Asking For A Friend - How Do We Deal With Doubt?
Gracious heavenly father, we thank you for an opportunity to be with one another. Lord, you have called us by your name to be one people. A people united by faith in Jesus Christ. With the same Spirit. Your Spirit living in us.
Cameron:Lord, as a family, as your body, Lord, we desire to love you and to love one another more fully. Father, help us to do that. Help us, Lord, to set aside and to break down all of the things that the world uses to try and divide and separate us. Lord, that you would unite us in faith with one another. Use your word, Lord, this morning to sanctify us, to teach us, to exhort us, lord, to correct us, to train us, lord, in righteousness.
Cameron:Father, may we see that where we have doubt, you desire to birth faith. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Luke:Amen. Well, like Pastor Cameron said, my name is Luke. I'm one of the pastors here, and we are starting our new sermon series called asking for a friend. So we were talking about this for a month or so, and we were inviting everyone to send in their text, questions to a text number. And these could be questions that just lay heavy on your heart, maybe you were embarrassed to.
Luke:Ants ask or answer, and we took all of those questions and we turned them into a series. So over the next 4 weeks, including this Sunday, we're gonna be talk tackling some of those questions. And then also on Wednesday nights, we'll be tackling some of those questions. So, today, we're gonna be starting with that question, what do I do with doubts? But this coming Wednesday at 6 o'clock downstairs, we're gonna be spending our Wednesday class talking about what does the Bible teach about sexuality, which is a very big topic but we'll be addressing some of the common questions with that.
Luke:Next week we're gonna be, continuing in that sermon series where we're talking about how do we have greater empathy towards the hurting. The following Sunday, we'll talk about what does the Bible teach about angels, demons, and Satan. So if you were here last week for, my message, like, in you were like, that just gave me more questions. That's the sermon for you. And then we'll finish the series with why did God allow evil into the world?
Luke:All very easy questions. And then the Wednesday night class, we'll go through how do I respond to a friend when they confess sin to me? What will the afterlife be like? And then the final Wednesday, we will we will be dealing with questions that say, how do I make sense of Catholicism? We know we have a lot of people who either grew up Catholic or we have a lot of friends or family who are still Catholic and so we got a number of questions dealing with Catholicism, and so that Wednesday class will be kinda generally dealing with Catholic theology and how do we make sense of it since we're not Catholic and we're Protestant.
Luke:So but today, our question that we're going to be tackling is that one, what do I do with my doubt? I was thinking about this. I was like, where have been the places where I've experienced doubt? And I thought of a humorous one that I thought I would start with. So I've been married now for over a year and a half, to my lovely wife.
Luke:And we, we met online as many people do. And if you have ever done long distance dating, particularly not when you just know somebody and then you go long distance, but, like, you start long distance. Right? She was living in Rhode Island. I was living here.
Luke:We went on a first date. I exposed her to COVID. I was sick for a while afterwards. Some of you might remember that. I was up at my apartment dying.
Luke:That was scary times. But anyway, so we're you know, I didn't think I had made the best impression, you know, and we're we're texting and chatting because, you know, it's a while before we see each other, And, you know, she was I don't remember exactly how it came up. And she said something about, you know, oh, sorry. I didn't reply back to you right away or, you know, something like that. And I was like, oh,
Cameron:I'll come off really confident
Luke:right here. Like, oh, don't worry. I'm not an anxious texter. Don't worry about it if you don't reply right away. That was a bold faced lie.
Luke:I thought it was true when I said it, but I was lying to both myself and her. I am an anxious texter. I was like, I don't remember what kind of brought it up or something. Maybe I said like a joke and then she didn't reply with a And I was like, oh, shoot. Like, maybe that joke wasn't funny.
Luke:Did I cross a line? Or maybe I said, I kinda like you, and she just didn't say anything right away. I got I was just like, good. And so we found out that I am indeed an anxious texter. But why?
Luke:Like, why do we kinda get anxious? What's what's that kind of nervousness there? Well, it was doubt. Right? Like, I was just note met her.
Luke:I met her online, right, which is a weird thing. Not that weird. It's very normal right now, actually. But we've met online. We're practically strangers.
Luke:We still sometimes reflect on that. I found you online. You know, so I was I had this doubt. I was like, is she really into this bold pastor guy? Like like and I had this kind of like fear, this anxiousness of like like, oh, maybe she's she's not all that maybe she's not all that interested in me.
