Series: My Personal Testimony, Part One
A sermon by Pastor Dale Wolcott
Presented November 20, 1999
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One of the lowest moments of my life was a bright, sunshiny summer day in the late summer of 1976. I was 28 years old, happily married, with two beautiful preschool age children. For the past three years or so I had been pastoring a couple of little country churches in Northern California. We loved the people and the people seemed to love us.
I’d recently completed my very first solo evangelistic crusade and we had several newly baptized people coming to church every Sabbath. That particular midweek morning I should have been out giving a Bible study, or maybe playing my guitar for morning worship at the little church school we had in the basement of the Sutter Hill church.
But instead, my family and I were 150 miles from home, staying with my wife’s parents while I took a 3-month medical leave, trying to get my health back; and at the very same time, my wife Nancy was getting ready for open heart surgery, because the doctors had recently told us that if she didn’t have the surgery she’d probably be an invalid by the time she was 40 years old.
My medical problem was a mysterious intestinal inflammation that wouldn’t go away. For the past year it had been sapping my strength. I had lost ten pounds or so, and I didn’t have spare pounds to lose. And the worst of it all was that my doctor had told me that the whole thing was probably caused by stress. (We later found out that the doctor’s diagnosis was wrong, and my illness was not stress related at all, but at that moment this was what was on my mind.) And it didn’t make sense: my marriage was good, my kids were happy and healthy, and I enjoyed my work.
But there I was, facing the possibility of permanent disability, or maybe worse. And I will never forget, that bright, brassy-skied morning, going out for a walk in an old abandoned grape vineyard on Howell Mountain, Angwin, CA, and trying to pray as I walked.
I had been praying about all this for months, and things just kept getting worse. And I remember looking up at that empty sky and wondering, almost in despair, "Is there really anybody up there at all? What if I’m just talking to myself when I pray? Where is God when I need Him?"
Have you ever been there? I hope you haven’t, but I think most of us have.
In the next several weeks, I want to share with you my personal testimony in three parts. I want to share with you three rock-bottom convictions that shape my life, that keep me going, that enable me to make sense out of the seeming chaos of life on planet Earth.
The way I want to share these with you is through a Bible story. (Because just talking about myself won’t really edify you.) I thought about calling this series "Two Kings and a Preacher." The preacher of course, is me. One of the two kings is Jesus, the King of kings. No matter where we go in the Bible, we always find that it takes us, in the end, to Jesus. The other king is a man you may not have thought of as a role model. But he’s a man in the Old Testament whose life story helps me to understand my own life story, and if it helps me it will probably help you too.
Before we go to the story, let me give you the three core convictions that we’re going to be focusing on in the next few weeks.
#1 God is smarter than I am. (That’s the Foundation of My Faith, which is the title of this sermon.)
#2 Jesus is stronger than the devil. (That’s the Reason for My Hope, which will be the next segment of this series.)
#3 Love works better than selfishness. (Part three will be "The Source of My Love.")
Before we begin, let’s pray. "Lord, teach us to trust Your wisdom more than we trust our own; to rely on Your strength because so often our strongest efforts turn out to be puny and pointless; to know Your love so that we’ll be free to risk truly loving those around us. In Jesus’ name, Amen."
Open to the Book of Daniel. (I hope you have your Bible. Coming to church without a Bible is kind of like going to a baseball game without a glove.)
In Daniel, chapters 2, 3, and 4, we find the story, the conversion story, of one of the Bible’s unlikeliest heroes: King Nebuchadnezzar. In chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar learned that God was smarter than he was. In chapter 3, Nebuchadnezzar discovered that Jesus is stronger than the devil. And in chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar found out that love works better than selfishness. And it wasn’t until all three of these came together for Nebuchadnezzar that he was actually converted. (And we’re told that Nebuchadnezzar became "a humble child of God," so I expect to meet Nebuchadnezzar in heaven!) [Ellen White, Prophets and Kings, p. 521.]
