Well, we have been in a series, and our series has been taking a look at the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. This is the first time I've ever done a series in 40 years, first time I've done a series on Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness. And let me give you a quick review if you've missed any of those weeks. Week one, we talked about the nature of the wilderness.
The wilderness is wild, but the wilderness produces something. It's not a detour. It's just a part of life. And in week two, we talked about the challenge of the wilderness that it exposes weakness in us.
It produces strength in us, and it promotes God's presence in our life. And then last week, week three, we talked about dependence. That the secret for surviving the wilderness is to depend on God to get us through those challenging, difficult times of life. And that if we will depend on God, that it will bring us closer to Him, it will make us stronger.
And in the process, it will actually pull others forward as well. Now if you were here last week, you know that I had my bike with me. And you would also notice that this is a different bike right here. So last week, it was a bright red bike and it's shining like a new dime.
But that bike was built for speed. I could lift that bike with a single finger. And it was made to go fast on tarmac, on blacktop, on concrete. It was aerodynamic.
And everything about it was built to go fast on hard surfaces. Now this is my gravel bike. And as you can see, it's all black and it looks mean. And some of you might look at it and say, well, I don't know, it doesn't look much different to me other than it's black.
The other one was red. So a gravel bike is kind of a cross between a road bike and a mountain bike. So the difference is that it's built a little beefier. You would first recognize the difference in the wheel size.
These wheels are probably a good three or four times as large as the road bike wheels. They got some knobs on them. Generally, the bike is a little bit beefier. Now again, it's all made of carbon fiber.
This one is just much more stiff. The components of this are just much tougher because this bike is designed to go fast, but it's designed to go fast on softer surfaces, gravel, dirt roads, maybe a little bit of water here and there. So this bike has been through a number of different races. In 2023, I raced in a series of races.
It was four races over a period of eight weeks and it was called the Mississippi gravel cup. Each of those races was in a different part of Mississippi. And the first race, they started in January, second week of January. So the first race, it was 26 degrees at start time of the race.
And of course, we're all wearing thin lycra out there and we got some arm covers and some little gloves, but it was cold. And I got second place in that race. I'm pretty decent about it. There's people there from six states all around the country.
And the way it works is you gather points over the four race series and they crowned a champion at the end. Well, two weeks later, it was a balmy 38 degrees at start time. But it had been raining for several days before that race and when the race began, it was a little drizzly and misty. And this is a picture of me.
They stationed photographers along the race route. That's me up front, about halfway through this race. And you can see I got a couple guys behind me and they're chasing me. Now this is not a pace line.
If you're here last week, we talked about a pace line. That's not what this is. This is a race and this is me going as fast as I can for as long as I can, trying to knock these guys off of my back wheel. And eventually I did and I got first place in this race and this is me at the finish line.
Now that's after 62 miles of racing in the mud and about three hours and 20 minutes. This next picture, this is me and my bike right here. And I've not only finished first place here, but I eventually won this gravel cup series. Just so you know, I didn't get paid for this.
In fact, I had to pay for the privilege of doing this. In this particular race, I had to spend $500 to repair my bike because it got thrashed by going through that mud. This is called your bottom bracket right down here and it was annihilated. The chain was toasted and all of these gears back here from being in the mud for three and a half hours were just smoked.
And it was an expensive win, but you can see that face right there was worth it. Trust me. Now, here's why I'm bringing this up. Travel racing is unpredictable.
It's uncomfortable and it's genuinely messy, as you can see. And yet somewhere in the middle of this race, you truly learn what you're made of. And that's kind of like the wilderness, because we all go through it in life, right? We all go through those messy times, those unpredictable moments that thrust us into really dark wilderness places.
And somehow in the middle of that, we find out what we're made of. And we all go through it from time to time. Now, this is actually a pretty good picture of faith right here. It's a messy business.
It's disorienting and it's nothing like what we expect. But here's what I want us to say. We pull that picture up one more time, Patrick. We can somehow come through the wilderness smiling if we understand how the wilderness challenges faith.
And that's what I want us to look at this morning is how does the wilderness challenge our faith? So let's talk about it for a few minutes. And here's what I want to say first. The wilderness challenges our faith in this way.