Luke:Maybe I'm not as funny and charming as I think. Right? And and all of that doubt, right, led to me behaving in a certain way, and I kinda had to figure out, like, what am I gonna do with this doubt? Now, what I did was I told her, actually I do kinda, you know, I am kind of anxious, you know. Or I don't remember if I even told her, she might have just called it out and said, I thought you weren't an anxious texter.
Luke:And I was like, hey. But that leaves us with the question is right, is just like I had to decide what am I gonna do with my doubt and my relationship? We have to ask the question, what are we gonna do with our doubt in our relationship to God? Because doubt Because doubt is is very common. It's whether you pardon me.
Luke:Whether you've been, just kind of exploring faith. You're like, I don't know about Jesus. I don't know about the bible. Or maybe I followed I went to church as a kid, but now as an adult, I'm not so sure. Or maybe you've been following Jesus for a long time, and you're just kinda like, oh, I kinda have this, like, itching, nagging, kind of uncomfortable doubt that kinda sits with me.
Luke:And today we wanna ask 2 primary questions, and that is what does god think about our doubt? And then the second question is, is what do we do then with our doubt? How does God respond when he sees that we are experiencing doubt? And then what are we gonna do with it? What are we what are we are we gonna throw it away?
Luke:Are we going to bring it close? What do we do? So let's just kind of start by talking generally about doubt. And I'll start off by asking you guys a question. If you have a question, if you have, like, something that you need an answer to, practical, anything, like, here's kind of a general question.
Luke:Like, not about, like, big things, but just anything. You know, how to change a tire? How to what you know, what's the best, like, you know, best cleaner for this or whatever. What do you do? How do you answer that question?
Luke:Go ahead and tell me. Google. Google. Right? We Google it.
Luke:Right? Oh, thank you, Haley. And in years past, we would have perhaps some of us would have said, oh, ask your local librarian, you know, or ask a family member. But now it's it's ask Google. You know, Google it.
Luke:And give it another 5 years maybe and the room will say Ask chat gpt, like, ask AI. Right? We live in this world where we have in our pockets these little phones that we just type all of our questions into, and we're just putting them out there. And, and but why? It's because we think that there's an answer to be had there.
Luke:And I think that kinda gives us this, like, having this little pocket question answering machine puts us in this framework of thinking, well, we've always got, like, we there's answers out there, and we can know those answers and we can know them with certainty but can you really? Like, can you really trust what's on the internet? Really? And do we actually how many things do we actually end up having to just take on faith? How many things do we actually have to say, you know what?
Luke:I have to, at some point, take this as a leap of faith. When you buy something off the grocery store off the shelf, and it's got an expiration date on it, you don't know for certain that it's not expired, you're trusting that little date that's printed on there. I know some of you don't care about those, but I do. And and you're you're taking that on faith. When the doctor tells you something, you're not saying, oh, I don't trust you.
Luke:You don't know what you're talking about. You only went to school for like 8 years. You we we just kind of have to take things on faith at some point. So for all of the information that we have, for all of the answers, the books, the videos, all of it, we still live in this age of doubt. We have more questions and more doubt when people, tell us a thing.
Luke:We are more likely to question it than ever. And so I don't think that we've gotten to this place where we actually can always know. I think the world has more questions that definitely do have answers, but I just don't know that we can know them, and that we can know them with as much certainty as we might like to believe because of our technology. So I think when I was kind of reading about doubts and doing some reading for this is I think there are 2 opposite errors that we can run into when it comes to doubt. And neither of them are gonna take us into a good place.
Luke:I think that perhaps particularly in churches and in, religious places and maybe this is you or describing the way you kinda grew up. If you're experiencing doubt, well, you just need to make it shut up. Go away, doubt. Go away. Shoo shoo shoo shoo.
Luke:Right? Just like you need to sing louder, you need to read your bible more, just ignore the doubt, it'll go away. Right? That's one way of responding. We can kind of banish doubts.
Luke:Say, make it go away. But the thing is is that it doesn't really go away. Right? Like that's that's like you trying to pretend that that tickle on the back of your throat is not a cold coming on. Right?
Luke:It it's gonna come back to bite you. So so that's one way of responding to doubt. And that's maybe the, like, traditional way. It's the way in which people have responded to doubt most often, in previous years. But then there's this opposite error which honestly a lot of the things I was reading, was kind of falling into, I think, and then that is to kind of commend or idealize doubt.
