Disappointment with God

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, October 22, 2011.

Texts: Numbers 11; Matthew 26:36-46

Yesterday, was supposed to be the end of the world. That's what Harold Camping, the founder of Family Radio, said. Back in January he predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. Thousands believed him. Some poured their entire life savings into buying advertising on billboards and TV announcing the end of the world. May 21 passed. Nothing observable happened. Harold Camping refined his calculations and announced a new date: October 21.

This is the third or fourth or fifth date Harold Camping has set for the end of the world. They have all passed. Nothing has happened. I'm tempted to poke fun at Camping and his followers. Don't they get it? Why set themselves up for disappointment?

But I can't be too scornful. Our own church actually got its start with a date-setting movement. Here's the story:

In the early 1800s a well-to-do farmer named William Miller was involved in intense Bible study. As he investigated some of the prophecies, he thought he had discovered the date of Christ's return to earth. For a number of years he kept his opinions to himself. He continued studying, going over and over his interpretations and calculations. Finally, in 1831, a local church invited him to preach on the subject. That initial invitation led to more and with a few years, he was the central figure in a movement that swept the eastern seaboard.

Estimates of how many people joined the movement vary widely from 50,000 to 500,000. Whatever the number of actual adherents, the movement caught the attention of the nation. As the time predicted approached, Miller and others refined their calculations and predictions, finally settling on October 22, 1844, as THE DATE.

The day passed. Nothing happened. People were crushed. One of the leaders of the movement wrote: "Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before... We wept, and wept, till the day dawn."

They had been absolutely positive of the date. They had been studying their Bibles with a fierce intensity. They had been praying, confessing their sins, searching their souls. They had been absolutely convinced that God was leading them. All the prophecies lined up. Jesus had to come.

But he didn't.

What do you do when you've absolutely positive that God has been leading you and you end up in a cul-de-sac or worse. How do you deal with disappointment with God?

Most of the Milerites quietly gave up their beliefs and went back to life as usual. Some continued to set further dates. The group that became the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church decided they had the calendar right, but had misunderstood the significance of the date. They struggled to make sense of their experience. They had received the Millerite preaching as the sweetest thing they had ever heard. Jesus was coming – not soon, that nebulous word we use – Jesus was coming on a specific date. Eventually, it was, Jesus is coming tomorrow. Then, Jesus is coming today! Imagine, no more bills to pay. No more arthritis. No more dealing with impossible people. No more wrestling with your own inner conflicts. Paradise. Face-to-face communion with Jesus. Today!

These believers arrived at their convictions through listening to Bible preaching and through their own Bible study. It seemed to them that God had led them every step of the way. They had been following the Holy Spirit. Their confidence in God was totally linked with their belief that Jesus was coming on October 22, 1844.

The day came. They were euphoric, on cloud nine. Their entire religious experience was distilled into the joyous expectancy of that day.

Then nothing.

Some of us have experienced a little bit of this. We caught the excitement of the “soon-coming of Jesus” when we were children. We knew time would never last long enough for us to finish high school. Then for sure, in the chaos and fervor of the 70s we questioned whether there was even any point in staying in school. What use would a graduate education be? We would be in heaven well before we earned our degree. Then our children were born. Then our children grew up and had children. And we who were never going to finish high school were attending the high school graduations of our grand children. And we no longer knew what to do with the word “soon.”

The Great Disappointment experienced by the founders of our church is mirrored in our own small and gradual disappointment.

Beyond our connection with those 19^th century Adventists' disappointment that Jesus did not come when they expected him, their experience can teach us a deep and weighty spiritual truth: Sometimes, we follow God's leading and we end up in a place that is dark and heart-breaking. We find ourselves disappointed with God. (To borrow a title of a Philip Yancey book.) We wonder, was God actually leading us?

Two Bible stories:

Moses was retired. He had been part of the royal family in Egypt. He was heir to the throne. He carried major government responsibilities. Then he rashly acted to protect a fellow Hebrew who was being abused by an Egyptian official. Moses killed the Egyptian. Word of his action reached Pharaoh. Moses ran for his life and ended up in the Arabian desert. He married a local girl there and became a shepherd.

