Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

The story is told of a group of mice who got together to plan how to prevent the cat from catching so many of them.

One spoke up and said, "I have a great idea.

If we put a bell on the cat so we can always hear him coming, we can escape."

The mice were so delighted with the idea they began to celebrate.

But then one of the older and wiser mice asked the question: "Who is going to bell the cat?"

That was definitely a wet blanket on the flame of their enthusiasm.

But somebody has to face reality and deal with the way it is, and not just with the way we want it to be.

Reality is often hard and disillusioning, and those who point it out will be accused of being kill-joys, and those who lack faith.

But there is no escaping it, for the Bible forces the believer to be balanced by demanding that they look at the whole picture of reality.

Right in the midst of one miracle account after another Mark records an equally spectacular account of the miracle that never happened.

It is a case of dramatic non-deliverance and non-healing.

Peter was in prison and he was set free by the miraculous intervention of an angel.

But not John the Baptist.

Not the man of whom Jesus said he was the greatest born of woman.

Jesus loved this man of God, and John obeyed God as faithfully as any man who has ever lived.

We have no record of any sin in his life.

He was an ideal servant of the kingdom of God.

If anybody ever deserved a miracle of deliverance, it was John the Baptist.

But he did not get it, and he died at the hands of an evil man for a trivial reason.

This bad news is not hidden in some obscure corner like back page news.

It is given front page coverage by Mark.

It is a monkey wrench thrown into the machinery of miracles everywhere for everybody.

This is the realism the Bible forces us to deal with.

If you like the fairy tale fantasizing of how the Christian who walks in the will of God will always be healed, or always be delivered at the last minute, then you will have to avoid the Bible.

The Bible will not support the superficial optimism of those who say it is always God's will to heal, or the child of God will always win over the child of the devil.

The Bible hits us in the face with the reality that even the best of God's people may never be healed or delivered.

We may hate to read this realism, for it sounds like the Bummersville Gazette, but God knows it is the only way we can be balanced in a world that has fallen, and where even God's people tend toward extremes.

The Bible reveals side by side, miracles and non-miracles, healing and non-healing, answers to prayer, and non-answers to prayer, and the thrill of victory, but also the agony of defeat.

Developing an awareness of, and acceptance of, the total picture is the basis for a balanced life spiritually and emotionally.

Christians who do not develop this balance tend to go to extremes, and do not exhibit faith but presumption.

Presumption is what Jesus would have displayed had he listened to Satan's use of Scripture and jumped off the pinnacle of the temple.

This would have been tempting God.

Many Christians do this and get themselves so worked up to a fever pitch of presumed faith that they do things that are contrary to common sense.

They claim miracles that are not there, and demand the fulfillment of promises that are never given.

Then they collapse in disillusionment and despair because they feel God has let them down.

Many have emotional breakdowns and become mentally ill because they refuse to face the reality of the Bible, and instead, build their castles in the air out of nothing but fantasy.

Are we to suppose that John the Baptist did not have enough faith, and that is why he got no miracle?

That is not the revelation at all.

On the contrary, and what we have here is the revelation that no matter who you are, and no matter how great your faith in God, you may just have to endure sickness and suffering and death with no deliverance in this life.

All believers will be delivered from all evil forever, but in this life there is no promise anywhere in the Bible that God's people will be delivered from all the negatives of life.

So we have the paradox of non-Christians who do get healed, and very Godly believers who do not.

You have some of the leaders in the world of healing who are channels of healing to others, but who cannot heal themselves, or some of those closest to them.

Paul could not heal this own thorn in the flesh.

He could heal pagans by the score, but his dear friend Epaphroditus, who was so sick he almost died, he could not heal.

In II Tim.

4:20 he writes of another friend in Christ, "I left Trophimus sick in Miletus."

Paul, the man with the gift of healing, did not seem anxious to hide his failures.

He states openly without embarrassment that he could not heal his fellow servants in Christ.

It is obvious that Paul understood that all healing is up the sovereign will of God, and that there is no promise that all of God's people will be healed and set free from their illnesses.