Luke:Say, well, doubts a mark of maturity. Like, you've not really you're not really a Christian until you've, like, doubted all of it. And this comes out in a lot of really interesting ways. I was having a conversation with someone. I can't remember if they were atheist or ag or agnostic.
Luke:And we were having a discussion about faith. And he was like, well, you probably grew up in the church, didn't you? I was like, yeah. And he's like, well, I'm not interested in talking to you then. I'm like, oh, why?
Luke:And you know, and he was just like, well, because like you just were spoon fed this and and you you you know, and so you're not obviously thinking about it critically. And you know, I told him because it honestly is my story is that, no. I was like, no. I did have a time at which I did not believe in Christ and I did I thought all of this was not true and I walked away from Christ for a time and Christ proved himself to be true in my life and I came back and he was like, oh, okay then, we can have a conversation. My doubt was almost this like badge of honor that like my faith in Christ must be silly or blind or unsubstantiated unless I have had this serious doubt.
Luke:Right? And we get into this place and we can even get to this place. It's I think it's common. It's an error to say, well, what can one really know? And you just kind of go about and you just kind of never land anywhere.
Luke:You're always in this place of always questioning, but it never never arriving at an answer, never you know. And that's not helpful either. That doesn't leave us in a good place. It's not how the bible talks about faith and talks about doubt and unbelief. So I want to instead of just run to one of these 2 because the impulse could be, okay, let's get rid of it.
Luke:Oh, hello. Let's embrace it and not be so mean like those guys over here and make doubt our friend and and like, doubts are really good thing and like, just kind of embrace it. And let's see what the bible actually has to say about it. We're gonna be in Luke chapter 7. So if you have your Bibles, I encourage you to open up to them.
Luke:I'll be in Luke chapter 7 starting in verse 18. The verse will be up here on the screen, but we also have bibles in the pews. If you don't have a bible of your own, consider one of our Bibles yours. We also have a number of Bibles in the back by the in the bookcase by the door. And there are a couple different translations there that if you're like, I have a translation, but it's really hard to understand, there's a couple back there that might be a really good fit for you.
Luke:We wanna make sure you have a copy of God's word that you can read and understand. So Luke chapter 7. We're gonna be in starting in verse 18. And before I start reading there, I just wanna catch you up cause we're kinda jumping into the middle of a story here with Jesus. Jesus is out and he's doing his ministry.
Luke:He's been healing people. He's been sending people free from demonic possession. He's been doing all of this. He's been teaching. And his ministry, if you remember the story of Jesus' ministry, started with his baptism.
Luke:He went to his cousin John the Baptist and he was baptized by John. And John was a prophet, said to come before the Messiah, and he was proclaiming, making ready everyone for Jesus to come, and he was talking about him. And Jesus comes one day as John is out in the wilderness baptizing people, telling them to repent. He says, behold, the lamb of God has come to take away the sins of the world and he baptizes Jesus and sees the Holy Spirit come on him. So John the Baptist, that's him, really important person.
Luke:And then Jesus leaves there, he goes and tempt, get this tempted, and then he begins to teach and gather his disciples, and his ministry starts. Well, after he's kind of left John Baptist is kind of going on continuing to do what he does. And in doing what he does, he makes some political enemies and is put in prison. And that's where John is when this story happens. John is locked up in prison in fear for his life because he would eventually lose it in prison.
Luke:And here, he is talking with some of his disciples and this is what happens in verse 18. John's disciples told him all about these things, telling them they were telling him all about what Jesus was doing. Calling 2 of them, he sent them to the Lord, sent them to Jesus and said, ask. Ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else? When the men came to Jesus, they said John the Baptist sent us to you and he wanted us to ask, are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else?
Luke:At that very time, Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses, and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, go back and report to John what you have seen and what you've heard. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, and those who have leprosy are cleansed. The deaf hear and the dead are raised and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.
Luke:So John the Baptist, the guy who baptized Jesus, the prophet who is coming to prepare the way for the Messiah is locked up in prison, and he has doubt. Now we don't know exactly what that doubt is. Right? We don't know exactly what caused it. It could have been, I don't know, maybe the fact he was in prison.
Luke:Right? Like, he's kind of like, this is not what I signed up for. Like, I thought Jesus was the messiah. And if Jesus is the messiah, why is he letting me sit here in prison? Why am I here?
Luke:This is not what I signed up for. I thought there was gonna be something else. And then he's hearing about what Jesus is doing and he's maybe thinking, that's not what I thought Jesus was gonna do. I thought Jesus was gonna unite us all and we were gonna be this united force to overthrow the Romans. I maybe what was going on in John's head?