Forty years later, God called Moses out of retirement. God wanted Moses to go back to Egypt and lead the Hebrew people out of slavery and back to Palestine which God had promised to Abraham for his descendants 400 years earlier. Moses protested. God had the wrong man. Moses did not want the job. Eventually Moses let God talk him into taking on the job. Moses headed to Egypt to rescue the Hebrew people. It didn't go so well. After Moses talked to Pharaoh about letting the Hebrews go, Pharaoh increased their work load. The Israelites blamed Moses.

Eventually, Pharaoh let the people go and they were on their way.

Once they were out of Egypt, the people were constantly complaining and belly aching. When Moses was up on Mt. Sinai getting the Ten Commandments, the people built a gold statue of a cow and began worshiping it.

Moses didn't just have conflict with the people. He and God argued. After the golden calf episode, God proposed wiping out the entire nation and starting over with Moses descendants to create a new nation. Maybe they would be less rebellious. Moses protested and God backed down.

Another time the people were wailing en masse about the miserable food God was providing – manna. Of course, they didn't blame God, they blamed Moses. Moses couldn't take it any more. “God, what have I done to make you mad?” Moses asked. “What did I do to make you put the burden of all these people on me? . . . They keep wailing, 'Give us meat to eat!' I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going to treat me, put me to death right now—if I have found favor in your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin. Numbers 11:11-15.

Get that last line. Moses says, “If you care about me, if you approve of my work so far, just kill me.” Maybe you could put it this way, “Kill me before I do something stupid.”

Moses had followed God into this position. It wasn't his idea. And now, having followed God every step of the way, he finds himself in a situation where death appears to be the only honorable way out. He is begging God to die.

Moses lost that argument. God won. God set up 70 elders to take on some of Moses' responsibilities, but he doesn't let Moses step down.

Have you ever been there? Have you done exactly what you thought God was calling you to do and found yourself in a mess so perplexing, some complicated, so painful, it seemed the only way out was death?

Maybe parenting. You dreamed of pouring your love and life into a child. But the child God sent you has needs you cannot fill. The demands of parenting are beyond you. You feel trapped. Death sometimes seems eminently more desireable than the years of stretching out before you.

Marriage? You married the man or woman of your dreams, then their mind was bent by mental illness or they had trauma to the head that left them a genuinely different person from the person you married.

A job? God opened the doors. It seemed like a gift from heaven. Now, it's more like hell on earth.

Let's be clear. Moses arrived at this desperate place through obedience. Up to this point, he had not made a single mistake in his leadership. He had held face-to-face conversation with God. He had even won an argument with God, getting God to back down from his announced plan to annihilate the Hebrews. Moses was a good man who had been doing good things. And look where it got him. He was in such a deep mess he would rather die than keep going. The situation was so impossible the only out with honor he can imagine was death. He prayed for God to kill him.

God didn't, of course. And Bible history honors Moses as the greatest of all human beings after Christ himself.

One of the lessons we learn from Moses' story is that disappointment with God is no proof that we screwed up. Finding ourselves in difficulty does not mean we have gotten off track. Moses was doing exactly what God had asked him to do. Moses was doing exactly the right thing. And doing the right thing had brought him heart-breaking disappointment. He was in the right place, but it didn't feel right.

We find this pattern repeated in the life of Jesus. He repeatedly warned his disciples that bad things lay ahead. He told them, “I'm going to be seized by the chief priests. They are going to hand me over to be executed. It's going to be ugly.”

Then it happened just like he said, and when it did he prayed to get out of it. No matter how prepared he thought he was, the reality turned out to be unbearable. He had followed God all his life. He was right on target doing exactly what God had asked him to do, and when it came down to it, when it came to the actual experience, – even though he had been warned – he found himself begging God to let him out.

He ended up staying in. He remained faithful, but at a staggeringly high cost.

Faithfulness usually takes us to good places, “good” in the sense of desirable, widely admired, even happy places. But sometimes, when we follow God, we end up disappointed.

Which brings us to the question: Then what? What do we do when following God to the best of our ability brings us into a place of profound, soul-bending disappointment?

Following the pattern of Jesus, the first thing we do is reach out for support. Jesus did. In his case, unfortunately, it didn't work. His friends let him down. But he set the pattern for us. When God's call in our life brings us to a place of unbearable darkness, don't hide. Reach out.

