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Have you ever complained to God? I have! There have been a few times that I have gone to God in prayer asking and inquiring as to the fairness of something that had happened in my life. Such an approach is okay because the scriptures say that we can come to Him:

What a privilege and a joy it is to have someone like Jesus Christ to lean upon! A few weeks ago in prayer, an old, old song came back to me that I used to love dearly as a child:

How true is the words to this old hymnal! Jesus is still the answer to the issues of life, today! God is still Almighty! But there is a spirit that would try to whisper to the church of the living God today that would say, “God does not do the miraculous as He once did.” “Those stories in the Bible are for back then and God cannot do such things today.” There is a lying spirit even trying to speak to some of you this week that “God cannot do all of what He has promised you.” That spirit would try to present God as a failure -- as a wind up toy that has finally wound down and that lies there only a portion of what He used to be.

But I’ve come to preach to somebody tonight with good news: God is not broken! His ways still works! His healing hand still heals! His Holy Ghost rain still fills! His ear still hears the cry of His children! He is not broken down or asleep! He is still very much alive! Need I remind you, again, saints of God what His sure word says? To that lying spirit that would whisper that God is broken, I declare -- as Jesus did -- “It is written!” It is written:

God is not broken! He has not failed! Somebody needs to remember the Word of God and come against that lying spirit with truth that will not pass away! God is still very much alive and He is still working within our lives in a powerful way! It’s time to let your faith arise and not give in to the lie of the pits of hell! God is very much alive and He is very much able to perform anything that He has promised!

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All of this is so true! And yet there are times when even the prophets of old like the prophet Jeremiah had a moment of weakness and questioning. In our text, Jeremiah looked around at his world and in a moment of being attacked by every side, he went to the Lord with a complaint and a question. He said, “why does the way of the wicked prosper?” “Why am I doing right and suffering for it and yet those who do not even acknowledge your existence, oh Lord, seem to be blessed?” “How come it seems that they are fat and sassy and I’m lean and hungry? How come it seems that the wicked are rejoicing while your people are mourning!? And then Jeremiah told God “how long will this last, pull the rug out from under them!” “Curse the wicked and vindicate the righteousness!”

This was probably not the prophet Jeremiah’s greatest moment of faith, but I’ll admit that I’ve been where he was at. Where you are frustrated at the wicked’s prosperity and frustrated with what seems to your eyes injustice in the world. And the human response is as Jeremiah said and David did many times in his psalms: “what’s wrong with you, Lord? Toast them!” And we find ourselves where John and James were when they were wondering why Jesus was rebuking them for their wrong spirit when it was the Samaritan towns that had utterly rejected Him!

It’s okay to ask such questions, Jeremiah, if you are prepared to receive an answer! And so I’ve come to declare to you first of all, God is not broken! But I also want to give you some answers as to why sometimes to us it seems as if He is!

I’m not going to give you fifty points in this sermon, but I will just present to you just three simple reasons as to why some people get convinced that God is not really moving in their life. May we learn these principles well.

Sometimes it seems to some Christians that God is broken because:

Our other text in Isaiah addressed the attitude of some that God was broken when the prophet said:

Simply put, God’s hand can reach far enough to fix any situation in your life. His ear can hear every prayer and His power can do anything that needs to be done. Sometimes when we think that God is broken, it is actually our continuing in sin that keeps us from seeing Him work in our life. I remind you that in the kingdom of God and scripture there is no such thing as lucky or unlucky but rather blessed or cursed. Listen to what Moses proclaimed to God’s people:

It is the will of God for you to be blessed! But we must remember the “ifs” of that promise. “If” you obey the commandments of the Lord, and -- catch this -- “if” you do not turn aside from any of them! In other words, there were two conditions: they had to obey the commandments of God and they had to stay faithful in them long enough to reap the full rewards!

