Can I get a witness: The journey of doubt

4^Th Sunday of Easter, April 13, 2008

Let me ask you a question this morning: what do you doubt in your life?  To put it another way, when you can’t sleep at night, and you find yourself staring up at the ceiling, what things are you worrying about?  What do you doubt about yourself, others, your future?

MSNBC recently did a poll of what people have doubts about.  Do you know what the number one thing is people worry or have doubts about?  The vast majority of people have doubts about their own financial security.  They doubt they have enough money to pay the bills and keep their heads above water.  Number two on the list are doubts about family.  People doubt they are doing the right thing by their family, they are raising their kids right, or are responding to crises in their families in the best way, or are responding to others in the family and especially aging parents and concerns with them in the right way.  Rounding out the top three things people have doubts about is their own health.  People doubt they are doing enough to maintain their own bodies; their own longevity.  They doubt they are receiving the best care and advice from the health care professionals they see.

That’s a lot of doubt floating around out there.  As we continue in our sermon series today, Can I get a Witness?, we’re going to be taking a look at Thomas, one of the witnesses of the resurrected Jesus who had a lot of questions, a lot of doubts.  We’re going to be looking at the journey he went on from doubt to belief.  As we look at his journey, I’m hoping we’ll see in many ways we are often on the same journey, too.

First, who was Thomas?  Thomas was one of Jesus’ disciples who seemed to always have a lot of doubts about fully trusting Jesus.  Even though Thomas had seen the miracles, heard the teachings and saw the people respond to Jesus with life-changes, he never seemed to really grasp and hold on to trust in Jesus.  In fact, if you remember the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, once He had decided to go to Lazarus, the disciples tried to talk Jesus out of it.  When Jesus said, essentially, “guys, I’m going”, Thomas was the one who didn’t trust that Jesus knew what He was doing – he doubted Jesus’ ability to stay alive since there was a price on His head, and in a tone of resignation Thomas turned to the rest of the disciples and said, essentially, “well, let’s go boys; we might as well die with Him.”[1]

Let’s go to our text now.  We’re looking at John  20:24-29.  John is the fourth book in the New Testament, so it goes Mathew, Mark, Luke and then John.  John was the youngest of the inner group of 12 disciples, and he was the only one of the remaining 11 after Judas killed himself who died a natural death.  All of the remaining 11 apostles were executed for believing in, and preaching about, the resurrection of Jesus and the new life that comes from believing it.  John was sent to the island prison of Patmos which is a 14 square mile island that lies in between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean sea.  John was sent there towards the end of his life, and it was while he was on that island Jesus came to him and told him what to write the book that has become to be known as Revelation.  After his release from Patmos, it is believed that’s when John wrote the Gospel named after him, as well as 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd John. 

So, in John 20, this is what we read: Now Thomas {his Aramaic name} (called Didymus {his Greek name}), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe it.” A week later His {Jesus’} disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the 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 it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” 

Why wouldn’t Thomas believe?  It’s not like he hadn’t been told Jesus was alive.  The Greek is very clear here – it’s not as if the disciples said in passing, “Oh, yeah, by the way, Jesus is alive.”  The Greek tells us the disciples kept telling Thomas Jesus was alive and they had seen Him.  They stated, they insisted, they made it clear again and again and again that they saw Jesus alive and well when He came to them behind closed doors.  And Thomas wouldn’t believe them.

That’s our first point this morning – whenever people came face to face with Jesus their lives were changed.  When people meet Jesus today the same thing happens: lives are changed and new beginnings are given.  But you gotta meet Him.  The reason Thomas wouldn’t believe Jesus was alive was because he hadn’t met Him after His resurrection.  And he hadn’t met Jesus yet because Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus came to the disciples a week earlier.  He removed himself from the fellowship of believers and missed the opportunity to meet Jesus.

The next time you pull out your barbeque and grill up some steaks, once the coals are all nice and white, reach down in to the heat with some tongs and remove just one of the coals.  Set it aside and watch it lose its heat.  The charcoal needs to be in a community of others to maintain its heat – its life.  Put that cold piece of charcoal back in the community of coals, and watch it come alive again.  Thomas missed meeting Jesus because, for whatever reason – fear, other things he felt he had to do, not being sure what to do with his life, not believing Jesus was alive – he removed himself from the community of believers and his fire died out.  It wasn’t until he was back with them and Jesus came to him that the fire was reignited and Thomas became a passionate, on-fire believer.

