November 19 sermon Doubt? John 20
What does a
How do you make a turkey float? Start with two scoops of ice cream, add root bear, and throw in a turkey.
What do you do with doubt about God? Not that God isn’t real, but that God is active in our lives. Spouse is sick or dying.
A child is being abused.
You lost your job again.
Your wife or husband left you.
The bishop sends you a young pastor who stretches you and your not sure if you are ready to trust him.
How do you cope?
Jesus told one father “If you can believe, all things are possible.” The father said back, “I believe, help my unbelief.”
Do you give up? Do you play the game of going to church each week to “keep up appearances”? Faith mixed with doubt. It’s a paradox, isn’t it?
Should you doubt? 1st you become a Christian, then your perfect. All uncertainties and doubts are gone. No more difficult times. No more pain. Everything is roses and cherries. No…you do have some doubts. You are not instantly perfect.
Does doubt mean you are not a Christian? Or if you doubt, is God really God? You know, all knowing, loving, good, perfect. Since evil and suffering exist, then a loving God cannot.
From Epcurus the philosopher, “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can but does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, and does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in the world?”
Remember that little boy who stuck his finger in the hole of the dike, thereby saving an entire village from drowning. Do you ever feel like that, where your little finger of faith is holding back a huge wave of doubt??
Jesus didn’t rebuke Thomas for doubting. Instead he offered him evidence for the truth. “stick your finger where the holes are. Do not doubt anymore.”
What do you doubt at times?? I’m sure you don’t doubt that God exist, right? There is just way too much evidence that there is a God.
So, could you doubt your understandings of God? Maybe God is unpredictable from our viewpoint. I heard this great illustration not too long ago.
I’m walking in the woods with my good friend Paul. First, Paul warns me to “look out, don’t trip over that root.” Later, Paul calmly watches while I handle a plant then tells me “that’s poison ivy. Here’s some ointment to reduce the itching. I’m glad for the ointment, but wonder why Paul didn’t warn me before I touched the poison ivy. Later on I fall down a deep hole and can’t get out. I look up and see Paul calmly standing there. No matter how many times I ask him for help, he just stands there and watches me.
That’s how it seems with God sometimes. Sometimes God warns me about stumbling blocks before me. He has this hedge of protection around me. Sometimes God lets me get in the poison ivy of life, and then gives me ointment to start the healing. And sometimes God just sits and watches, leaving me on my own to get out of life’s pit of despair. I don’t know how God is going to deal with me; and that unknowing and uncertainty, is the root of my doubt.
Is doubting a bad thing? Does God want me to have some doubt? Has God appeared on any of the platforms you have built in the past?
Ed is getting close to finishing his house. Maybe God will show up today on that nice concrete pad site. He’s never been visible to me; never turned water to wine; no one has come back from the grave in my lifetime I know of; The most I’ve ever instantly been healed is when a headache went away when the Advil kicked in.
Frederick Buechner expresses this ambivalence about doubt beautifully: “Whether your faith is that 1. there is a God or that 2. there is not a God, if you don’t have doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.
Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” Romans 8 says “For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.”
Maybe occasional struggles with doubt are good.
1. doubting tests the perseverance of my faith.
If I have not doubted, then I really never step out in faith. Hebrews 11 says “Faith is believing in what you don’t see.”
2. Doubt makes my faith grow stronger.
If my faith in God never struggles, then why would I search for answers?
For example, I’m learning to drive a car. I put it into drive for the first time and take off….going down the coast, seeing the sights, showing off my new car. But I make a wrong turn and end up at a dead end. I stop at the wall and wonder what to do next. Every time I tap the gas pedal, I move closer to the wall. Finally in a last ditch effort, knowing this car is brand new and virtually perfect, and having come this far, I’m a perfect driver, I PUT THE GAS PEDAL TO THE FLOOR. Of course I wreck the car.
I can’t believe that my WHOLE understanding of driving has been completely wrong. Cars aren’t really the way to get around. Everyone needs to get a horse. Cars are a farce put on society by a government that just wants to control us. The idea that cars can get us from one point to another is just a crutch for the weak mind. Of course that’s wrong.
Doubts strengthen our faith. How? Doubts are like the barbells we must lift for our faith to grow stronger. James tells us that “whenever you face trials, you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” No pain, no gain.
3. As faith gets stronger, the doubt will raise our level of faith above mere feelings and emotions. If your faith is grounded in feelings, it will go south when life gets hard.
Some of the televangelist will tell you “If you don’t feel the Spirit moving in your life, you just don’t have enough faith.” Then they say something about sending in money. But in the scripture we talked about last week, Jesus tells us to love God with all our hearts, souls. MINDS, and strength. You can’t base faith just on feelings.
What are the sources of doubt???
1. The world…kids when you go to school, especially college, you will be bombarded with people telling you that Christianity is a fake and useless belief pushed on you by someone you really love.
Science has proved the non-existence of God. It’s offensive to claim that Jesus is the only way to heaven. A loving God would never send people to hell.
2. Satan…yes Satan is real. Yes hell is real. And just as God is working on you thru you with His Prevenient grace, Justifying grace and Sanctifying grace, Satan and his evil group is working to plant seeds of doubt in your mind. I’ll give you this illustration for the three types of grace.
Your world is a box, covered with black ice. No light can get in. It’s all you. From the day of your conception, God’s prevenient grace is taking an ice pick and chipping away at that black ice. One day, grace has chipped away enough of the black ice that light gets in your box and lights the fire in you.
That is Justifying grace. That is the day you believe in salvation by Jesus Christ. Then every day after that, sanctifying grace blows on the embers of that fire within you to melt more and more of the black ice from around you.
3. Our own flesh is the last and probably greatest source of doubt. When the disciples were on the sea, Peter starts to walk on water out to where Jesus was. But when the waves bounced around him, and he began to sink, he cried out “Lord save me.”
Jesus reached out and lifted him up. “Oh you of little faith. Why do you doubt?” When Peter took his eyes off Jesus, his faith faltered.
What do you do now when you doubt?
1. study the Christian evidence. The empty tomb, 500 witnesses to the resurrection, other changed lives.
2. study the bible. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Faith gains strength by reading and studying the bible.
3. Most important is to talk to God. Jesus did not pray that Peter would be shielded from Satan’s attacks, but that “his faith should not fail when tested.”
God did not keep Daniel from being thrown in the lions den, but protected him while he was among the lions. Definitely ask God to eliminate your problems, but after that, ask him to sustain your faith if he desires you to go thru them.
I’ll tell you right now. I don’t have the easy answers for those ongoing questions of doubt. Though I do have some answers, there are some you must learn on your own. There are struggles you must go thru.
But when your faith is low, you will have a spouse or a friend or me, your pastor sitting beside you. My faith is strong, stronger than it has ever been. We have a really big God who is bigger than any of your doubts. So if you need to, you can rely on my faith for a while, and I know we will get thru this together.
I’m here to listen to you. You and I can lift those barbells of doubt together and build some faith filled muscle. Jesus said “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” I know that to be true, and we will take this journey together.
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