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The ‘Deadly Virtue’ of Certainty
Jim Weaver, Guest Pastor
Well thanks to Pedro and Matthias for that great lesson for all of us. And the fourth Sunday with you is here. How it has come quickly for me. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you in these four Sundays and I certainly appreciate your welcome and your hospitality. We've been talking in these four Sundays about what I've called some deadly virtues. These are genuine qualities, attitudes, virtues of the Christian life. But they can get twisted, distorted, and they can become deadly. This morning we're going to talk about the deadly virtue of certainty. I heard this story at a Baptist meeting. It's not a true story like those I told last week, but it does make a good point. There was this couple out west that had a cat. Actually, the wife had the cat. Every time the husband would sit down on the sofa and stand up, he'd have cat hair all over him. When he'd go to the kitchen to open up a can of soup, he'd always find evidence on that can opener that it had been used to open a can of cat food. Somehow it was assumed that he would be the one to empty the litter box. Well, one day his wife was gone for several hours and the husband gathered up his wife's cat And he drove down to the river and he used up all nine lives of that cat all at once. Later that afternoon, the wife returned home and after a while she began to miss the cat. She started to look for it. didn't take her long to become frantic because of course she couldn't find the cat. And she broke down and she cried for hours. And this went on late into the night. And the husband tried to comfort her. Now dear, you don't worry about it. We'll keep looking for the cat. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Tomorrow at work, I'm going to offer a $5,000 reward to anyone who can help us find this cat. the wife thought she had the most kind, compassionate, wonderful husband there was in all the world and he just smiled this smile of self-satisfaction. The next day, the husband did what he said he was going to do. When he got to work, he said to the fella at the desk next to him, My wife just lost her cat. I'm going to give a $5,000 reward to anyone who can locate this cat. The fellow said, $5,000 for a cat? Suppose somebody finds your wife's cat. Aren't you taking a big risk? And the husband said, well, I guess I am. But when you know what you know, you can take some risk in life. When you know what you know, you can take some risk in life. When you know what you know. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. When you know what you know. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. When you know what you know, God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. When you know what you know, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. When you know what you know, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is passed away, behold, the new has come. When you know what the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever. When you know what you know, you can take some risk in life. What we're talking about is assurance, conviction, certainty. We know what we know, and so we can live our lives with confidence and courage. We can take some risk in life because of the certainty of what we know. And actually, to be more precise about it, it's not just knowing what we know, it's knowing who we know. God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. This certainty, this assurance, this conviction that we have about God is not the certainty of visible scientific proof. You may have studied the classic philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Maybe you have reflected on some of the evidence about the empty tomb and the boldness of the first disciples in the formation of the church that supports the credibility of belief in the resurrection of Jesus. All of this is helpful. All of this shows that belief in God is reasonable, that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is believable. But all of this is not the proof of facts that can't be disputed. Not everybody will be convinced. A woman asked Bertram Russell, who was perhaps the best known atheist in the 20th century, what he would do if he found out that he had been wrong and he discovered himself standing there at the gate of heaven. Russell's eyes lit up and he said, Why I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.' The certainty of the evidence that we have is the certainty of a different sort. It's no less valid than the evidence of the certainty of proof that the world relies on. But the certainty that we have is the certainty of faith. The writer of Hebrews says, Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Some versions use the language of certainty in their translation. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Some of God's promises are out there in the future, but we're sure that these promises will become reality because of faith. We can't see God with our physical eyes in the way that we can see each other here, but we're convinced that God is real because of faith. We see with the eyes of faith. In the physical world we can't see the wind with our eyes, but with our physical eyes we can see the evidence of the wind and flags that are waving and trees that are blown over. In the same way, we can't see God visibly, but through eyes of faith, we can see the evidence of God at work in the world, especially in changed lives, including our own lives. We're sure about God because we have encountered God in Jesus and we've come into a relationship with God that gives us real life. This is what faith does. Faith gives us the assurance, the conviction, the certainty on which we base our lives. Faith gives us the confidence, the courage, the risk-taking freedom to live our lives in the kind of world we live in. Our certainty is the certainty of faith. Then the words of Paul, We keep on walking. We keep on living by faith and not by visible sight. But perhaps we need to say a word about doubt. In case anyone is thinking, my faith is not so certain. Maybe if we're honest, we can be like that father of the boy who had an unclean spirit, who cried out to Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. There may be doubts and questions and anxieties that come. And if this is us, we're in good company. The Bible is full of people who wondered about God and God's purposes. Abraham wasn't sure God was going to keep the promise that God had made to him, that he would be the father of many descendants. Moses thought God had made a mistake in calling him to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt. Jeremiah struggled with the way that it looked like the wicked people were winning while the righteous people were suffering. Job couldn't understand where God was in the tragedy of his life. John the Baptist wondered and wanted to know whether Jesus really was the Messiah or should he look for somebody else. And even Jesus called out on the cross in