Thank you, Sherry. Let's open our Bibles together please to the Gospel of John and the 20th chapter. Regardless of where we were born, most of us come from Missouri, the Show-Me State. For most of us, seeing is believing. Human nature has an inbred skepticism, and that's not all bad, is it? There are twin fools, the one who doubts everything and the other who doubts nothing. A bit of skepticism can be healthy, especially when we're dealing with the human race and with human institutions.
The earlier in life that we learn that lesson, I suppose the more quickly we become wise. Robert Browning said, who knows most doubts most. Charles Thomas Samuels said, skepticism is a hedge against vulnerability. And so we all know what it means to be skeptical, and we do that in a sense to protect ourselves from being hurt. But as helpful as doubt can be, it must not be allowed as the controlling attitude of our lives.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, never be afraid to doubt if only you have the disposition to believe. His point is that we must be careful that our disposition isn't to doubt. But if we have the disposition to believe, we don't need to be afraid of doubt. What we observe about faith is that faith is only as valid as its object. Faith in another person may prove valid or it may prove invalid. It depends on the person. But the fact is that faith in God is never proven invalid.
It is always valid faith because God is trustworthy. The object of our faith determines whether our faith is sound and healthy. In our text today we're going to read about a man who struggled with doubt. His name of course is what? Thomas. We all know Thomas for this characteristic. Psalm 20 verse 24. But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore were saying to him, We have seen the Lord.
But he said to them, Unless I shall see in his hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. That last statement, that conclusion, was a very strong statement. In fact, the way John writes this, he puts two negatives together in the Greek language. And so he is saying, I will not by any means believe. No way. Unless I can touch him and I can see him.
A settled attitude, a disposition really, in Thomas of doubt and even unbelief. Well the word goes on to say, After eight days again his disciples were inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Reach here your finger and see my hands, and reach here your hand and put it into my side, and be not unbelieving, but believing. Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God.
Jesus said to him, Because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed. Many other signs therefore Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these have been written, says John, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that believing, you may have life in his name.
Thomas, whose name means twin in the Aramaic, is known commonly throughout the Christian world as the one who doubted. I believe that Thomas above everything else doubted himself, as well as the other disciples due to their common failure, due to the disappointment of the events surrounding the cross. Thomas was a man who was close to Jesus. He was loyal to Jesus. He was outspoken in his loyalty to Jesus. But Thomas failed the Lord. He fled in the garden like the other disciples.
And I believe the heart of Thomas' doubt was in himself. He had not been present the week before, as we noted last Sunday. And so he did not see the resurrected Lord on the first Easter. Now eight days later he is still defeated, he is discouraged, he is pessimistic, and he saw no reason at all to believe. Now we condemn Thomas, but we need to remember that he is no different than the others were just a few days before this. Thomas represents many of us.
At least he represents us as we are from time to time. For whatever reasons, we too struggle with questions that may be defined as doubt. But unbelief is a close cousin to doubt. To doubt that is not addressed, that is. In fact, Thomas had apparently crossed that line from where he was doubting into unbelief. Because he said, I will not by any means believe unless I see him. And Jesus said to him, stop being an unbeliever, Thomas.
That wasn't that he had lost his salvation, but he had not believed in the resurrection. He was an unbeliever in that sense. Doubt although a common experience to all of us, must be addressed if we are going to walk with a holy, faithful God and serve him well. God had plans for Thomas, therefore Thomas' doubt had to be confronted. And our risen King Jesus Christ came on that occasion to deal with the doubt and the unbelief in one of his disciples.
It is instructive to us to notice how Jesus dealt with doubt in one of his followers. Now it's instructive because we will find that Jesus deals with us often in the same way. In the first place, Jesus allows Thomas to feel the pain of his doubt. Jesus could have appeared to Thomas wherever he was the week before. On Monday of that week, Jesus could have come to Thomas wherever he might have been and said, Thomas, here I am. But he didn't.
