Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2925
“Why did you doubt?” Matthew 14:31.
OUR Lord did not begin His dealings with Peter in this emergency by asking him that question. He first stretched out His hand and saved him from his peril and then He said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” When a man is in trouble, help him out, first, and then blame him for having got into it, if you feel it necessary to do so! It is cruel to bring your censure to bear upon sinking Peter. First give him your help, lest he perish in the sea. And when you have done that, you may chide him afterwards for any fault that you perceive in him. This is always the way with our Master. He gives liberally and upbraids not, except when there shall come to be a special reason for our spiritual profit, when a little upbraiding may do us good. Now I am going, first, to use our text and then I am going to alter it. I shall first speak to God’s people, and say, “Why did you doubt, O Christian?” And then put it into another tense altogether, and address it to the unconverted, and say, “Why doyou doubt, O you who know the Gospel, but have not yet believed
it?”
I. LET US USE THE TEXT AND QUESTION GOD’S PEOPLE—“Why did you doubt?” I am probably addressing some Brothers and Sisters—perhaps a great many who have been through a season of profound gloom and in the midst of that gloom there has been the element of spiritual evil. To be gloomy and depressed is not sinful at all, but there may have been in the midst of that, the sin of unbelief. There may have been a doubting of God—a distrust of His Providence—a questioning of His love. Now I come at this time to such a Brother or Sister and say, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Can you answer that question? Shall I help you?
First, I will suppose some reasons which, if they do exist, will justify you in having doubted. And then I will take the reasons you, yourselves assign, one by one. I shall put them to you to know whether the supposition is allowable.
You may doubt if on former occasions you have found God unfaithful to His promises. If He has lied to you—if, after having said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” you have found, say on one occasion at least, that He has utterly failed you and forsaken you—then you are perfectly justified in doubting Him in the future and you were justified in doubting Him just now. What do you say to this supposition? I would not ask you to speak what is not true, even for God, Himself, for there is nothing more detestable in God’s sight than for us to attempt to honor Him by a lie. A pious fraud is a most impious blasphemy. No, speak the truth. Has the Lord been a wilderness or a land of darkness to you? Has He said and has He not done it? Can you put your finger upon a single promise and say, “I relied upon this and I found it failed me.” He said that they that trusted in Him would never be ashamed nor confounded. Can you say that you did trust Him in some particular event and the failure you experienced made you to be ashamed? Brothers and Sisters, I know what you will say to that supposition. You are grieved almost to hear it made. You rise up with loving indignation and you say, “God is faithful and true! He has not gone back from His promise in any single instance.” Then, Brothers and Sisters, I will put it very softly—and I have reasons for doing it very softly—“O you of little faith, if it is so, why did you doubt? If He helped you before, why did you doubt Him in the next trouble? If He fed the five thousand with the loaves and the fishes, why did you think that He could not also make you walk the waters of the sea?
There is another supposition. You may doubt if your case is a new one and so superlatively difficult that it is quite certain that God cannot help you in it. You require something more than Omnipotence and the case is so perplexing that even Omniscience cannot see a way out of it! Now, as I make that supposition, my heart is laughing at the very absurdity
of the terms I use, for if we say Omnipotence, that is all power. It is not possible that anything could be beyond that. And if we say Omniscience, that is all wisdom. It is not even imaginable that anything can surpass that! So I think I had better dismiss this supposition at once. Only it is sometimes put in Scripture by way of question, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” “The Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither His ear heavy that it cannot hear.” When you answer, “I know that God is able and I know that God is wise to help me,” then I must whisper that question again, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
But I will suppose something else, that you may doubt if God has abolished the promises. Dear Brother, is it true that the Bible has run out and become like an old almanac that is done with—that God has spoken somewhere in the dark places of the earth and has said that the seed of Jacob may seek His face in vain and that He will not be held to His Covenant or bound to a single promise that He has made—that He has revoked them all? You are astonished that I should even utter such a supposition! Your soul rises indignantly to repel the imagination, for you say, “All the promises of God in Him are yes, and in Him, amen, unto the Glory of God by us.” You know and you are assured that He cannot change. He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever,” and you are quite certain that He speaks the truth when He says, “My Covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that has gone out of My lips.” “God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent.” You are persuaded of all this, my dear Brothers and Sisters, are you not? Then all these promises being true and all confirmed with the sprinkled blood of Christ, I must have your ear yet again while I just whisper into it, “Why, then, did you doubt? Why did you doubt?”