the humanity of his nature as fully God and fully man, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As finite people who live in a world where not everything makes sense and the props can be knocked out and people can be cruel, We can't have our doubts and our questions and our anxieties. This is part of life. This is a part of being human. And the truth is doubts and questions and anxieties can lead some people away from God, tragically. But in the context of faith, doubts and questions and anxieties are an invitation to deepen our relationship with God and to grow in our faith in God. The Christian author and minister Frederick Buechner said, Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving. When we struggle our way through doubts and questions and anxieties, we can come out on the other side with stronger faith. Just as exercising our muscles can make stronger muscles, exercising our faith as we deal with doubts and fears can make faith stronger. Maybe our faith has become complacent Or maybe we've taken our faith for granted. Doubts and questions and anxieties can shake us up and stir us to more vibrant faith. Maybe there is something in our faith that is shallow and superficial and it can't bear the weight of life in our kind of world. Doubts and questions and anxieties can sweep away everything that is shallow and superficial and lead to the building of more mature faith, more certain faith. I don't think we would say to go out and look for doubts and questions and anxieties, but if they come, when they come, We can see them as the opportunity to grow in our faith. They're like spiritual growing pains that can lead us to trust even more in God. God isn't threatened, God isn't offended by our doubts and anxieties and questions. If we're open to God, God can use them to keep our faith alive. and to keep us moving toward God. I imagine that most of you are familiar with the soul and R&B singer Bill Withers. One of his classic songs is Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone. Maybe you recall that in the middle of this song, there is the repetition of just one phrase. 26 times, Withers keeps repeating the phrase, I know, I know. There's an interesting story about this. When Withers went into the recording studio for the first run through of this song, he hadn't finished writing the lyrics for the whole song. And he got to what was going to be the third verse, the unfinished verse, and he improvised. And he just kept repeating the words, I know, He intended to go back and write lyrics for the third verse, but all of the people in the recording studio, and there were some big names there, urged him just to leave the song the way he had sung it. And that's just what he did. There may be times when we're not sure what words come next in life. There may be times when life seems so unfinished, so uncertain. Maybe we just need to repeat what we know. We hold on to the I know of faith. Or maybe better put, we know that God is holding on to us. This is the way Paul puts it. I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. This is the assurance of faith. This is the conviction of faith. This is the certainty of faith. And faith that is certain leads to courage and confidence to follow Jesus in our world. When you know what you know, you can take some risk in life. This kind of faith, this certainty of faith is a virtue, it's a quality, it's an attitude that is the anchor at the very center of a Christian's life. None of us can make it very far, very long in life if we don't have this assurance of faith. But this Certainty of faith can get twisted and misguided and become deadly destructive to our spiritual lives. And it happens when we become too certain about things. This uber certainty about things impacts our relationship with other people, even in the community of faith. You've probably heard the watchword. In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity, which may go back to a bishop in the church in the 17th century. People who are too certain about things can turn non-essentials into essentials and think that they have all of the ideas and they want everybody else to think that they have all of the ideas. But somebody once said, Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. There was a situation in the church at Rome where people were too certain. Some had a Jewish heritage, some came from a Gentile background. They had different interpretations of the only written Bible that they had at the time, the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament. Some observed particular holidays and some didn't. Some ate just vegetables and some ate meat and vegetables. And the result of all this was tension and strife and hostility and name calling. So Paul stepped in and he said, may the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had. so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another, then, as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God. When we are tempted to be too certain in our dealings with other people, especially brothers and sisters in the family of faith, we need to remember the attitude of Jesus. We need to be more like Jesus. But being too certain can also take us in another direction. It can impact our relationship with God. We can begin to think that we know all there is to know about God. We can begin to think that we have God all figured out. Now I don't suppose that we would ever articulate anything like this out loud. This may not even be the way that we think that we think. But the way that we live and the way that we act may betray something else. We may decide that God would do this, but God would never do that. God would work in this way, but God would never work in that way. We may limit God in that creative powerful grace of God to just what we think God ought to be about in the world. And we can put God into a box of our own making and we can miss God and miss out on what God is doing. Once I went to the airport to pick up a man who was going to lead some special services in our church. I hadn't seen the man in several years. and I walked right past him in the terminal. He had aged some, and I had two, and I just didn't recognize him. I was trying to find the man that looked the way that he used to look, and I wasn't anticipating the man as he was right now in the present moment. I missed him. And we did miss each other until we sort of stumbled onto each other and reacquainted ourselves. It's possible we can do something like this with God. God may come doing a new thing, but we fail to recognize God and where God is at work in the world because we're still looking for the same old things. God may come and want to touch our lives with a fresh wind of God's Spirit, but we may have God boxed up in some stored away notions. We may have in mind exactly what God can do, and we're in our comfort zone. Because we've got a God who is predictable, there are no surprises for us to expect from this God. Life can be easier for us this way. But God can never be put in a box. And the truth is, we're