Sunday message · Asking for a Friend: Doubt, Church Trauma, and the In-Between series
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Message Summary
Asking for a Friend, a series on doubt, church wounds and everything in between, reaches its final week as Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to rebuilding faith. He has tried to show that believers can discuss deconstruction without being dismissive or defensive. This message, he warns, will feel more like a theology class than a Bible study, because someone rebuilding faith needs more than a few encouraging verses. They need clarity and theological footing, something to hold on to when everything else is falling apart.
Phil admits that digging into Scripture, last week’s starting point, can be challenging. The Bible is a library, written over nearly 1,600 years by more than 40 authors. It holds lamenting prophets, praising poets and disciples who doubted even before the risen Jesus (Matthew 28), yet God speaks through it with one consistent voice, and we read it through Jesus, whom Hebrews calls the exact expression of God’s nature. To those who call the Bible unscientific, Phil replies that historians do not prove history scientifically. They ask how many copies exist and how soon after the originals they were written, and by those standards the Bible has more evidence than other ancient writings people readily accept. He recommends a Tim Keller presentation on the church’s website.
Once someone trusts Scripture, the next step is understanding its gospel, which Phil traces through four themes. Creation shows that God, not us, is the central figure, and that we bear his image. Separation explains our brokenness: Eve was tempted to believe God was withholding something good, and Adam blamed the woman God gave him. Promise shows God meeting our rebellion with mercy and a promise to conquer sin and death, and rescue and restoration reveal Jesus as our rescuer. In Genesis 3 the serpent twists these into lies: we should rule our own lives, God cannot be trusted, and only we can save ourselves. The gospel answers that our Creator defines us, our rebellion is the problem, God pursues us in love, and he rescues us through his Son and will restore the world when King Jesus returns.
Everyone preaches some gospel to themselves, Phil says, whether of image, happiness or control. The gospel of control tells us we are masters of our fate, other people are the problem, and hope lies in a life where our control is never challenged. The true gospel frees us: God is in control, and we are not. The restoration we long for, he jokes, is not a lake house and a new bass boat but freedom from the brokenness of sin.
Naming false gospels is how believers keep preaching the true gospel to themselves and help others rebuild faith. Jesus calls rescued people to join him in the rescue, not to win arguments but to bear witness, carrying grace and truth to those who have walked away, like a shepherd leaving the 99 for one lost sheep. He sends the church out “not just comforted by the truth of the gospel, but commissioned by it,” to be gentle and truthful.