Fragile faith can be exposed in the harsh wilderness. So we're going to be looking at Mark 9 today. And Mark 9 introduces us to a man in scripture, a father who had a son. His father has been through the wilderness in his life.
So let's be introduced to our story. I'm going to read verse 17, 18, and then verse 19 to 21. So it says, one of the men in the crowd spoke up and said, he's talking to Jesus. And he says, teacher, I brought my son so you can heal him.
He is possessed by an evil spirit that won't let him talk. And whenever this spirit seizes him, it throws him violently to the ground. Then he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. Bring the boy to me, Jesus said.
So they brought the boy. But when the evil spirit saw Jesus, it threw the child into a violent convulsion. And he fell to the ground, writhing and foaming at the mouth. How long has this been happening?
Jesus asked the boy's father. And he replied, since he was a little boy. Now I want us to focus here for a moment on these five words. Since he was a little boy.
One of my favorite authors is Ernest Hemingway. We read him in my dual enrollment class. And so my students here are familiar with Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway was a great writer.
He's really known for his powerful language. He didn't try to get fancy. He made every word count. And he had short pithy sentences.
And legend is that someone challenged him to write the shortest short story that he could. That was powerful. And so he wrote on what became a six word short story. And here it is.
For sale, baby shoes never worn. So when those six words sink in, suddenly you feel the intense pain behind those words. You don't know the story. But you get the sense that there's tragedy behind those six words.
Unspeakable pain compressed into the smallest possible space. So many people were able to read the book that was crushed before it was ever used. A wilderness that started before it should have. There's unspoken tragedy behind those words.
For sale. Baby shoes never worn. Now, one of the challenges for us as we read the Bible is that it can become too familiar to us. So familiar that we treat it as a text rather than as a testimony of something that in real life.
This was a real father with a young son. And we want to feel the pain of these five words, which ironically in the Greek language is six words. But we want to feel the pain of this since he was a little boy. Now, this is a man, a father who's been living in the long, dark wilderness, who's been watching his young boy experience what we just got a glimpse of.
And here's what it looked like. Seized. Thrown into the fire. Thrown into water.
Convulsing. Grinding. Teeth. Rigid.
Foming. At the mouth. And this is a father who was forced to watch again and again and again. Feeling only helplessness to be able to do anything about it.
He's prayed. And he's tried everything to no avail. Now what does this father do on this day? Well, what he does on this day is he has heard about a man who's healing people.
And so he brings his son and he finds this man. And the man's not there, but his disciples are. And he brings his son to them. And what happens is they tried to cast out this demon and they failed at it.
And now this man finds himself standing before Jesus Christ himself. And he says to him, please heal him if you can. Now it's a real fascinating conversation now that happens between Jesus and this man. Let me read the next part of the story in verses 23 and 24.
So this father comes to Jesus and says, please heal him if you can. And here's Jesus' response. What do you mean if I can? Jesus says anything is possible.
If a person believes, the father instantly cried out, I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief. Now it's a truly fascinating interchange here. And I want you to notice what Jesus does. So this father comes to Jesus.
Understandably, he is cautious. That's why he says if you can, please heal him if you can. That is the language of protection. That's a man who's been disappointed again and again and again who was just disappointed because Jesus' own disciples failed in trying to heal his son.
But Jesus confronts it. What do you mean if I can? Now we might be tempted to think that Jesus is being defensive or he's somehow offended by this statement, well, if you can. And that's not what's happening here at all.
He doesn't say what do you mean if I can to shame him or to send him away but to crack him open. He is inviting him all the way in. Jesus isn't looking for perfect faith from this man. What he's looking for is honest faith.
And that's exactly what he gets from this father. Suddenly the father gets real and speaks truth. And he says, I believe and I don't help me. And that's what Jesus is after the whole time.
Not certainty but honesty. Now here's what I want to see this morning. This is the way God works with us as well. He's not looking for perfect faith.
But what he wants is honest faith. The wilderness exposes the fragile places in our faith. That's what the wilderness does. That's what happened with this man.
That's what happens with us. You can be strong and courageous and faith-filled until you hit the wilderness and things get unpredictable and life gets hard. And then it exposes those fragile places that were hidden before or that you just didn't talk about or say out loud before. The wilderness exposes the fragile places in our faith.