Luke:And we don't really know. The passage doesn't tell us except that John wanted to make sure he had this moment of doubt where he's just like the one. You're the one one. Right? Like, you're not like one of them.
Luke:You're just like the one we were waiting for. There's not somebody else after you that we're supposed to be waiting on. He has this uncertainty and he asks Jesus that question. And Jesus responds to him by not belittling him, not by making fun of him, not by saying, oh, foolish John. He responds by quoting the old testament and saying, I am fulfilling the prophecy that was said.
Luke:Lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news of the kingdom is preached to the poor. And so Jesus quotes that, and then he ends his little answer in his response saying, blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account to me. And he goes on and he goes later, and he he doesn't say he does say in verse 28, I tell you among those born of women, there is no one greater than John, yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. So Paul Jesus doesn't lose, like, his esteem of John. He still says that he's a great man, says that he's a prophet and says that he was carrying out the will of the Lord.
Luke:He just simply responds by saying, like, by assuring John. But then that last verse, verse 23, blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. Blessed is anyone, good for anyone, who does not get caught up on who Jesus is, who doesn't get tangled up and say, and kind of like stuck on who he is and what he came to do. And so Jesus is inviting John to look at him, to know him, and and and meet and find faith there. Jesus neither commends nor banishes doubt, rather he invites people to know him.
Luke:Jesus doesn't run to either of these extremes in this case. He doesn't say, John, get your dad out of here. Or he doesn't say, oh, good, John. You've you've matured. It's good that you're asking these questions and thinking critically.
Luke:He doesn't do either of those things. Rather, he says, John, look at who I am. Look at what I'm doing. Come and know me and experience me. And regardless as whether or not you're in prison or things are happening the way you wanted them to or expected them to, I'm still the messiah.
Luke:And so Jesus invites us to come and to know him. Really, the Bible is filled with stories about doubt and faith and belief and unbelief, and it's absolutely chock full of it. It doesn't always use the word doubt. It doesn't use the word doubt very often, and it but it often uses the word believe and faith and unbelief. And if you were to read through the 4 gospels, you'd find Jesus is constantly making comment about, wow, I am a marvel at the faith of this person, or I am surprised that there is no face to be found here.
Luke:Jesus is constantly making comment about it. I wanna look at another passage where Jesus kind of talks about that here. Let's move forward a couple chapters in Luke to Luke chapter 11. Wanna see a different scenario where Jesus responds differently than he did with John and then ask the question is, what's different about these two places? What can we learn by comparing these two stories?
Luke:So Luke chapter 11, we'll start in verse 14. Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left the man, the mute man spoke and the crowd was amazed. But some of them some of them said, by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. He is driving out demons.
Luke:Others tested him by saying, ask by asking him for a sign from heaven. So Jesus is out. He's doing miracles. He's healing people, he's setting a man free from a demon that was keeping him mute. And the mute man suddenly is speaking and they're all kind of going, oh, well can you do something better?
Luke:Can you do something from like the sky? Can you like this make the sky go black or something? They're like, can you do this bigger sign for us? And then some of them are saying, well, you're casting out a demon. You must be casting out a demon because you're a demon.
Luke:And then Jesus responds with a very well known portion of the passage and but he kind of responds by I'll kind of summarize it by saying that, kind of calls him out as being a little stupid. Because he's just like, look guys, why would Satan be casting out his own demons? That doesn't make any sense. Why is the why would the bad guys be fighting the bad guys? Like, that's not how this works.
Luke:Right? So a house divided against his self cannot stand. So he kind of points out the silliness of, like, what are you talking about that I'm casting out demons by Beelzebub, by Satan, like, that's weird. That wouldn't be how this would be working. So he talks about that, but then if we get down to verse 29, as more and more people were showing up, as the crowd increased, Jesus said, this is a wicked generation.
Luke:It asks for a sign, but none will be given it except for the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was assigned to the Ninevites, so also will the son of man be to this generation. The queen of the south will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them. For she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom. Now something greater than Solomon is here.
Luke:The men of Nineveh will stand up at judgment with this generation and condemn it for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And now something greater than Jonah is here. Is this about the queen of the south? Jesus is making this point when he's talking about the Ninevites and when he's talking about the queen of the south. He's talking about foreigners, People in the Old Testament who were not Israelites, who came either to Solomon or Jonah came to the Ninevites.
