How to Overcome Doubt:
Thomas
(John 20:24-29)
1.
If even casually followed professional baseball in past
10 years, will recognize name Dave Dravecky.
He is a former pitcher for San Diego Padres and San Francisco
Giants. Dravecky developed cancer in
pitching arm. After two remarkable
comebacks, eventually he had to have his arm amputated. That was devastating experience and naturally
it raised many questions and doubts in his mind about God. But even during those dark days, Dravecky
remained a vibrant Christian openly sharing his faith and confidence in
God. He received letters from people all
over country. Most of the letters were
encouraging. Many asked for advice on
how to make it through difficult times.
But one day he received the following letter...
Dear Mr. Dravecky, If there is a God who
cares so much about you, why did he allow you to have the surgery in the first
place? I have lived 41 years in this old world and have yet to see any piece of
genuine evidence that there is anything real about any of those religious
beliefs you talk about. God certainly does not love me and has never done a
single thing to express that love for me. I have had to fight for everything I
ever got in life. Nobody cares about what happens to me and I don't care about
anybody else either. Can't you see the truth that religion is nothing more than
a crutch used by a lot of weaklings who can't face reality and that the church
is nothing but a bunch of hypocrites who care nothing for each other and whose
faith extends not to their actions or daily lives but is only just a bunch of
empty phrases spouted off to impress others?
How would you respond to a letter like
that? Here’s what Dravecky did. He wrote back telling the person that he knew
how he felt because he had faced the same doubts. He had wondered if God had abandoned him. He questioned if anyone cared. He feared his faith was just empty words. But then he said that when things seemed the
worst, Jesus was there..."I am convinced," Dravecky
wrote, "that there is a God. That no matter what happens to me, there is
a purpose for it and behind that purpose stands a loving, caring God.”
2. How does a person overcome doubt to arrive
at a faith like that?. That’s what we
are going to focus on in this study. Everyone
struggles with doubt to some degree or another.
Frederick Buechner wrote something that really speaks to me. He worte:: "Whether your faith is that there is a
God of that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either
kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are
the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving."
3. In
this session we are going to look at a person for whom faith was not
easy....this particular person was not by nature a person of faith...as matter
of fact, he was by nature a skeptic with rather pessimistic mind set...however,
was a person who through long process ended up with a solid faith....referring
to Thomas, who more often than not in Christian literature is referred to as
"doubting Thomas"....
4. Unfortunate think of Thomas in that way
because one of greatest affirmations of faith in entire Bible came from lips of
Thomas....but world has way of forgetting good done by a person and judging him
by one glaring mistake...certainly has happened to Thomas....want to look at
passage which demonstrates both the doubt and the faith of Thomas...(John 20:24‑29)....
T.S.
- Thomas was person who successfully moved from doubt to faith...from his
example want to share with you a couple
of thoughts about how to overcome doubt...
I To
overcome doubt we must not be afraid to acknowledge our doubt
1. I admire Thomas because he refused to pretend
to believe something he didn’t really believe...he made no claim to understand
something he did not understand...the other disciples had seen the resurrected
Lord...they accepted the fact of the resurrection...now they were trying to get
Thomas to believe...
2. The grammatical construction of v.25
indicates there was a real struggle going on between the other disciples and
Thomas...the tense of the verb translated “were saying” implies that the disciples were persistently
saying, they kept on saying...and Thomas was just as persistently replying that
he would not believe until he saw for himself what they had seen...
3. What want you see in that is that Thomas was not
afraid to acknowledge his doubt and he didn’t allow others to pressure him into
claiming to believe something he didn’t really believe...
1.
In Living
Above the Level of Mediocrity Chuck Swindoll describes interesting experiment
conducted by a psychologist...ten people were asked to look at three lines at
three different large sheets of paper...they were asked to raise their hands
when the group leader pointed to the longest line...unknown to one of the ten
group members, the other nine had been instructed to raise their hands not when
the teacher pointed to the longest line but the next longest line...amazingly,
75% of the time when that one person saw the group indicating that the second
longest line was really the longest, that person would say that line was
longest as well...the group pressure became more convincing than his/her own senses...[Swindoll,
Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p.225]
2.
