Believing is hard. I'll tell you why on this edition of Keylight. Let's Steve Browne. He's no guru, but he loves Jesus Christ. He loves the Bible and he loves the teacher. A program is keylight, and here is Steve with a teaching for today. Steve? Thanks a lot Mike. If you have your Bible open into the book of the Zeke you. Now we are not taking each book of the Old Testament and this Old Testament survey, verse by verse. That's my general practice on Keylife with different books of the Bible. But frankly I'm too old, and by the time we got through Genesis I'd be dead. Man, I spent weeks and weeks and weeks on Romans. I mean, if I spent weeks and weeks and weeks and months on each and Genesis deserves three years. If I spent that much time going verse by verse, dear friend, I'm not going to live that long. So I decided to do an Old Testament survey. The methodology of choice of old guys. And we're up to the book of the Zeke. By the way, our staff is prepared. This is going to be a dynamite, little three booklet series that you'll want to have in your home. They're going to take each of my teachings and in the Old Testament books give you some major themes, some basic notes on that particular book of the Bible. And then it will help whenever you read the Old Testament. And if you'd like to first of those booklets, I'll give you the phone number and the address at the end of the broadcast and you can give us a call or drop a note. And we'll send you the first of the three that are going to be out on the Old Testament survey. Now, if you've been with us for a while as we've studied Ezekiel, you know that we're looking at that part of Ezekiel where Ezekiel is not altogether happy because God isn't altogether happy. Any pronounces? God's judgment and wrath against the people of God, especially in Jerusalem. Now, that's chapters four through 24 and we're up to the 12th chapter of that. Now yesterday we saw, and I think it was the 10th chapter where the glory of the Lord had left the temple. And we saw that's how Jesus destroys temples. That when the church doesn't want him, he says, cool, I'll go somewhere else. And sometimes we don't. Dostoevetski, the inquisitor, tells Jesus to leave him alone. They got it all straightened out. Just go somewhere else. And Jesus dies. And he still does that in the church. Jesus is not always a welcome guest. He says things that you would rather do not say. He does things you would rather he not do. He accepts people you wouldn't accept at your dinner table. He calls us to be open and vulnerable and most of us are closed and uptight. He causes us to be a fellowship of sinners and we want to be a fellowship of wonderful, pure, obedient people. And so we play games. And Jesus says, you want to do that? Do it by yourself. Do it by way of solitaire because I'm leaving. And sometimes he goes to some strange places. Jesus is a destroyer of temple. God withdraws his glory. Jesus sometimes leaves. All right. Now, I said yesterday, and then I ran out of time before I had a chance to say much about it, that in the 12th and 13th and 14th captors of Ezekiel, we find major reasons for the fall of Jerusalem. Do you know what I do each morning? I pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Now, I do not believe that everything Israel does is right, but I do believe that Israel has a right to exist and I believe that Israel is still a part of God's plan. And I believe that Christians are called as well as Jews to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And every morning I pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Well, Jerusalem is a key city and you'll find it running throughout the entirety of the Bible or at least most of it. We talk about Jerusalem, the city of David. We talk about what happened there and God's presence there in the temple there. Then you get into the New Testament, you read about the New Jerusalem. But every day I pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Well, Ezekiel in chapters 12, 13 and 14 of his book is addressing the city of Jerusalem primarily and the reasons for its fall. And the first reason he gives is belief or unbelief, and the second reason is listening to tweets, false prophets, and then the third reason is idolatry, and that's chapter 14. Now, let's say just a little bit about each of those in the twelfth chapter. Ezekiel begins with this, now the word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of Man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house which has eyes to see, but they do not see. And ears to hear, but they do not hear, they are a rebellious house. Therefore Son of Man prepare your belongings for captivity and go into captivity by day in their sight. Now, what does it mean to have eyes, but not see, and ears, but not hear? It means you lack faith, or you lack belief. Jesus said something similar to the people when he was preaching his sermon still. Sometimes you can say things over and over again, and people simply will not believe. When I was a pastor a thousand years ago, I used to have a thing that we call skeptics forum. We invited atheists and agnostics, I was the only Christian allowed to come. We usually have 15 or 20. And it would be a multi-week kind of thing. Generally, we had so many new Christians in our church, and they were dealing with husbands and wives who didn't believe and made fun of them and girlfriends and boyfriends that made fun of them. It was sort of like my daddy's bigger than your daddy. Boyfriend would say to this girl who became a Christian, I can't believe you believe that nonsense. Tell me how you can believe him and give her some drivel. She would say, look, I've brand you with this. I can't answer your questions, but I've got a pastor who's mean