We don’t come to church on Sunday morning because it’s ‘just the thing to do.’  We come to church to be surrounded by the truth of God from His word, and let that word and sacrament strengthen faith and draw us closer to Christ Himself.  We come to church to be with others who believe in the inerrant word of God, and Jesus as the only savior from sin, death and the devil, because from time to time we all need a community of believers to help us on our journey.  We come to church to connect our hearts to the heart of God in a unique and wonderful way with our brothers and sisters in the faith.

So what was Thomas’ journey from doubt to belief?  What happened?  It started with an encounter with Jesus.  Jesus came to Thomas.  This is an important thing to note: Thomas didn’t have to go and ‘find’ Jesus, Jesus came to Thomas right where he was: in the middle of his doubt, pain and insecurity.  He’ll do the same for you and me, too.

There is a fine line between doubt and unbelief, and Thomas crossed it.  We call him doubting Thomas, but I think a more appropriate name would be ‘unbelieving Thomas.’  Doubt says “I’m not sure if something is true” while unbelief says, “I know for a fact something is not true.”  Doubt says “there might be a possibility of something being true, I just need to know it for certain” while unbelief says, “there’s no way.” 

Doubt can be answered by clear teachings from the Bible.  Unbelief rejects the Bible and tries to make a life for itself on its own with its own set of beliefs.  And ultimately that’s what Thomas was doing – trying to make a new life for himself based on his own set of beliefs – beliefs that did not agree with the clear word of God.  And so to keep him from going down a path of no return that lead away from God, Jesus came to Thomas.

The second thing on Thomas’ journey was that Jesus reassured him.  He spoke Thomas’ words right back to him, which reassured Thomas that Jesus was more than a mere man.  If Jesus had been a mere man, He would not have known what Thomas said to the disciples when Jesus wasn’t with them.  What’s more, He took Thomas up on his demand for proof, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.”  Jesus’ invitation for Thomas to go ahead and do what Thomas said he was going to have to do in order to believe, reassured Thomas of two things: Jesus heard and listened to what a child of His said, and Jesus would not walk away from Thomas and leave him in his struggle to believe.  Jesus was here, now, and what had gone on before was in the past.  All that mattered was what was happening now and what would become of it.

The same is true for you and me.  We have the same reassurance Thomas did.  Whatever has happened in the past is in the past.  Whatever the sin, whatever the choice, whatever the action, word or thought, it’s in the past.  All that matters is the here and now, and how we’ll respond to the love and forgiveness Jesus offers.  He will not walk away from us in our pain or struggles, even when our struggle is with Him.  In fact, that’s when He comes even closer to us and invites us into a new life with new beginnings and new hope.

Is it okay to have questions about or even doubts about Jesus?  Yes it is.  Our God is big enough to handle our questions and concerns.  I know I mentioned this in one of our Adult Study sessions recently, but do you remember the 1980’s and the televangelists?  Remember all the make-up some of the wives of the televangelists wore?  There was a Christian comedian back then who said people were always coming up to him and asking him “How much make-up should a Christian woman wear on her face if she really loves Jesus?”  He would always answer, “I don’t know – it depends on her face.  But if our God is no bigger than a tube of lipstick or a mascara pen, then we have a big problem.”

If our God is no bigger than our questions, then we have a big problem.  If our God can’t handle us saying “I believe, help me unbelief”[2] we’re in trouble.  Just be sure you’ve not crossed the line from honest questions to sincere unbelief.  We’re going to talk a little about this today in our Adult session: you can sincerely believe in something and be sincerely wrong.  That’s the road Thomas was on when he sincerely believed in his unbelief (if that makes any sense). 