the ones who can become boxed in. God is at work in the world. And we may not see it because we've shut the windows to our lives. When we're too certain that we know exactly what God will do and we know the ways and purposes of God, God might come right at us and we miss Him. There's always a wonderful mystery about God and God's purposes and ways. We just need to sing with Paul his doxology. O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay them? For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. As long as God is God and that's forever, and as long as we are who we are, God has some things for us that we have never thought of. God has some things for us to experience that we have never imagined. It's a tragedy when somebody slips into this deadly virtue of being too certain. and they miss out on God and they miss out on what God is doing in the world. There's also another variation of this deadly virtue of certainty that can undermine our relationship with God. It's the need to be too certain before we step out and follow God in faith. And the result is that we can miss out on the life of abundance, the life to the fullest that God has for us. A man once came to me and told me that he believed that God had something special for him to do with his life, but he didn't have any idea what it was. We talked about some particular interest a man had and the needs that he saw, and the gifts that he recognized God had given to him. And I suggested that maybe he might try to match these gifts and interests with the needs he saw and see if it felt right. And maybe in this process of connecting interests and gifts and needs, God would show him what direction to go. And perhaps God would make it very clear for him in all of this exactly what God wanted to do with his life. The man thought about all this for a moment and he thanked me for my time. And then he said, But I need to be certain right now before I start doing anything. I think I'll just wait a little longer and see if I can figure it out. The last I knew about this man, he was still waiting to figure it out. Mark Twain told the story of a man who died and met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. The man knew St. Peter was very wise and he thought he'd ask Peter a question that he had been thinking about all his life. He was quite interested in military history and he wanted to know who was the greatest general of all time. Saint Peter said, why, that's an easy one. It's that man right over there. The man looked at that fellow, the person Peter was pointing to, and he actually knew him. And the man said to Peter, you have to be mistaken. I knew that man on earth. He was a common, everyday guy. He was the manager of a snore near my house. Peter said, You're right. But he would have been the greatest general in the world if he were a general. What is God calling us to be? What is God calling us to do? There's probably not anything that could be much sadder than to come to the end of our lives and to regret what could have been if we followed God in faith. Now it's the nature of a life of faith that God isn't going to give us all of the answers up front. And God usually doesn't give us the whole map at the start of the journey. God calls us to faith. God calls us to follow Him and to step out in faith, even if it's just the one step that we can see right there in front of us. For many years, Henley Barnett was seminary professor in Christian ethics. He grew up in a poor family in a mill town in North Carolina. And sometimes Barnett and his family would cross the mountain near his house to visit another family on the other side. It would be about bedtime when Barnett and his family would head back home. And his father would lead the family single file along that narrow mountain path. It would be dark. There would be dangers on either side if you wandered off the path. But there was always light for the journey. His father carried a kerosene lamp. It didn't give out a lot of light, but it was enough light. The tiny flame of that lamp spread a circle of light around the father's feet as he led the family home. Barnett said about this experience of his childhood, I learned a great lesson. Each time my father took a step, the light went with him. Following God who's come to us in Jesus sometimes is going to be like this. God is here with the light for us. Sometimes it may not be as much light as we want it to be. Sometimes the light may not shine out as far in the distance as we want it to shine. But God is the one with the light, and God calls us to follow Him. And if we want to stay in the light, we've got to move out with God, following God one step at a time. This is what a life of faith always is going to involve. It's going forward even when we don't know all of the answers. It's going forward even when things aren't crystal clear. Now there is risk in all of this. Following Jesus is not risk-free. But we shouldn't expect it to be any different when the one that we're following ended up on a cross and passed through the tunnel of death and burst back into life. We can be certain, in spite of the risk, that God is always here with us with the light and we can trust God to keep the light burning. You know, faith isn't always knowing exactly where we're going. But faith is always being certain of God who leads the way and who is keeping us in His love. Somebody has said that following Jesus in faith is like riding a bicycle. Either you're on or you're off. You can't stay still with your feet suspended on the pedals for very long. Either you are pedaling and going forward or you are putting your feet on the ground and you're standing still and you're not going anywhere. There is no staying still place for the person who is living by faith in Jesus. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the one who is the founder and perfecter of our faith. And we need to keep on peddling because He is the one who shows us the way and He's the one who gives us the strength to ride. Anybody who needs to always be too certain about every step of faith, isn't going to make it very far along toward that finish line where Jesus is leading us. And that's deadly destructive to our lives. Today, God invites us to be sure about him, to be certain about him. We're never going to have God all figured out. We certainly can't put God in a box. But God calls us to follow Him in a life of faith, where we will find out more and more about God and the new thing that God is always doing. And out there in that journey of faith, we'll find out more and more about the life that God is calling us to live too. God doesn't promise us that this way of living our lives will always be smooth and easy and comfortable. It's not that way. But when you know what you know, you can risk your life on it. When you know who you know, you can risk your life on him. Would you pray? Father, help us to keep our eyes on you in all of your grace and your love for us in Jesus. And help us to follow you in faith. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.