as a snake. He'll cut your legs off, and he has this group of people. Well, they didn't say it that way, but we printed up these invitations in these atheists and agnostics game. Each week we deal with a subject, and I would tell them what the Bible said on a particular subject for about 10 minutes. And then I would open the floor, and they go after me. We saw about half of them become Christians. The other half quit laughing, and I was very gentle. I was very careful. But you know, sometimes I felt like in the church itself, and I still feel that way, that I'm dealing with a bunch of skeptics, of people who don't really believe it. And unless you think I'm preaching it to you, let me talk about myself. Sometimes I think I don't really believe it too. If I really, really believed that God was sovereign, that he was in charge of my life, that he was in charge of every circumstance of my life, I would sleep better at night, but sometimes I wake up at 2 in the morning. And I'm in a panic mode. That's called unbelief. If I really believed that Jesus loved me, the way the Bible tells me that Jesus loves me, I wouldn't care what you thought about me. I wouldn't care what my enemy said. I wouldn't care when people criticize me, but I do care, and you follow that under unbelief. If I believe that God wasn't angry at me, as the Bible clearly teaches because I'm a part of the covenant people of God. Romans, Paul talks about the imputed righteousness of Christ, if I really believed that, I wouldn't feel so guilty all the time. You follow that under unbelief. Unbelief is a really big thing. And so I dealt with skeptics for them, but I also sometimes deal with skeptics for them in my own life, and skeptics for them with you guys. They didn't believe they had eyes, but they didn't see. They had ears, but they didn't hear. And God judged Jerusalem because of their unbelief. Now do you believe when you can't believe? How do you do this kind of thing? Ephesians 2.8-9 teaches that belief or faith comes as a gift from God. And so you can sit around and say as did the queen to Alice, when Alice said she couldn't believe that the queen was 101 or whatever years old. And the queen said, oh yeah, you can close your eyes and try again. That's what we do in the church. I don't believe this nonsense. This is the weirdest stuff I've ever seen, but I gotta believe it even though it's patently not true. So I'm gonna close my eyes, and I'm gonna pretend that I believe it. Maybe I'll believe it. It doesn't work that way. Believe is an effort that you turn off and on. Believe is a gift from God. Now don't go to Him and tell Him you believe all of this when you don't. Go to Him and say I'm not sure about you, and I'm not sure about all this stuff that everybody's been telling me. I'm not sure, and I need to believe because I believe that belief is important as the basis of my life, and God I want you to give me the gift of belief. Now I don't want you to think that what we believe is irrational, it's not. As a matter of fact, the Christian faith and the Bible is the most rational thing in the world. I know of no other worldview that makes sense. The only alternative to the doctrines that we believe, isn't it me? The only alternative to the doctrines we believe is not Islam. It's not Judaism, it's not Buddhism. The only alternative I believe and I believe this with all my art. The only alternative is outright absolute meaninglessness. And aside from that, the Christian faith makes sense. It's the only thing that makes sense. And so you need to know because I do this for a living. If you don't believe and I believe, and you argue with me, I'm going to win. I mean you wouldn't want to go to a surgeon who says I'm not exactly sure where to cut, or you want to fly with a pilot named Chuck E who says I've never done this before, and I'm kind of scared I'm not being arrogant. And I know a lot about God and stuff like that. And I probably win the argument because this is a rational thing and truth is on my side, but still you wouldn't believe even if I won the argument and me too. So what do you do? You get on your knees. You go to God and you say God, I'm having trouble with this. Don't ever lie to him telling where your need is. And I want to believe the truth, and I want to know it's true. And then in process, you'll give you the faith you need to do what it calls you to do. You think about that? I mean, hey listen, if you don't have our summer magazine, and I'd love to send it to you free, it's on the law. I wrote a piece called The Law, a God's Gateway to Freedom. And there's a wonderful piece by Brian Chappell, the president of Covenant Seminary, on the power of joy that you're going to love. There's a question and answer column. My tenor is there, so you can stay away if you want. If I'm near you, the lot of resources to get you in those you love home with freedom and joy and faithfulness to Christ is your kind of achievement. I'll send it to you, give us a call, 1-800-Keylife-24-Hours-A-Day, or key life post office box, 5,000-Matron, Florida, 3-2794, or key life Canada, post office box, 3-2150, Cambridge, Ontario, N-3-H5-N-3, or you can email us at Steve at keylife.org with your regular mailing address. Hey listen, if you can help us financially and if this ministry has helped you and you could do it, please do it. I mean, this ministry is expensive and I promise we'll be faithful with your gift. You can charge you to Mastercard, Visa Discover Card, including your envelope. And for any contribution of any size, I'll send you as my thank you when you requested the facets of God's love, the depth of the reality of His love. Hey listen, I gotta go, but first let me say, key life is a listener-supported production of key life networks.