What many Christians do is sow years of disobedience to God’s word, and then get tired of reaping judgment and hurt and pain and decide to obey God’s Word in a service and then after five days if their whole life is not fixed, they are ready to give up and go back to the things of the world! They obey for a moment and yet they stop obeying before they are able to reap the full benefit of what God has promised!

People who are starting living for God and then stopping, starting living for God and then stopping, are frustrating the right hand of God. The Bible says that there are “windows in heaven” and that God would pour out a blessing that we could not contain by opening the windows. In some people’s lives, they start out living for God and God motions to the angel to start raising the window and a few blessings began to trickle out and then because there is not yet the avalanche of God’s blessing, the person goes back to doing things their way and the window has to shut. And then the process is repeated and they began to get a mindset that “God doesn’t bless me like He does other people.” When the truth is that they keep stopping the flow of God’s blessings before it really gets to the level that God has promised because they do not continue in God’s commandments long enough to reap the full reward! We must obey and continue in those things! God is not broke, but his arm is weary of having to keep closing the windows of blessing on some of our wishy-washy lives!

Somebody needs to get the revelation of what I am about to tell you, and you never need to forget it: I am obeying the Word of God, then no matter where I am right now, I am on my way up! But if I am disobeying the commandments of God, then no matter where I am now, I am inevitably on my way down! That is always true no matter your situation. The promise of God has been made and He is not broken, but rather your actions have much more to do with it than we would care to admit! Being blessed or cursed has much to do with what direction you are headed. Better to be a poor man on your way up than to be the rich man heading to hell!

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Furthermore, sometimes it seems that God is broken to some Christians because:

In my daily Bible reading, this week I have been drawn to the story of King Ahaz, one of the kings of Judah spoken of in the book of 2 Kings. Most you have never heard of him because he was a very evil king, and, despite being a descendant of David, King Ahaz, “did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord.” He became king at 16 years of age and worshiped the idols of Ashera and Baal and even offered his infant son as a human sacrifice to the god, Molech. He was constantly at war with the northern tribes of Israel and Judah was not a pleasant place to live within his reign.

For some reason King Ahaz esteemed and looked up to the evil king of Assyria. He longed to be as that foreign king. Assyria was the world power of that day. Assyria was the wealthiest nation of the time. It had the great armies. It had the respect of all of the world. And the Assyrian king was an idolater and worshipped many false gods. Ahaz went to visit the king of Assyria and took much of the treasures of the temple of Jehovah God and offered it to the Assyrian king as a present.

Why would he want to emulate such an evil person? Because at that exact moment of time, it appeared to human eyes that the King of Assyria was blessed more than Judah. But what King Ahaz could not see was that things were not quite as rosy for the King of Assyria as it appeared. God had allowed them a brief time of prosperity because of Israel’s idolatry and yet because of Assyria’s idolatry, there was already a world power of Babylon waiting in the wings that was going to utterly destroy Assyria. The “great riches” of Assyria that King Ahaz longed for was just a fleeting and temporary thing and would not last long!

The truth of the matter was that the only reason that King Ahaz had remained king in the first place was because of King David’s faithfulness that had caused God to swear that his lineage would not depart from Judah! Assyria’s wealth was about to be gone in a flash, and yet evil Ahaz was on the throne only because of God’s fulfilling promises to David -- a man who had been faithful to Jehovah God.

Listen to this preacher: Sometimes we -- like Jeremiah -- look at the circumstances that we are in currently and we judge everything on what it appears to our eyes. But your human eyes aren’t fully seeing the truth. That rich man that seems to be happy in every way has a family full of strife and issues at home. He usually has a marriage that is falling apart or a history of such things. Furthermore, in time, his wealth will crumble, or worse, he will die and find that none of it makes the trip with him and find out that as far as eternal things, he is very poor indeed! Listen carefully: how things are in the present, is not how things are going to turn out in the end. Don’t worry, God is not broken and He has not failed and He knows everything that is going on! Just don’t believe the lie of Satan that the wicked have it better -- even when it appears to human eyes that they do -- you are far from seeing the real picture!