Paul did not go around preaching that it was God's will for all to be healed.

Paul was a man of balanced perspective, and the result was, he could experience miracles, and take non-miracles in stride.

He was not shaken or surprised by either, for they were both a part of life.

Dr. David Allen Hubbard, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, began a new class in 1982 called The Miraculous And Church Growth.

The course broke all enrollment records as students going to the mission field especially flocked to learn how miraculous healing could be a tool to open up cultures to the Gospel.

Now here is the paradox: Dr. Hubbard, a leader in this field, has a record of more sickness than the average pagan he is training his students to reach.

1.

His father died of a sudden heart attack.

2. His brother got the mumps and serious complications.

3. His foster sister died of Tuberculosis.

4. His mother was severely scarred by pressure cooker explosion.

5. His sister had to drop out of college because of a serious eye problem.

With many prayers behind them, hands were laid on her, and she was

anointed with oil.

Satan was rebuked, but her eyes remained crossed.

6.

His eight week old son died.

7. His wife Ruth has chronic bouts with ill health.

8.

He has severe allergy reactions and other problems.

For a man like this to be promoting the healing power of Christ, looks at first like a bald man promoting hair growing tonic.

It seems inconsistent and contradictory, but it is not so.

It is the Biblical perspective where some obscure 12 year old girl who hasn't touched anybody for God is raised from the dead, and the greatest man ever born of woman, who has altered the course of history for God, is aloud to die a violent death with no attempt to spare him, or to raise him up afterward.

Did John have less faith than this 12 year old girl?

Did her father have more faith in Jesus than did the thousands of followers of John?

Nothing is more offensive than to say, if a person had more faith they would have been healed.

Such words as that are unbalanced fanaticism that rejects the clear revelation of the New Testament.

Dr. Hubbard and his wife have seen people with little faith healed, while others, including themselves, with great faith are not healed.

Fortunately, he had a wise father who carried olive oil in his pocket because he was ready at all times to anoint for healing.

But he taught his son to love and serve God in the working of miracles, or the withholding of miracles, for God is sovereign and no man and no method, and no means can control God, or manipulate him to do the will of man.

Malcolm H. Miner, an a Episcopalian priest, who has seen many miracles as a result of his laying on of hands, saw his own wife stricken with a fast growing cancer.

It was already beyond surgery when it was discovered.

They went for radiation, and she attended his healing services and was anointed.

She was on a prayer list throughout the world.

People all around her were being healed, but in three years she died.

Did Malcolm throw in the towel, and say all this healing business is a sham?

Not at all!

He had the Biblical view which goes on seeking and experiencing healing, even while he had to endure the reality of non-healing, and a miracle which never happened.

If you cannot accept both sides, you don't want reality.

You want fantasy, and this will lead to fanaticism, abuse, and eventually disillusionment.

The man who expects heaven in a fallen world will find reality to be hell.

The man who expects a fallen world to be somewhat hellish will still be able to taste of the things to come, and experience something of heaven on earth.

Jesus could have done a lot of things He did not do, and He could do a lot of things today that He does not do.

The point is, all that could be is not reality.

Reality is what is, and what is is that Christians of great faith get sick and never get well.

They get into accidents and die, and they suffer most all of the ills of a fallen world, and do not escape.

That is reality, and that is the Biblical picture.

To teach or believe otherwise is to impose man made fantasy on Biblical reality.

The point of all this is not to hinder our faith in healing and deliverance, for we are to pursue them with diligence, and never cease to call upon God for healing and health.

We are to be bold in seeking miracles, but we need to have the balance so we do not lose faith when all we hope for is not granted.

The lopsided Christian is the one who loses his faith because he thinks it is all or nothing, and is not ready to accept both miracles and non-miracles.

His false view of God's promises leads him to expect what God has never said he should expect, and the result is the reality of the non-miracle crushes his unrealistic faith.

Realism demands that we face the facts, and the facts are that John the Baptist died at the hands of evil people.