This father wanted to believe. But belief was a struggle because he's been in pain and helplessly watching his son for years and years since he was a little boy. It's not a character flaw in this father. It's not a failure of faith.
It's an honest response to being in the long dark wilderness. And that's okay. So what I'll say to you as a pastor this morning is if you find yourself this morning in the long dark wilderness, you understand this story. You're living it right now.
And if you find yourself there, good news is waiting for you. And that leads us to point two. What do we learn in the wilderness? We learn that fragile faith can be exposed in the harsh wilderness.
But here's the second thing we learn. Mature faith can be produced through honest doubt. Mature faith can be produced through honest doubt. Now it's interesting.
We don't know what happened to this father of this young boy because this episode is all we know of him and we don't know what happens after him. Now what we know of him is that he appears by all measures to be a genuine seeker with an honest faith and he appears to be someone that Jesus transformed because he did in fact heal his son. And so there's every reason for us to believe that he overcame and was transformed through Jesus. Now here's what we do know though.
Well we don't know what happened with this man. We do know how many, many, many others in scripture grappled with their own doubts and their own unbelief. So doubt, do you BT, is that dreaded five letter word that shakes every person who's ever felt its sharp edge. So doubt, it haunts our hearts, it punishes our thoughts and it tests our will to continue with faith.
And so listen closely, please, here's what I want to say to you this morning. Here's what I want you to understand about doubt. Maybe different from anything you've ever heard. Doubt is not the monster that it wants you to believe that it is.
It's not the big bad boogie man if you will allow yourself to have a healthy honest doubt. So let's talk about what doubt is and what doubt isn't. So here's what you need to walk out of here today understanding. If you see doubt as something to get rid of in your life, doubt will crush you like a bug under your tennis shoe.
If you see doubt as an enemy, it will cause you to shrink, to pull back and to move away from God. So for some doubt becomes a ready made excuse for unbelief. Why? Because I see doubt as an enemy to belief.
So listen, doubt is not a static thing to get rid of. Doubt is a dynamic thing to wrestle with. So there's a guy in the Old Testament, his name is Jacob. And there's this really unusual fascinating story about Jacob who one night wrestles with God all night long.
Now there's a lot about this story that we don't know all of the answers to exactly what does this mean. He wrestled with God. Was it an angel? Was it some sort of emissary of God?
But what we know is that it describes Jacob as having wrestled with God all night long. Was it real? Well, here's how we know how real it was. After that, Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
That was a real battle right there. But he also left that with a new name, Israel. And with the faith, now that was stronger for the rest of his life. Now I think that's a super important story for us to be aware of because this is a beautiful description of doubts.
It's not something that we should strive to get rid of. It's something that we simply wrestle with. When we stop trying to get rid of doubt and wrestle with it honestly, then it changes things for us. Now we see doubt as this vicious enemy to faith.
And we need to see doubt as a simple reality of faith. If you'll see doubt as a simple catalyst, what is it? A catalyst is something that produces growth rather than prevents it. So for a lot of people when they have, when they struggle with doubts, it stops them in their tracks.
It stops them from growth. What we need to see is doubt as a catalyst that actually produces growth in our life. So doubt is honest and it's human. Did you know there are 150 Psalms in the Old Testament, book of Psalms, 150 chapters.
Fully a third of those are what we categorize as Psalms of lament. Now what is a lament? Well, a lament is a very loud complaint. And laments are essentially saying this, I don't understand this.
I don't get this. I feel abandoned. And one of the most famous, Jesus quoted on the cross, this is a psalm that begins. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
That's a lament. And when we read these Psalms, they are dark and even uncomfortable. They're questioning God. And questioning doesn't destroy faith.
It builds faith if we let it do its work. Now it's a big if there. What does it mean to allow questioning to do its work? Well, this is the work of questioning.
It means getting to a place where not that I never doubt. It's getting to a place where I no longer allow doubts to make decisions for me. That's allowing questioning to do its work. These Psalms are raw.
They're unfiltered. And they even make a squirm a little bit. But here's what's interesting. Of these 40 plus Psalms, all of them, except for one.
End with the Psalmist singing. End with the Psalmist singing a hymn of praise to God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Followed by hymn of praise.
Now what does that mean? Does that mean that suddenly, that quickly, the Psalmist is over? They're questioning and everything's been resolved? No.