Do you have Daniel chapter 2? Note verse 1: "Now in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him."
Whenever the future is uncertain, our spirit is troubled, right? Did you know that some of the world’s most successful people are also the most insecure? And the most unhappy? Nebuchadnezzar, of course was probably the world’s most successful person at this point in his life. Although a young man, he’d already conquered most of the known world. He was the absolute monarch of the most powerful nation on earth. But what did the future hold? What was going to happen next for him, for his kingdom? At some intuitive level he KNEW that this dream, this dream he couldn’t remember, had something to do with the uncertain future, his future. It was important. He couldn’t remember it, but he couldn’t forget about it.
Note verse 2, "Then the king gave the command to call the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. So they came and stood before the king."
You remember the story. The wise men, as the story unfolds, are clueless, and then Nebuchadnezzar is furious, verse 12, "For this reason the king was angry and very furious...."
Why do you think he got so angry? Think about it. Nebuchadnezzar has prayed, as Babylonian heathen people prayed; he has consulted the gods; and the gods have let him down. There is no answer to his prayer.
What are your emotions when it seems God is ignoring you? I remember mine. I felt depressed. I was close to tears at times. I kept a brave front but I felt hollow, empty, deeply anxious on the inside. Some people feel suicidal. (Thankfully, I didn’t get that far.)
But some people, instead of getting depressed, get angry. (Or maybe because they are depressed they get angry!) I guess the psychologists would say some people internalize, and other people externalize.
Nebuchadnezzar externalized. "Off with their heads. I’m through with religion; I'm through with religious people." Verse 12 says the king "gave the command to destroy all the wise men of Babylon."
Now, if you don’t have anybody to worship, anybody to trust, anybody in the universe who is smarter than you are, bigger than you are, who is there left to worship? Yourself. And that’s what we'll find Nebuchadnezzar doing when we get to chapter 3.
In chapter 2 Daniel tells the king, "You are this head of gold," and so in chapter 3 Nebuchadnezzar makes a whole statue of gold and tells everybody in his kingdom, "Bow down to me." It’s as if he was saying, the gods have let me down; if anything good is going to happen in my life I’m going to have to make it happen. I’ve got to take charge of my life. If I don’t look out for myself nobody else will.
Have you ever been there?
And when Nebuchadnezzar in his anger and frustration and bitterness, in his personal fear that indeed there was nobody he could trust, nobody who was smarter than he was, nobody wiser, nobody greater than he was; when Nebuchadnezzar was lashing out at the world, at that very moment there WAS a God in those brassy heavens who was reaching out to him, ready to let him know that He WAS there after all, and that Nebuchadnezzar could trust Him to see the future, to know the future, to take care of the future better than he himself could -- that God was smarter than he was.
You remember the story. (If you’ve not read it lately, read the whole chapter this afternoon; read it from Nebuchadnezzar’s viewpoint!) For now, let’s just note verse 28: "But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these:..." And God went on, through the prophet Daniel, to outline the future for Nebuchadnezzar and for all of us. In a very real sense, Daniel 2 is the foundation of our faith as Seventh-day Adventists, isn’t it?
So, at the end of the story, notice Nebuchadnezzar's response in verse 46. "Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, prostrate before Daniel, and commanded that they should present an offering and incense to him."
He didn’t quite get it right, did he? He was bowing to the wrong person. I suspect the king’s response made Daniel very uncomfortable. But it’s interesting that Daniel didn’t rebuke him. When Nebuchadnezzar found out that there was a God in heaven after all, that there was Someone bigger, smarter, wiser than he was, he couldn’t move fast enough to get down on his face in worship. Note how he put his emotions into words in verse 47: "The king answered Daniel, and said, ‘Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret."
My personal testimony to you is that I have found that I do have a God in heaven who hears my prayers, a God whom I can trust, a God who is smarter than I am, who reveals His secrets to me.