The corollary of this principle is that when our friends are in places of darkness, we are called to go to them, to keep them company. You cannot dispel the darkness. You cannot change God or fix the misery. You can, however, be there. So . . . be there.

Another corollary: You can't call your friends if you don't have any. So make friends now. And don't think just coming to church and sitting here constitutes friendship.

Friendship requires you to do something with another person outside of worship. Spending time working and playing and talking together is necessary.

Your presence here in worship is a blessing to others. Your worship is contagious even if your worship is full of lament and struggle. Your being here on Sabbath morning is a blessing even to the people you never talk to, the people on the other side of the sanctuary that you never actually see. Your being here makes their experience of worship richer. And their being here affects you in a good way.

That's worship.

Friendship is something different. It happens outside of worship. Working together cleaning or doing children's Sabbath School or maintaining the building and grounds or serving at the Mountain View Community Service Center – these things done with others will create genuine friendship. Playing together, eating together, vacationing together, doing projects at your house together. These things will build friendships. It's really valuable to have friends when you find yourself engulfed in darkness. When God disappoints you, you really need friends.

If we go back to the early Adventists, we discover that one of the things those disappointed believers did that carried them forward is they hung on to each other. They met together to study their Bibles and pray. And it was in this times together that they began a new adventure, one that led them to the discoveries that created a new church.

They discovered the Sabbath—the weekly interruption of the frenzy of our lives.

They discovered the good news that there is no eternal torment.

They discovered the idea that adopting habits that enhance physical health is a reasonable part of Christian life.

Eventually, they developed a church culture that prized education and learning.

None of this would have happened if they had nursed their disappointment alone.

So the first principle for handling disappointment with God: Hang with friends.

A second principle, as soon as you can, begin asking the question: Now what? Where to from here?

The early Adventists obviously screwed up their prophetic interpretation. Jesus did not come in 1844. But they had some important things just right. For many of them, their enthusiasm about the date was absolutely linked with a life-altering enthusiasm for Jesus. They became radical disciples. As they carried forward their radical commitment to Jesus, they discovered the new truths of the Sabbath, health, no eternal torment, and eventually the value of education and learning.

These beliefs, these perspectives genuinely enrich life. They enhance the quality of life of everyone who embraces them. They found these things as they came together and studied trying to find a righteous way forward in the darkness of their disappointment.

Moses and Jesus, in their black nights of despair, hung onto their mission. They hung onto God, even when they could not make sense of what he was doing and eventually they moved through the disappointment to new ministry – a ministry that was empowered by their passing through the darkness.

A final lesson we can learn from the early Adventists: ultimately human experience is a godly teacher. Those early Adventists got so caught up in their theories of prophetic charts and calculations, they ignored the testimony of history about what happens to date-setters. Until their own experience overwhelmed their theories.

As their children, we want to learn from their experience. Because of their experience we don't allow ourselves to get caught up in date-setting schemes. No matter how persuasive. Because of their experience we don't go crazy if we find ourselves in a dark place in spite of our best efforts to follow God. Sometimes that happens. Because of their experience we acknowledge that our theories about the end time – no matter how absolutely positive and confident we are about them – are just that, theories. God will work out history according to his schedule and according to his will. Our interpretations of prophecies do not constrain God.

Often when I tell people I hope Jesus will come this afternoon, Bible students will immediately tell me, “Oh, that can't happen. Before Jesus can come there has to be a National Sunday Law and the Seven Last Plagues. The AntiChrist has to exercise more power. In fact, there are all sorts of things that have to happen first before Jesus can return.”

I laugh at them. The logical implications of their statements are that their interpretation is infallible and that is God is bound to their interpretation. Really?

Given the Great Disappointment, it would be wise for us to exercise a deep humility about all of our theological opinions, unless we are prepared to argue that we are vastly superior to those who founded our church.

Moses and Jesus were disappointed with God. Following him did not work out the way they expected. The founders of our church were disappointed with God. Their prayerful Bible study did not work out the way they expected. And we may at some point in our lives be disappointed with God.

If we find ourselves in the darkness of disappointment, let's join Jesus in reaching out to our friends. Let's join Moses in honest, confrontational prayer. Let's join our pioneers in persistent, stubborn seeking for new light, for new truth, for a way forward that turns our darkness into an incubator of light.