So what do we do with our questions and concerns?  First and foremost, we have to go back to the Bible.  Just like the disciples on the road to Emmaus we talked about last week, if Thomas would have just believed the word of God concerning the Messiah, he would have avoided a great deal of heart-ache and problems.  It’s not that he didn’t know what the scriptures said, it’s that he didn’t believe it.  Just like him, we need to continually go back to the word of God.  In Acts chapter 17 we’re told of a group of people – the Bereans – who heard what Paul and Silas taught about Jesus, but wouldn’t take their word alone for it; they searched and examined the scriptures to find out if what they were being taught was true, and through that, they came to see that it was, and believed in Jesus.[3]  This group of people are forever immortalized and lifted up as an example to you me for their digging into scripture to study the things of God rather than just take the word of someone.

Where are the answers to our doubts and concerns going to be found?  In the Bible.  The question is, “Will we believe what the Bible says, especially if what the Bible says is something we don’t like?”

The second thing we can do with our questions and concerns is simply to ask.  I hope and pray you all know you can come to me with your questions.  If I don’t have an answer for you right away, I’ll tell you, and look into it and get back to you.  You all know we have a website now – lcchanover.com, and on that site is a link for “Ask the pastor.”  You can click on that link and submit a question that way.  The question and answer will get posted on our site.   The point is, ask!  Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be open to you.”[4]

Third, we pray.  Pray for an answer to the questions while reading the Bible.  Here’s the hard one: pray for a willingness to hear and accept the answer, even if you don’t like the answer.  Too many people have asked questions and when they hear what God says (not what the ‘church’ says, not what the ‘pastor’ says, but what GOD says) they don’t like it and so reject it.  That puts them on the same path Thomas was on: unbelief, and sincerely believing in their unbelief, and sincerely believing that all the way down the road away from God the Father.

Jesus did not rebuke Thomas for doubts because Thomas didn’t have doubts.  Jesus rebuked Thomas for unbelief because in the end, that what Thomas really had – unbelief.

Unbelief in Jesus as God in the flesh.  Unbelief in the ability of Jesus to take the punishment for the sins of the world on His own shoulders.  Unbelief that Jesus could rise from the dead.

Finally, returning to the journey Thomas was on, there was a third thing Jesus did for Thomas in his journey from doubt – unbelief, actually – to belief.  Jesus enabled him to believe.  When Thomas saw Jesus, I mean really saw Him for who He was, he believed, fell to his knees and cried out “my Lord and my God!”  Jesus appearance enabled Thomas to believe.

Today we don’t see Jesus in the flesh, but He still is the one who enables us to believe, and He does so through His Holy Spirit.  Just a few chapters earlier than this one, in John chapter 16, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit who will convict the world of sin, and in so doing, show the truth of who Jesus is.  It will be the Holy Spirit that will speak to our hearts and bring us into faith. 

Will we let Him? 

We can always persist in our unbelief, our demand that things have to be the way we want them to be, that somehow God’s word has to agree with our thinking, rather than letting God’s word have its way in our lives to change our thinking.  And again, that puts us in the same place as Thomas: the place of unbelief; the place where we are rebuked for not believing what God’s word says.

So what are we left with today; how do we end today?  We are left with a journey for Thomas that ended in belief, and a promise given to you and me.  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed: we are blessed.  Today, we have not yet seen, but for those who believe in spite of that, we are blessed in the eyes of God.  When God looks at His children; those who have believed with blind faith, those who have wrestled with doubts  and questions and have come to believe in Jesus even more because of them; those who allowed themselves to be turned from the path of unbelief to belief, He sees a blessed child of His.  One He loves passionately; one He simply can’t get enough of; one He waits for with eager anticipation to sit down at the heavenly banquet with and share a meal that’s been an eternity in the making.  That’s what God sees when He looks at you and me – those who have not yet seen the risen Jesus, and yet still believe.

We have not yet seen, but we will someday.  Someday we will see the same Jesus who held out His hands to Thomas and invited him to touch His wounds.  We’ll see the same nail scared hands and feet, and we’ll know in a new, fuller, way that this is our Lord and our God.  We will see Him with our own eyes and hold Him in our own hands. 

One final promise for us as we journey with the witnesses and come to know and believe in Jesus more and more.  This promise is from Revelation:  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away^[5]…Behold, I am coming soon!”[6]

Amen.  Come Lord Jesus.