He let Thomas experience the pain of his doubt for a whole week. So that Thomas would understand the misery that comes when we doubt God. The painful results of doubt include these. First of all, it disrupts the balance of life. When you and I doubt, it agitates and upsets us inside. It churns our hearts. It throws off the sense of equilibrium that we have. It unsettles us. It disrupts the balance of our lives. That's painful because most of us like to have some sense of balance.
But there's nothing like doubt to throw us off balance. Secondly, doubt consumes our reserves of strength. When we question God, when we doubt, when we enter into unbelief as Christians, that doubt and unbelief sucks us dry of the inner stamina and the energy and the vigor that we need for the demands of a world like ours. Doubt gnaws away at the vitality of the soul. Thirdly, doubt removes us from fellowship with God. Thomas doubted.
He was not in fellowship with the Lord this whole period of time from the crucifixion on. It consumed his energy. It threw him off balance and it removed him from fellowship with God. You see, God responds to faith, not doubt. That's why the writer says, he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Doubt does not lead us into fellowship with God. That leads us the other direction.
That's why Jesus commanded Thomas, be not unbelieving, but believing. I love the Psalms of David because David is a man who is so transparent. He is not afraid, he is not ashamed to tell us exactly what he's experiencing. Many of the Psalms are that way. One of them is Psalm 73. In Psalm 73, Asaph shares with us a struggle of doubt in his soul. He looks about him and he knows that God is good to Israel, but he confesses that he himself was close to stumbling.
The reason was that he envied the arrogant and the wicked rich. He could not understand why the wicked prospered. He, seeking to be a righteous man, had so little. Now, none of us ever have a doubt about that, do we? We never wonder why the rich, why the wicked prosper and why those who are righteous seem to have so little. But here's a man who did. So bear with him, will you, as he expresses his doubt.
He talks about the pain that was inside of him because of his doubts, the price that it exacted. He says in verse 13, in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence, for I have been stricken all day long and chastened every morning. He talks about the experience of his doubt. If I had said, I will speak thus, behold I should have betrayed the generation of thy children. He was careful how he expressed his doubt.
But he says in verse 16, when I pondered to understand this dilemma, this doubt of mine, the word pondered here is a word that you accountants would appreciate. It means to put all the figures in a row to draw the line and to add them up. Asaph says I have calculated the whole thing. I've summed it up in my mind. Or it's a word that you ladies who like to knit would appreciate because this was the idea of a weaver who would take threads and strands and weave them together to form cloth.
He is saying I'm weaving together, I'm pondering in my mind the fabric of this doubt. He says it was troublesome in my sight. All that word troublesome means it was heavy. It resulted in labor to his mind that produced distress in his heart. He was weary with it. Then he says in verse 17, until I came into the sanctuary of God. Then he says, then I perceived their end. What happened was Asaph got into the presence of God just like Thomas did. And suddenly he gained perspective.
And that doubt that he had as to why the wicked seemed to prosper and the godly had little was all put into balance in his life and it was settled. When he saw the destiny of the wicked, that their life is brief and that they go to hell, he concludes by saying how much better to be a righteous man. Verse 21 he says, when my heart was embittered and I was pierced within, then I was senseless and ignorant. I was like a beast before you.
These are poetic words describing the cost of doubt, the pain of it all. And that's my point here. That God allows us to feel the pain of our doubts so that we are brought back to himself having learned some important lessons. So how does God deal with our doubt? He does the same thing with us as he did with Asaph and as he did with Thomas in John chapter 20. First of all, he allows us to experience the pain. The misery that we bring on ourselves by our doubts.
Secondly, he confronts directly the presence of doubt. Do you notice here that Jesus entered into the room, he spoke that shalom alechem, I sang that for you last week, I will not do it this week. I will spare you. He said peace be with you and then immediately he focused on Thomas and he said to Thomas some very familiar words. Reach here your fingers, see my hands, reach here your hand, put it into my side. Jesus knew exactly what Thomas had said in his unbelief. Jesus had heard those words.