God didn’t leave us alone and helpless back there in 1976. Nancy’s surgery was successful, and her heart is perfectly healthy today. A few years later she and I and our kids hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon together!
My situation took a little longer; four years or so. I eventually lost 25 more pounds and had two major surgeries. But today I’m just about as healthy as I’ve ever been, except for turning 50 last year!
But my confidence in God is not merely because He has treated me well. What was it that turned Nebuchadnezzar from angry rejection of God to spontaneous worship and praise? It was God revealing Himself IN HIS WORD, a prophetic Word, a miraculous Word, a persuasively accurate Word.
God has shown me IN HIS WORD that the times when I thought God was absent, when I thought God was unreliable, when I thought God was wrong, it was I who was wrong, it was my thoughts that were unreliable. God is smarter than I am.
Our modern world has had many Nebuchadnezzars. First Charles Darwin told us there’s no Creator; we created ourselves, through evolution. Then Sigmund Freud told us there is no heavenly Comforter; we’ve got to comfort ourselves, through psychotherapy or whatever. And now the gurus of Silicon Valley and Wall Street are telling us there is no supernatural Savior; that we need to rely on technology and free market economics to save the world and to secure our future.
And I can testify to you that I have listened to all of them, and when I come back to the Bible, this rock-solid Word of God, I keep finding out that neither science nor psychology nor technology nor anything that depends on human smarts is as reliable as this Book.
I have learned to tell myself, "Do not criticize the Bible. Let the Bible criticize you." I confess to you that I am a congenital doubter, but God has given me faith. I have concluded that I do indeed have a God who is smarter than I am. And I am relieved. And I am grateful. And that is the foundation of my faith.
But that is not the end of my faith or even the center of my faith. Nebuchadnezzar had a lot to learn after Daniel 2 was finished. The center of my faith is Jesus, and Nebuchadnezzar didn’t meet Jesus until chapter 3, which we’ll look at in the second part of my testimony.
As we conclude, let’s shift the focus away from the pastor’s experience, away from King Nebuchadnezzar’s experience, to the other King, the King of kings, Jesus. Turn to Matthew 26.
Jesus is facing the darkest moment of His 33+ years on planet Earth. He’s kneeling alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, and He knows what’s going to happen in the next 18 hours or so. And His darkness is not a fear of Roman soldiers; it’s not a fear of their cat-o’-nine-tails that’s going to rip open the flesh of his back and chest; Jesus is not afraid of nails or of a cross.
What makes that night in Gethsemane so dark is the guilt. Jesus feels guilty for my sins, your sins, everybody’s sins, and they are wringing the very life out of His body. As He kneels there praying it seems to Jesus that the harder He prays the darker it gets. Where is God?
He’s sweating blood now, and He is tempted to question if maybe this plan His Father and He had agreed to wasn’t such a good plan after all. Maybe it isn’t going to do any good; maybe He won’t be able to handle it; maybe He should just walk away from the whole thing.
And in verse 39 Jesus prays in the dark, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me." Jesus was tempted to doubt. But, as always, He immediately rejected the temptation and said, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will."
He was tempted to doubt, but He chose to trust. Even in the face of the most horrible death any human being has ever had to face, He remembered that His Father was smarter than He was, because He (Jesus) was weak, He was human, He was in the dark.
And so He said, Not my will, but Yours be done. I’m in the dark, You’re in the light; let’s do it Your way. And was God’s way better than the way Jesus in His limited humanness would have chosen? YES. The resurrection proves it!
My testimony is that it works that way for me. Father knows best! God is smarter than I am. That is the foundation of my faith.
Please join me in singing one of my favorite songs in response to God’s Word this morning. Hymn number 316, "Live out Thy life within Me, O Jesus, King of kings, be Thou, Thyself, the answer to all my questionings." Don’t just sing it; pray it!
Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879)
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