Luke:They heard the word of the Lord, saw the wisdom of the Lord. And they were like, oh, this is that there's one true God. This is he this is him here. They repented. They had faith when they encountered god.
Luke:But here, Jesus is saying look, the foreigners, the Ninevites repented and had faith in God. The queen of the south, this foreign queen had faith in God and yet, here I am the Messiah. I'm greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah and you guys can't muster any faith. You guys are in this place of unbelief, maybe a place of cynicism because you guys I'm doing signs, I'm doing miracles, but you guys are like, that's not good enough. I'm not gonna bleed to you do a bigger one, or that's surely not it.
Luke:Because if they're sitting there and they're like, look, Jesus is casting out demons and he's like, well, that's not really the Messiah, then they find some excuse. Chances are, if Jesus was going to do a greater sign, they would have said, well, that's I mean, you know, anyone can do that. Like, they're just gonna find another excuse because they're just constantly living in this place of cynicism or unbelief. I wanna kind of draw this point out. Belief and unbelief are opposite, but doubt is the wrestling with faith that is in between.
Luke:We see that God responds differently to those who are in this in between, who are experiencing doubt, who are wrestling with their faith, versus those that are hardened and are shut off to any demonstration of faith. Whether God did a sign or not, would the heart ever soften. God is patient with those who doubt, but leave cynical unbelief often to itself. We see lots and lots of examples of God being gentle, kind and patient. He never says it's a good thing.
Luke:He never says doubt is good. He never says that it's a it's a good characteristic. But he's patient with it. We can think of a number of different stories in the old testament. Some like Elijah, who, was in the wilderness and after the confrontation of the prophets of Baal has this kind of place of doubt and wondering.
Luke:And then Moses even has his doubting in the wilderness. We could think of many, maybe you even think of the, the judge Gideon. Right? He's kind of an an not as well known of a story. If you've been in church, you maybe have heard of him.
Luke:Right? He was this judge and God came to him and said, hey, Gideon, like, I need you to go fight, Israelite's enemies and will you go do that? And Gideon's like I don't know God, is it really you? If if it is you, can you can you I'm gonna put this fleece out on my front lawn. I want you to make the fleece wet and the ground dry and god does it and then Gideon's like, I don't know god.
Luke:This time make the fleece dry and the ground wet, you know, and he reverses it. And and God does it again, he's like, okay. I'll go do it now. I know that it's you now. And he goes out and then God decides to whittle down the army little by little until the army is a very small force so that Gideon couldn't be confused, that it wasn't Gideon's great leadership and it wasn't the strong army, it was God that delivered them.
Luke:And I go through all that just simply because I wanna the opportunity to make it very clear that Gideon is not a positive example in the story. Sometimes we kinda hear that story and we're like, oh, well, I should lay out fleeces. And that's not the point of the story. That's not the like, God isn't, you know, God is patient with Gideon. God honors when he puts out the fleece.
Luke:He he does that, but that's not an example that we're meant to follow. Like, I think probably the reason God makes his army so small is because of Gideon's lack of faith, because he wanted to show Gideon and grow his faith and show him that it was not him. And so we see that god is patient with doubt, but it's never this commendable thing. It's never a desirable thing. It's not a good thing.
Luke:But he doesn't banish it either. He doesn't beat up us who are weak and struggle and have doubt. He invites us in to know him and often meets us there. And that's very different from living in a place of unbelief. A place of hardened off our hearts where no I'm just you know, no matter what kind of argument you give me, I'm gonna find a way to poke a hole in it.
Luke:That's a very different place to be. There's this quote. It's a, you know, a quote from Saint Anselm. It's probably the only quote most people know from this guy. It says this, it says, for I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.
Luke:For this, I also believe that unless I believe I shall not understand. And you probably are like, I don't understand that quote. What that quote is trying to get at, what he's saying because it was written a long time ago, is been short handed down into the motto, faith seeking understanding. What he's saying is that if you try and start from the position of saying, I wanna understand everything. I wanna have all my questions answered.
Luke:I wanna know exactly how it all makes sense. I wanna know everything there is to do with the Bible. I wanna have all the understanding of how God works and his plan. I wanna make it all make sense to me. I don't wanna have any mystery.
