When You're Doubting God Because of Pain

In the chronicles of Jesus' first advent are tucked two stories of angelic visits that have similar overtones but completely different results. Both stories are found in the first chapter of Luke, and both involve an angel named Gabriel delivering messages of miraculous occurrences to two separate people.

First, of the priest named Zechariah, Luke tells us (in Luke 1:5-20) that Gabriel broke the news to the aged priest that he and his wife, Elizabeth, would have a son in spite of being in their older years, and that they were to name him John. John's assignment would be to prepare the way for the long-awaited Jewish Messiah.

Zechariah's response is a simple and completely understandable question:

How?

In Luke 1:26-38, Gabriel visits Mary to announce that she, a virgin, would conceive and bear a son. Her response to Gabriel, in a nutshell, is:

How?

Two people, visited separately by the same angel, offering the same question in response to the prophecy of the miraculous: How?

But Gabriel's response to each of them is quite different.

What if Gabriel silenced Zechariah not as some kind of punishment, but because that was the most compassionate way to respond to Zechariah in this season of his life?

Zechariah's story reminds me that God is incredibly patient!

Transcript

Brandon: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Walk Humble podcast. I'm your host, brandon Cox, and this is an ongoing conversation about life, faith and relationships among people who don't claim to have life all figured out. We walk implying we want to grow and make forward progress and be healthy, holy and happy. But we walk humble, meaning we get to drop the pretense, take off the mask and realize we have nothing left to prove. It's been a bit since my last episode, but I've got something on my mind today I had to share and I've tried writing about it, I've tried journaling about it and I just had to express it.

Brandon: 0:35

I'm recording this just a couple of weeks before Christmas, during the Advent season. If you're part of a tradition that celebrates Advent, we are two weeks in, with two weeks to go, and Advent is really just the season of anticipating the coming of Jesus. So we look back at the time that it came the first time. We also look forward to the time when he returns and we sort of balance those intention and we wait, hopefully and actively, until Jesus fixes things and finishes his work of redeeming and saving a lost and broken world. I want to talk to you today about two kinds of doubt, and both of these are illustrated in a chronicle that comes early in the Gospels In the life of Jesus. It's part of the Christmas story. Both stories are right next to each other. They have very similar tones, very similar overtones, and both have a lot of parallels, but also there's some differences, and I want to talk about Mary and I want to talk about Zechariah, if you're not familiar with who they are, mary, obviously, the mother of Jesus, zechariah, was the father of John the Baptist. He was a priest still serving according to the order of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, a Jewish leader. His son, john, would grow up to sort of leave the temple and the city for the life and the wilderness. He would be a prophet in kind of the Old Testament spirit and he would prepare the way for Jesus to come.

Brandon: 2:11

But we get this encounter in Luke, chapter one, of the angel Gabriel with Zechariah and then the same angel Gabriel with Mary, and to both of these individuals separately he gives them announcements. He comes to Zechariah and Zechariah is serving in the temple. He is in what is called the Holy of Holies, the very holiest place in the temple, and there the angel Gabriel speaks to Zechariah, appears to him, speaks to him and announces that he's going to have a child. Now, the thing to remember is that Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth the Bible says they are advanced in years, they are an older couple. They have not had kids, they are beyond childbearing years. They have struggled with infertility or, as far as we know, that was a struggle for them because they hadn't had a child at this point. And so when Gabriel comes to Zechariah and says you're going to have a baby, your wife is going to get pregnant, you're going to have a son. I want you to name him John, which normally wouldn't have been the name you'd given, but that's what God wants you to do. And so he comes to him and Zechariah responds with a kind of doubt and he asks a question. I'm going to sum it up in a single word Zechariah looks back at Gabriel and says how, how can this be? How's this even possible? Let's just hold that thought for a second. Okay.