It was days before this apparently when he expressed his unbelief. And yet Jesus comes to this room at his time and directly confronts the unbelief and the doubt in Thomas. Thomas' response is not to reach out and touch him apparently, but he simply blurt out a confession of faith that is the climax of the whole Gospel of John. And he says my Lord and my God. John in this Gospel traces two strands of response to Jesus.
He traces the response of unbelief chapter by chapter and it culminates with the cross when Jesus was rejected by his own to whom he came. And then he also traces the response of belief and it climaxes with this statement of Thomas. This is the pinnacle of the Gospel of John, these simple words, but profound. When Thomas says my Lord and my God. Why was Jesus so concerned about Thomas' unbelief? First of all Jesus knew the pain that the doubt was producing.
Jesus wanted Thomas to know the same shalom, the same peace that the other disciples had experienced a week before this. Jesus didn't want Thomas to be miserable. He wanted Thomas to have peace and that's why he directly confronted the unbelief of this man. Secondly he knew the prison that the doubt would create in Thomas, that would keep Thomas from enjoying his fellowship with the resurrected Lord. It had for eight days.
Jesus knew that that prison would only enhance the misery of Thomas and so he directly confronts the doubt. Not only did he know the pain in the prison of doubt but he knew the potential in Thomas. He knew what was planned for Thomas. Thomas was one of the disciples, the apostles, who was to go into all the world and preach the Gospel and tradition tells us he did. That he took the Gospel to the east, into India, before he died.
Jesus knew that that potential in Thomas' life would never be reached if that doubt wasn't settled. He wanted him to have the experience and the joy of God's will and God's purpose in his life and so Jesus directly confronted the doubt. I want to tell you something, Jesus will directly confront the doubt in my life and your life too for the very same reasons. He doesn't want us to be in pain. He wants to free us from the prison of our questions and doubts.
He knows the potential that God has placed into our lives and he wants us to experience it. So he will not allow any of us to wallow in spiritual doubt without confronting us. Now we can continue in our doubts. We can go on and experience the pain. We can become more miserable. We can make the prison cell even tighter if we want to. We can miss the potential of doing what God wants us to do in the world if we choose.
But we can't do it without Jesus confronting our doubts and unbelief that moves us in that wrong direction. He will confront them. He confronts them sometimes with other believers. He did with Thomas. The disciples kept on saying to Thomas, we have seen the Lord Thomas. He's alive. We really have. He appeared to us. He ate with us. We saw him. Thomas refused that confrontation that Jesus brought from the other disciples. He continued on in his unbelief.
So Jesus confronted him with circumstances as he confronts us with circumstances sometimes to answer our doubts, to confront our doubts. In this case, he appeared to Thomas. That was the circumstance he brought. He appeared to Thomas right there in the room. And then thirdly, Jesus will confront our doubts as he did with Thomas by the Word. By the Word of God. In Thomas' case, Jesus spoke it personally to him and said to him, here, reach out and touch my hands. Put your hand into my side.
And stop being an unbeliever, Thomas, but believe. Jesus confronts directly the presence of doubt in our lives. He may do that through other people that he sends to us. He may do that through the circumstances that he brings into our lives. He may use the Word of God directly to speak to us, but he will always confront doubt because of the damage that it does to us. And finally, Jesus shows to us here the provision for doubt. What's the provision that he makes for doubt? It is this.
We have a trustworthy revelation in which to place our faith. Now in Thomas' case, that revelation was his physical appearance in his glorified body. In our case, it is this book, this trustworthy revelation of God that you and I have, which is even better than an appearance of Jesus Christ. The provision that he has made for doubt is a trustworthy revelation. Our belief can be and must be based upon a credible source. For us, it is this inspired word, including the Gospel of John.
And notice that John says, I have written all of these things down so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, that he is the Son of God. And that believing this credible source, what I've written, you may have life in his name. You and I can feed our faith from this book. And if you and I will feed our faith from God's revelation, it will starve our doubts to death.