Luke:I wanna have all the understanding. He's like, if that's the way that you're gonna operate, you're gonna want all the understanding and then you'll have faith, You will neither under you will end up with neither faith or understanding. But if you start with faith that there is God, that God wants to know you and be in relationship with you, and you say, Lord, I want to know you, I want to seek understanding, I'm gonna seek to know you, please reveal yourself to me and give me understanding of things too great for me, the lord will be faithful to that and meet us in that. And we will end up with faith and some understanding. We won't get all understanding.
Luke:I don't think that the Bible makes any attempt, really, to give us all the answers in life. I think the Bible often gives us questions. Jesus himself asked way more questions than he ever answered. And so, this is the posture. God honors faith that wrestles with him in doubt.
Luke:God would have you wrestle with him, be honest with him about where you're at in the difficulty of doubt and faith that you're wrestling with, than just to simply walk away from him. God wants to maintain relationship with you, and he will honor that faith. Because here's the thing, in order for faith or in order for doubt to exist, faith must first exist. Right? You cannot have doubt if you do not also have some small kernel of faith.
Luke:If you've got no doubt and and and no faith, you're just in unbelief. You're just in a place of of hardening your heart. And so God is faithful to honor that small kernel of faith. So god is patient with us. He is kind.
Luke:He meets us where we're at. He never wants to leave us though in doubt. He wants us to walk out of it. It's not a Doubt is not a destination. Right?
Luke:It it can be part of the journey, but it's not the destination. And so, god is patient. God is kind with us. And that answers a little bit of the It answers the question, I think, of what does god think about our doubts? I think God thinks that it's part of our weakness, that he wishes we would not doubt but that we would have faith, but I think he understands.
Luke:I think he knows our frailty. I think he knows our propensity to doubt even when we've been shown clearly. And so here, we now are left with the question of what do we then do with our own doubt? What do we do with it? Alright.
Luke:If that's how god responds to it, what do I do with it? Do I need to just kind of push it away? How do I kind of deal with it? Let's answer that question by going to the book of John. We're gonna go to chapter 20.
Luke:John chapter 20, and we're gonna start in verse 24. John chapter 20 verse 24, Jesus has been crucified on the cross. He was buried, he was in the grave for 3 days, and he rose again on the 3rd day, and he appeared to the disciples. And when he showed up to them, he was like, guys, like I'm not dead, I'm resurrected, look at me. And all of them were there except for Thomas.
Luke:And that's where we pick up in verse 24. It says, now Thomas, also known as Didymus, was one of the 12, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. And so the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in the hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later, his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them.
Luke:Though the door were doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put your put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.
Luke:And Thomas said to him, my Lord and my God. Then Jesus said to him, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book. But these these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the messiah, the son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Luke:So let's kind of reflect a little bit on this passage, but also more generally, what do we do with our doubt? If we're experiencing doubt, we know that God responds to us with patience if we are pursuing faith, if we're struggling and wrestling in that in between. And the first thing that I think we must do is we must be honest with ourselves and honest with God about our doubt. I think we do nothing if we do nothing but harm for ourselves if we simply just pretend doubt isn't there. Right?
Luke:If we just kick it down the road, ignore it, don't talk about it, we just wanna make it go away, chances are it's just gonna come back around, it's gonna stay there. It's not necessarily going to just go away. We have to bring it in. And the Bible is really an excellent model for this. If we were to go through the book of Psalms and you were to look at some of the lament Psalms.
Luke:They are filled with questions of God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you downcast, oh my soul, within me? Right? The psalmist The Psalms that ended up in the bible include doubt, include wrestling with God, include coming and asking God these difficult questions.
Luke:God, why do the wicked prosper? Yet the righteous seem to suffer. Lord, when will your judgment come? Wrestling with this faith and this doubt, knowing God is good, but, man, I don't know when that's gonna come. When is deliverance going to happen?
Luke:And so we see models of being honest with God, worshipful yet honest, not having to hide and put on a mask and say, oh, no. We're we're good here. We're just going to church. And gonna sing real loud today. You know, like, it's honest faith.
Luke:The Bible includes all of the positives and the negatives. We see some of the greatest heroes of faith express and experience doubt, but the thing that they all did is that they sought God in the midst of their doubt. And so we must be honest with God, but we also must be honest with ourselves. We must ask ourselves what lies behind our doubt. Now, I'm not gonna say that there's never any such thing as an honest intellectual doubt.
Luke:But I will say that most of the time, it's not just an intellectual thing. Most of the time behind our doubt, there's something like a perhaps a rebellious desire. There's perhaps pride. Maybe there's fear. Maybe there's hurt, anger.