Brandon: 3:41

Further down in the book of Luke, starting verse 26, the same angel, gabriel, visits Mary and says to Mary you're going to have a son, and I know that you haven't ever, you know, been intimately in body and I've had sexual relations with anybody, but you're going to have a child. You're going to have the child that God conceives in you and he's going to grow up and save his people from their sins. Now, same angel right, similar kind of message. Mary's response is also how, how is this even possible? So Zechariah responds with how is this possible? Mary responds with how is this possible? But the response Gabriel gives both of them is very different. To Zechariah, gabriel says look, I stand in the very presence of God and you don't believe me. You're expressing doubt and therefore you're going to be silent. You're not going to be able to speak until the child is born. And that's exactly what happens. Zechariah can't talk. And when John is born, then Zechariah asks for some of the right on and he confirms yes, we're going to name him John. Then his mouth is opened and he gives glory to God.

Brandon: 5:00

Mary, on the other hand, when she says how, how can this be? Gabriel's response to her is to just explain it. Well, the Holy Spirit's going to overshadow you and you're going to conceive a child, and it's going to be a mystery to all kinds of people, but you just need to keep leaning in and trusting. And Mary is ecstatic, but she's not. She's not struck with the inability to speak, she immediately begins to praise God. And so you've got two people, both instrumental in the story of the coming of Jesus, the first advent, the first coming of Jesus, both encountering Gabriel the angel, the messenger angel from God both getting messages of something miraculous and wondrous and unbelievable okay, from a scientific, natural standpoint something unbelievable and both of them responding to Gabriel with how can this be possible?

Brandon: 5:55

But the response of Gabriel is different, okay, and I think there are two different kinds of doubt that surface in this passage. The first kind of doubt is what Zechariah gives and is what I think of as a doubt that is leaning away. It's leaning away from God, it's leaning away from faith and simple trust. It's a how that says I'm not sure this is actually possible. How is this going to be? And Mary's how is a little bit different in that she is leaning in instead of leaning away. She's leaning toward, she's leaning in and she's trusting and she's believing. But I want to dig a little bit deeper because, while you've got these two different kinds of doubt, I want to scratch the surface a little deeper than what we normally would and talk about how these two different kinds of doubt surface in our lives and why I think maybe we should reread these texts a little differently.

Brandon: 6:57

First of all, I got to say this whole discussion was inspired by my wife and I attended New Heights Church in Bentville, arkansas, on Sunday. Pastor Josh preached on this passage, did a wonderful job, shared a lot of great truths, and since then her and I have talked quite a bit about these two stories, these passages of scripture. We've shared our spiritual insights with each other and my wife, who is a therapist and just naturally an empath and hurts with people and tends to really have a lot of compassion for people who are suffering. She pointed something out about Zechariah and Mary that I just hadn't thought of before. And before I get to it, let me just say that I have always read this passage on kind of the surface level.

Brandon: 7:40

Well, zechariah doubted, and because of that he suffered some consequences. He endured some punishments, some chastisement. Gabriel was upset with him. That's how we read the text. Mary, on the other hand, you know, gabriel was delighted to just explain things to her. She went right on her day, right on her Mary way, pun intended. And so I look at that and that's how I've always read the text and maybe you've read it that way too, but he brought something up, it seems like.

Brandon: 8:08

It seems like Zechariah's doubt was expressed from a place of pain, and Mary's was not, that that Zechariah had lived his adult life not having a child, that he and his wife had endured all of those questions that come with the struggle with infertility, and if you've never walked through infertility before, you can't understand it. It's just a special kind of pain, it's unique, it's different. It leads us through these crises of faith. What do we do with a God who just won't bless in that particular way? And that's a huge amount of pain that they had endured for years.

Brandon: 8:50

And it's almost like Zechariah, even though he was going through the motions. He's in the temple, he's serving, he's doing the thing he's he's. The Bible says he lives blamelessly and righteously, he keeps the rules, he serves God outwardly, but inside he's got all this pain and that pain has him leaning away from God. And as he receives this message from Gabriel about what's going to happen, he speaks out of that pain. How, how can this be? It's almost like don't tease me, don't mess with me here. I've been through enough. I don't want to go through anymore. How is this possible, mary?