So very often when we are overcome with doubt, it's because we've been away from the book, because this book is God's provision for doubt. And notice there's special blessing spoken here to those who, like us, believe without a visible demonstration of Jesus' presence. In fact, there's a beatitude often overlooked in verse 29. Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed. Now I don't think that that is so much a rebuke of Thomas as it is a promise to all of us.
A promise that there is special blessing when we believe without having to have some miracle, some visible demonstration of God in our midst. When we just believe. Now of course Peter picks up on this theme, doesn't he, when he talks about the fact that we have believed without seeing and therefore we have a joy that is inexpressible. Blessed, said Jesus, are those who believe without seeing.
But doubt is a common experience to all of us and it's not always bad, especially when you're dealing with human beings and human institutions. But the place that we allow doubt in our lives must be limited. Because doubt does not save the soul, only faith saves. Neither does doubt bring the believer joy. It is faith that brings joy. Someone has written these lines. I worry, I putter, I push and shove, hunting little mole hills to make mountains of. You ever feel that way?
You ever practice that? We need to be aware that the mole hills of doubt in our lives do not become mountains. And we do that by facing our doubts. Doubting God destroys our equilibrium. It eats away at our spiritual energy. It disengages us from fellowship with our Lord. It makes us miserable people. One person said, doubt is hell in the human soul. Doubt of God is to be confronted in our lives. It's to be repented of before it develops into outright unbelief.
And even if all of our questions are not answered, we must, like Thomas, be not unbelieving, but believing. And like Thomas, acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord and God. John Greenleaf Whittier captured faith this way. Nothing before, nothing behind, the steps of faith fall on the seeming void and find the rock beneath. Because of doubt in your life, it may seem like there is nothing but void. But if your trust is in God, you can put your foot out there and it will be solid. It will hold you.
And so, as the risen King met Thomas on that Sunday evening 2,000 years ago, he meets you this day at the point of your need and your doubts. That you, like Thomas, can fall on your knees and adore your Lord and your God. Or you can continue on in the misery and the pain of your doubts. But why would you do that?
How much better to settle the doubts, to step out of the pain, to step out of your self-imposed jail, to cease your spiritual wandering, and to experience the joy and renewed believing fellowship with the King. I want to challenge you to bring your doubts to Jesus Christ. To behold Him as the victor, as the conqueror of sin and of death. To behold Him as the risen King who is sovereign over all.
To bring your doubts and to lay them at His feet and leave them there and say, as a confession of your heart, Jesus Christ, you are my Lord and you are my God. I leave my doubts at your feet and I trust you. Let's pray. Are you today struggling with doubt? Will you do what Thomas did? Will you follow this blessed pattern as Jesus today confronts you with those doubts? He says to you, as it were, reach out and touch. See that I am alive.
See that I am the risen King who is sovereign over all of those things that you're doubting about. And stop doubting and believe. Perhaps you need to believe on Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior to receive Him into your life, to save you from your sin. You've had doubts that have kept you away. I want to challenge you today to put the doubts away, to step out and say, Jesus Christ, I believe in you and I receive you into my life as my Lord and Savior.
And as a Christian, whatever the source of your doubts may be, will you join Thomas in this glad confession that He is your Lord, He is your God, and put your doubts away. If you fall into one of those categories and you are today willing to confront the doubts, to give them over to Jesus Christ, would you by your hand indicate that? Just lift it up. Say I've been struggling with doubt. Yes, God bless several of you already.
I've been struggling with doubt, but I'm bringing my doubts to the risen King. I'm going to put them at His feet. Anyone else? Yes, God bless you, sir. Yes, thank you. Yes, God bless you. Yes. I'm bringing my doubts to the Lord this morning. I don't want to be imprisoned by them anymore. I don't want the pain. I want to be free. I want to have peace in my heart. Lord Jesus, you see these hands, every one of them, and you know the hearts.
And oh, I pray for these friends who are here, many of them brothers and sisters in your family, that they may today step out from their unbelief, from the doubts. And that very simple transaction of the heart, cry out in faith with Thomas. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.