Luke:Maybe there's disappointment. I think back to John the Baptist, he's in prison. Was his Was he disappointed with the way things had worked out? Was he angry he was in prison? Was he was angry that the Messiah didn't come and free him from prison?
Luke:And was that at root some of his doubt? I don't know the answer to those questions but I wager that something was at the root of it. Oftentimes, we are encountered with God and his will and what he says in the bible and we're just like, I don't like that that much. I kinda wanna live life my way. I kinda think that things ought to make this kind of sense.
Luke:And I get it. I feel that way sometimes. But the thing is is that if we were to just make that the roots and we're just like, I kinda want life and I want God and I want this, all the match up to the way I want it to be, well, then I'm gonna wanna put distance between myself and God. I'm gonna wanna find an excuse to say, oh, I don't have to fear God, I don't have to trust that he is higher and mightier than me, that he is wise and above me. I wanna I wanna put that distance, and so doubt can sometimes be a justification for something in our heart that is rebellious.
Luke:When we think back to the, the Genesis story, the very first story in the bible, God created heavens and earth, and he created Adam and Eve, and he set them in the garden. He said, do not eat from this tree the knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat of its fruit. And the serpent comes saying, did god did God really say that? Did God really say you couldn't eat it?
Luke:He doesn't want you to eat it because you'll be like him. He must be keeping something good from you. God doesn't have your best intentions. The serpent came and sowed doubt that created room for pride and the choice of rebellion in its own way. And we have to be honest.
Luke:That's a question you and God have to answer when it comes to your doubt. What's going on? Is there a hurt? Did something happen? Is there a situation?
Luke:Is there something you just kinda don't like and you don't wanna bend your knee to god on it? That's a question that we have to wrestle with. Not always is it not all doubt is necessarily, malicious or has something awful behind it, but I find that it often does. And so, if then we've been honest with ourselves, we've been honest with God, we must finally we must seek God for who he who he is and not who we would have him to be. This is a really countercultural mindset for us because we live in a world that values our opinion or at least we think it does.
Luke:Right? Like every social media we're at app we're on, we're asked to share, to like, to comment, give your opinion, thumbs up, thumbs down, sad face, happy face, heart this, like this, all that was give me a review on Yelp, do this, do that. Like, we are constantly these like little mini critics of everything we encounter and we think that we're the evaluators of what is good and what is bad. And we bring that same kind of thinking to God oftentimes. So many times people's objections to God are, well, that just doesn't seem like the way I would kinda like God to be.
Luke:That's not If I was God, I would do it differently. And what I gotta say is that if we have a God of our own making, we have destroyed God. If we have a god that fits into my box perfectly, I can understand and does everything exactly the way I think it ought to be done. I've created a false god because I am not god. Let me just give you a simple, like, not simple example, but an example from the bible again.
Luke:The book of Job. Job is this man who suffers, he experiences evil, and he has no real rhyme or reason as to why any of this is happening. And his friends come and say, oh Job, you must have done something wrong, or you're someone in your family did something wrong. Job, like you're a good guy and bad things like this don't happen to good people. And Job is saying, no no no.
Luke:And then he becomes very frustrated. You see at the beginning of the book, he has this strong faith. He's like, even though all of this happens, I will praise and worship the Lord. But as the book goes towards its end, towards its conclusion, Job becomes angry. He begins to doubt god's goodness, and he begins to say, god, you need to come down here, and you need to give me an answer because I wanna know why all these these awful things happened to me.
Luke:And god shows up. And Job wishes god hadn't showed up when god shows up. Joe god shows up in this cloud out of this whirlwind. God just speaks. I get this like, imagery of just like a a hurricane coming up and stopping, and god speaking out of it.
Luke:And God says, who are you to ask questions of me? And Job's response to god, after hearing god's response is simply to say, I spoke and I darken the council of god. I spoke of things too high for me. I do not know. I am not God and I do not not owed an answer.
Luke:The book of Job never ends with a conclusion where God says, oh, look Job, here's all the answers to all the questions you had. God rather says, no, Job, I am God, and you're not going to have all the answers. Because I am bigger and mightier than you could ever conceive of. And that's the God of the bible. We don't have a God that has every single answer that can come up in a nice little box that we can kinda check.
Luke:And that makes us uncomfortable because we want certainty, but we're not God. God invites us into faith. He invites us to know him and to know that he is good, to experience his goodness in all things. We must seek God for who he is, not whom we would have him to be. I think that is important that we seek God.