Don’t follow Assyria, Ahaz, because that supposed blessed wealth and life is just an illusion that is about to slip away. And all of the wealth of Assyria and Babylon combined cannot compare with how God blessed David and Solomon when they followed Him completely. Ahaz would have been better served to emulate someone who was blessed because they were godly, not because of a temporary high of life that would soon crumble! Remember when you question God -- Jeremiah -- that what you see is not the entire truth about other’s lives. The wicked is not as blessed or happy as we tend to think that they are. God is not broke or broken and eventually the wicked will come to naught and the righteous will be blessed, even if that day does not come until eternity! We must remember that just as Jacob believed the worse when he saw the bloody coat of Joseph, so is it rarely that what the devils allows us to see really truth of what happened! Jacob, your dream is still alive -- don’t go by what it seems like to human eyes!

Let me stay with King Ahaz for a moment {can I chase a rabbit for a moment, it‘s been a while since I have?!}; reading about his life and desire to be rich and powerful like the king of Assyria we find this passage:

Seeing the altar to the man made gods of Assyria, King Ahaz copied it and when he got back to Jerusalem, he took the old altar that had been built according to God’s specifications in the laws of Moses and moved it to the side and replaced it with this huge, altar designed by men. All of the sacrifices commanded by Jehovah God, King Ahaz commanded the priest to offer on the new altar like the one that the king of Assyria worshipped at. He kept the old bronze altar of God only for him “to inquire by.” In other words, he would use it only when he desperately needed a word from the Lord.

In verse 17 of the 16th chapter of 2 Kings, we find that King Ahaz also dismantled and removed the lavers that were used for washing and the sea of water Solomon had built, he took off its foundations and set it on the ground on a pavement of stone that he had designed. And then, finally, we find this:

This “covered way” was a canopy or tent to hold the overflow of crowds that met on the Sabbath to worship Jehovah God. King Ahaz took it down to discourage people from coming faithfully to God’s house at appointed service times, and then he built an outer entrance for the king of Assyria who was coming to visit that he “caused to go around the house of the Lord.” The religious entrance built by Ahaz amazingly “bypassed” the house of the Lord.

What Ahaz did in his day has been done by many religions and preachers today that are looking through carnal eyes rather than the eyes of God. There are preachers who look at others who are full of greed and wealth and fame and who draw the crowds, and so they begin to desire that temporary wealth and fame and crowds for their ministry and their church. And so like Ahaz, they have moved the old altar of repentance out of the way and brought in a new huge altar designed not of God’s Word, but of men. This new altar is of simply repeating a sinner’s prayer and of “accepting Christ as your personal savior.” You don’t even have to sincerely repent and turn from your sins anymore, as long as you offer your sacrifice on this “new altar.”

And like Ahaz, they seeking the fame and crowds, have dismantled the lavers of water baptism and made them unnecessary anymore. If you want to do it, then you can, but what is left is the sea that has been removed from the foundations of God’s Word and what is left is a water baptism that is now grounded on man’s creation. It’s not necessary for salvation anymore, they say, but if you want to do it, do it on our foundation of the titles and not on the foundation of scripture, the name of Jesus Christ!

And not only have men done these things, but like Ahaz, they have discouraged people from regularly assembling at the house of God at the appointed morning and evening sacrifice. The importance of being faithful to the house of God is not preached much anymore and most Christians make it to a Sunday am about once a week or two. And in fact, some of them believe the lie that they can stay at home and just watch a service on television and be alright and therefore they have taken a route -- like the one that Ahaz built -- that bypasses the house of God altogether!

And the sad thing is that people come to the places of worship with this new altar and minus the lavers and with the altered sea and with the entrance that bypasses faithfulness to the house of God, and they find a powerless god and they go away believing that “God is broken!” Even Ahaz kept the old altar around “for him to inquire at.” In other words, when he needed a real “Word from God,” he knew better than to go to the man’s traditions but to go back to the altar that was designed by the Word of God!