It means that in the midst of their complaint, they choose to give praise to the creator of the universe. What's really fascinating here, and let's get back to our passage in Mark 9, is that what we see here is a bunch of people who are having a crisis of faith. So we've got the Father, Raw, Desperate, just enough faith to show up here to Jesus. He's not far down the road of faith, but he's moving and he's honest.
But then we got the disciples, the 12 dudes. These dudes have been hanging out with Jesus for a while. I don't know how long at this point. He had made everything he did.
Miracles, healings, everything he's taught every day. And they're confident and they're experienced. But on this day, they came face to face with the limitations of their faith. And they thought they'd arrived, but they learned the difference on this day because they couldn't do anything about the problem this man brought.
So there's people all over the road of faith in this one story right here. And you know what happened? Jesus met every one of them where they were. And nobody was disqualified.
Now what's important there? Here's what I want us to see. Faith is a continuum. And so from this father on this very beginning of the journey of faith to these disciples who are scattered all over this road, all of them were coming to markers in their life where their faith was challenged because this is what the wilderness does to us.
It reveals the fragile places in our faith. And the questions that we have that linger in those dark places in our heart and mind are not our enemy. They put us actually in good company because when we read the Bible, we learned that Abraham and Moses and Jacob and David brought their questions to God. And Matthew and Mark and Luke and John individually struggled without a long road in their pilgrimage and Paul and Barnabas and James and Timothy and Pastor Brian Mercer and Pastor Craig Ferguson and you all struggle with our own questions.
And what we do is we bring them to God honestly and we learn it's okay. After all was said and done that night, the disciples came to Jesus and they asked outside of the presence of all of that crowd, hey Jesus, what happened? Why weren't we able to cast out that demon? And Jesus said that only happens by prayer.
In other words, you're not quite there yet. And here's what Jesus didn't do. He didn't scold them. He didn't belittle them.
He taught them. And what he loved is that they came honestly to him. And this is what he wants from us. So maybe someone's been waiting until you thought you had enough faith and you've been sitting on doubt because you think you've got to resolve it first.
And what this passage teaches us is the opposite. Just bring what you actually have to Jesus and that's enough. Doubt's not the end. It's the beginning of the conversation.
And maybe you're like the Father, been in a long wilderness and doubt's been building for years. Or maybe you're like the disciples. Further along but hit a wall you can't quite explain right now. Maybe you're somewhere in between on the continuum.
Wherever you are in your faith though, the Father's prayer, the Father's cry, unbelongs to you. So what we're going to do today is we close with something a little nutty. We don't usually do it. And if you don't want to do it, then don't.
Okay? Now here's what we're going to do. We're going to say this Father's cry together. So here it is.
This is the Father cried out to Jesus, I believe. I'm helping my unbelief. Now I like just, let's get real. What does that mean?
Hey, I believe. And I don't. And those can both exist in the same place. And that's okay.
Now we're going to say it out loud together. Why? Well because, number one, it's true. It's true.
That's not an accusation. That's honesty because we're human. And that's real. And number two, we're going to say it together because I think there's something powerful about saying something that's true in the presence of other people who are saying it too.
In fact, that's the point of being a faith family church. And just remember, you're not the only one in this room without. You're not the only one whose wilderness has been long. And you're not the only one whose faith is a mixture right now.
That's being human. So let's say it together. All of it. The belief, the unbelief, both things that can and do exist at the same time.
Ready? So here we go. Believe, help my unbelief. Now we're going to one more time just in case you were like, and so now you're ready.
Okay. Here we go. I believe, help my unbelief. Let's pray.
Father, thank you that we can come with that kind of honesty to you and say what's true. I believe and I don't. And that's the human condition. God, thank you that we don't have to pack that away and be ashamed of it or hide it somewhere.
Keep it from people, but we can see in this father that you loved him and you blessed him and you transformed him because of his honesty and the disciples. You loved them and you transformed them because of their real faith. So God help us to be people who aren't trying to cover on what's real in our life, but we're willing to own where we have that mixture of belief and unbelief. God, I pray that you help us not to see doubt as the enemy that haunts our conscience, but to see it as a simple matter of being human and to help us to grapple and wrestle with that doubt and through it to gain mature faith and help us to do that.
This week, Jesus name, we pray. Amen.