Luke:A couple reflections out of the passage in John is simply to say that Thomas modeled that honesty. Right? He could have said any number of things when the disciples came and told him we've seen Jesus, Jesus is resurrected. He could have said oh sure. Not.
Luke:Right? Like he could have pretended that he believed, he could have done any number of things. But what I find interesting is that there was a whole week that goes in between. Thomas comes, he meets the the disciples are like, Thomas, you weren't here. Jesus is resurrected.
Luke:We met him. We saw him. And then a whole week goes by. And what's interesting is that Thomas is still hanging out with the disciples. Thomas didn't leave the community.
Luke:He didn't run away, he stayed. And I don't know what those conversations were like between the disciples who had seen Jesus and Thomas. I don't know what they were like. But I see that when Jesus shows up, Thomas has this absolute revelation that Jesus is indeed lord and god. There's this famous painting of Doubting Thomas.
Luke:It's if you picture classical art and, you know, classic art, Doubting Thomas, Google it, you'll get an answer of what it looks like. And and it's this famous painting. And one of the things that strikes out to me is a couple of different things. One is that the painting is so beautiful in that it shows Jesus reaching over to Thomas and extending Thomas's finger into his own side. Jesus in this kind of physical way is demonstrating Jesus saying, come, look.
Luke:Put your finger in my side. Come and see that it is me. Stop your doubting and have belief. This invitation that Jesus saying, come touch, know me, see me. And I think it's a beautiful picture of that.
Luke:I think the other thing is that sometimes that picture is beautiful as it is, can kind of, make us insert something into the story that isn't actually mentioned here. It never says that Thomas actually goes up and puts his finger in Jesus' side. It never says that he touches Jesus or anything before he proclaims my Lord and my God. That Thomas, when he saw Jesus and Jesus was like, here come touch me, come feel me, see that it is actually truly me, that Thomas just says, my lord, my god, you are God. You are surely risen, you are he.
Luke:He doesn't require he drops that, bold statement he has a couple verses earlier where he says, I will only believe if I think we are invited by Jesus to do the same. Come taste and see. Come and know that I am indeed God. So whether you are dealing with doubt because you're like, I don't know exactly where I'm at in my faith journey. I don't really know if all of this makes a whole lot of sense.
Luke:It doesn't maybe I grew up in church, maybe I've never been to church and all of this is strange and I don't have answers yet. That's okay. Christ's invitation remains the same. Come taste and see. Come and know me.
Luke:Seek me in that faith and I will meet you there. And whether Or if you've been following of Jesus for a long time and you've had this nagging doubt that you've been afraid to talk about, you've been afraid to share with anyone in community or with God himself, God invites you to cry out to him and he wants to meet you. I can't guarantee you answers to your questions. The bible doesn't guarantee it and God doesn't guarantee it. But he does guarantee himself.
Luke:He does guarantee that he will meet those who are faithful to seek him. When we turn to him and seek his face, he is faithful to come to us like the spring rains. God is here and he wants to meet you and he wants to have a relationship with you in the middle of wherever it is you find yourself. Cry out with that same cry that is in the gospel that says, Lord, I believe help me with my unbelief. Perhaps there is nothing else better for you for me to give you as you go away from here is that no matter where you're at in your scale of belief and unbelief or doubt, is that that prayer will always be appropriate.
Luke:Lord, I believe, help me with my unbelief. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we are thankful that you have not stayed far away from us. Lord, you you've come and revealed yourself to us. You have brought us here today.
Luke:Lord, I believe that there's no one here today on accident. Lord, you invite all of us to know you no matter where we're at. Lord, I pray that today, we would all hear that call, that invitation to come in closer, to taste and see that you are good, to experience you and walk with you no matter whether we are on the mountain top or we are in the valley of the shadow of death. Lord, you want to walk beside us and be our comfort in our staff. Lord, I pray that your holy spirit would make you known to each of our hearts.
Luke:That inside of us, your spirit would testify to our spirit, that you are indeed Abba, that you are our father, that you are God, and that you hold and sustain us, that this world is not by accident. Our life is not without purpose. You created and knit us together. Lord, I pray that you would make us a people of faith, that you would build us up as we seek you. In Jesus name we pray.
Luke:Amen. Conduit, my prayer for you today is that the great I am would make himself known in your life. But as you go from this place, you would know you do not go alone, but god is with you. Go in peace.