Brandon: 9:30

On the other hand, tradition tells us, history tells us that very likely Mary was quite young, that she was in her mid to upper teen years when this entire story takes place, when she has Jesus with Joseph. And so because of that, mary, obviously we don't know what she's gone through in her life, but we do know that she's never wrestled with infertility. She's just reaching childbearing years, about to get married, she's betrothed, which is almost like marriage and their ancient culture, and in the midst of that, she's asking her how? Question not from a place of pain, but from a delight, from an excitement, and I always read this as Zechariah being punished. But what if? Just just bear with me what if Gabriel sentencing him to silence until the baby John the Baptist comes along? What if that was simply the most compassionate way to handle Zechariah in the moment, not to argue with him, not to give him some further kind of evidence, but also not to allow him to continue to sort of rant, but instead to have this assurance and this quiet assurance. And then, when he finally does open his mouth, praise pours forth. Right, he worships God. And so there are these two different kinds of doubt, one leans away from God, one leans into God, but I'm not convinced that leaning away from God and expressing doubt out of that moment is something that incurs his wrath and judgment and chastisement and punishment all that. Instead, I think what it brings about is compassion. I think there's a level of pain there and that you know Jesus. Obviously, according to the writer of Hebrews, he's walked through every kind of pain that we can walk through. He's been through every kind of temptation we can be through. He knows how we feel and he feels with us. And so this doubt that's expressed out of pain, I think it's different than Mary's doubt.

Brandon: 11:32

Now let me get relevant with you for a second. Get a little bit real here. I can look back on the last few years of my life and I can see definitely a season where I was sharing and expressing doubt from a place of leaning away from God. I just walked through some hard things, gone through some exhaustion and some feelings of rejection and that kind of thing, and the midst of that I asked some hard questions of God. I really wanted to know what was next and God, who am I and does any of this make sense? And I was asking all these sort of how and why questions from a place of pain, and I just want to express this I today, I'm so incredibly thankful for the patience of God that he walked with me through that era and guided me and just took me by the hand and, step by step, stuck with me and was faithful to me in a season of doubt. It has meant all the world to me that God would do that and I'm just extremely thankful. So I just want to give you this encouragement Maybe you're there today, maybe you're in one of these two seasons, if you're like Mary and you're just in awe and wonder of all that God is doing fantastic.

Brandon: 12:49

But maybe you're a little bit more like Zachariah, maybe life's just been hard. Maybe you've really wrestled with some big doubts about God, about how he relates to you, about who you are, about God's plan for your life. You've wrestled with where is God in our culture and where is God in the suffering and the pain, and why doesn't God show up the way I wish that he would, so that I could just have a sealed and steady faith. I believe that God feels that with you, that God understands that you're leaning away from him, perhaps expressing doubt from a posture of leaning away, because you're bracing yourself and I think that our compassionate God knows that very well and this God of all comfort just walks alongside you through the midst of that. So take that as just an encouragement. Out of Zachariah's story, out of my story, out of the story of so many others who have walked through seasons of doubt, we've come out of the other side of that and feel like faith is stronger, that there's been some great reconstruction that's occurred in our hearts and in our lives, and that is possible because of the goodness and the faithfulness of God. For that I am super thankful. All right, that's it.

Brandon: 14:03

That's the episode. Really thankful you listened to it. Happy to take feedback and questions. Just go to walkhumblecom or email me at brandonettewalkhumblecom and feel free to share this episode with somebody, especially someone walking through a season of waiting, a season of cloudy darkness, a season of shadow, somebody that needs some hope, needs some faith, needs a bit of encouragement that the God of all comfort has not forgotten them, that he is walking beside them. And to just remember that when I'm leaning away from God, maybe the best thing I can do is not speak, but just wait, just listen, just observe, just continue to seek out the mystery of who God is and what he's up to.

Brandon: 14:45

If this work blesses you, if you want to support Walk Humble, just go to walkhumblecom. Slash support A couple of ways you can help out there. Either way, I'm just glad you're here. I want us to make progress, but I want us to do it without the pretense, because the pretense is killing us, right? Hope you guys have an amazing day. Thanks for tuning in. Share this with somebody and just remember the God of all comfort never forgets you.