And so I am here to declare to you that “God is not broken” but rather man’s traditions and rituals and false doctrine are broken! If you will put the altar of repentance back in your life and the waters of being baptized in His name! If you will tear away the lie that says you can bypass the morning and evening sacrifice of services at God’s house and will put faithfulness to the things of God back in your life, you will find that God is not broken! He still hears and answers prayers, when you get back to serving Him as He commanded and not as your flesh likes!

God doesn’t function at all in second place! If we would put God as our priority and make up in our minds to serve Him faithfully no matter what, then in time He will be vindicated and His Word will be true! I’m not interested in a church of crowds, but of people that are going to heaven! I’m not interested in earthly fame, but of heaven and hell knowing my name! I’m not interested in copying the inventions of religious men who currently seem to be on top, because such things will soon crumble -- give it time! In time, the righteous and truth seekers will be exalted and the wicked will fall! God is not broken and this old-time Apostolic message taught by Jesus to His disciples is still the best and surest way! God only appears broken when He and His Word is not priority in our lives!

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Some people think that God is broken because of their sin and lack of faithfulness to the things of God. Other think Him broken because they are viewing through carnal eyes and changing the basic tenants to match man’s tradition rather than God’s Word. And finally, our third and final reason that some think God broken is:

Doubt can slip in even among the most faithful. For many of you, many years of your life were spent in sin not even aware that God could move miraculously. It is your habit to not expect God to show up and perform His Word. And if we are not careful, that attitude will slip over into our walk with God. Because for so many years, the natural thing was to not expect God to move, we can pray a prayer and yet still have such an attitude of really not expecting God to move miraculously. That is doubt and when it slips in, it slips in to steal your receiving of the promises of God.

The key word here is “receiving!” Think with me to the promise of the Messiah that was born of Mary. The devil never tried to destroy Jesus in the womb, nor did he attempt to destroy Mary at the moment of conception. Rather, he put all of his destructive power into destroying Jesus at the birth site. In other words, the devil doesn’t care that you hear about the promises of God. And he doesn’t even care if you receive a miraculous work that begins the bringing about of God’s promises in your life. But what the devil doesn’t want is for you to actually give birth and hold that promise!

If you think with me, you will probably agree that in your life, the hardest moment to have faith is not in hearing the promise or first stepping out on that promise. Rather the hardest moment is a few weeks, months, or years, later when you must continue in that thing. That is because the devil fights you the hardest the closer you are to receiving the fully-developed promise of God! Understand that we must guard ourselves lest doubt creep in at the very moment that we are the closest to receiving all that God has for us!

We would do well to emulate the example of Abraham, the father of the faithful:

“No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God.” And he was “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” There was a time lapse of several years between God first told Abraham that he would have an offspring of zillions and the birth of Abraham’s promised son. But the key was that Abraham did not just believe at the initial word of the promise, but he kept believing and did not allow doubt to enter in and steal the promise! We must believe but we must keep believing! Time elapsed between the promise and the fulfillment does not mean that God has failed, but rather that God’s timing is perfect and dependent upon things that are beyond our understanding. God is not broken! Keep serving Him!

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Our God is not handicapped nor restricted from doing anything that He has said He will do. If anything, He is looking from heaven looking for someone that He can make an example of His precious Word! It is not time to stop doing right simply because we have not seen in a few weeks the full promise that was given. It is not time to copy the wicked and compromise on truth simply because of temporal circumstances. It is not time to grow discouraged and to believe the lie of the lying spirit that would whisper to us, “God cannot anymore.” He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He will never change. He still has the power to heal and fix the issues of life today. Turn to He who is the Almighty and live for Him with all of your might trusting that He will be faithful as He always have. And do so with a smile because God is not broken!