And sometimes, those who are Christians, feel pressure from
others to suppress their doubts...they assume that everyone around them must
believe, so they too should believe...they end up pretending that their doubts
don’t exist...and they never deal with them and they never go away...want you
to know that you will never overcome doubt by ignoring it...
II. To
overcome doubt must learn to distinguish between honest doubt and dishonest
doubt
1.
Someone has said "doubt is either the agony
of an earnest soul or the trifling of some superficial fool."...and
it seems to me that whether doubt is “the agony of an earnest soul”
or the “trifling of a superficial fool” depends entirely on the
attitude of the doubter...some people are honest doubters and others or
dishonest doubters...now, what's the difference between the two, between honest
and dishonest doubt?....
2.
The dishonest doubter doesn't really want to know the
truth...not in process of trying to discover truth...likes things as are and
doesn't want change...Gaston Foote describes dishonest doubters this way: “There
are people who do not want to believe in God because they prefer a life of
ungodliness. Belief in God would only make them more uncomfortable. There are
those who doubt the virtue of others because they do not choose to be
virtuous. There are those who question
the honesty of [others] because they themselves prefer to live by dishonest
methods.” ...this kind doubter condemned by psalmist when wrote: "The
fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'"
3.
On other hand there are honest doubters...people
earnestly searching for and open to truth...people looking for evidence upon
which base their belief... while dishonest doubters look for reasons not to
believe, honest doubters searching for reasons to believe...
1.
Kind of doubter Thomas was...the doubt Thomas expressed
in v.25 was honest doubt... he basically
said, “When see what you saw...when
have evidence you had, I too will believe..."... really, when
think about it, no more skeptical than rest of disciples...just wanted to see
the evidence for himself...
2.
Important see Lord didn't condemn Thomas for that kind
of doubt...He welcomes the questions of those who are honestly seeking
Him...was true in case of —
--Nicodemus
who questioned how what Jesus told him could be true...
--John
Baptist who asked if was really Messiah or should look for another...
--Thomas
who had courage express doubts...
1.
Alfred Tennyson, the great poet, was devastated when
his friend, Arthur Hallam died...was so filled with grief and doubt about God, wrote no poetry at
all... finally after working his way through darkness of doubt, wrote one of
most outstanding poems, "In Memoriam"...one line in the
poem says this:
“There
lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe
me, than in half the creeds.”
2.
Starting point in moving from doubt to faith is
realizing that doubt, if it's honest doubt, is not bad...
III. To overcome doubt we must not let doubt
paralyze us
1.
Interesting thing about Thomas...even though wasn't
ready believe in resurrection like other disciples, didn't stop meeting with
them....v.26 tells us that eight days after refusing to believe, Thomas still
meeting with the group....
2.
See in that something significant...while couldn't
bring self to accept fact of resurrection, did continue doing what could
do....and because took that small step of faith, when Jesus appeared to them
again was there to see for himself....
1.
That's often way is with way of faith....more often
than not don't overcome doubt in one giant step...but through series of small
steps move from darkness of doubt to light of faith....as we have courage to
act on faith or insight we have, then it's God's way to provide more faith or
insight...
2. Do you remember a couple of years ago when
the streets were covered for days with a layer of ice…driving was to say the
least treacherous…during that time Carol’s
mom had a medical emergency and need to be taken to the hospital…didn’t know if
we could get her there but started off…made it end of our street…kept
going…didn’t look too far ahead…just went driveway by driveway and block by
block...found that by going step at time was able to reach destination...
3.
That’s how is in journey from doubt to faith...don’t
try to make it all at once...take the steps we can...cling to faith we
have...walk in light available to us and God gives us more light... and worse
thing can do in face of doubt is allow doubt to rob us of faith we have...to
respond to it by abandoning those things we do no doubt...
4.
Elie Wiesel tells
the story of a prophet who came to a city and delivered his message every day
in the marketplace...after a time his ranting became a fixture of the city's
life and people regarded him with amusement when they regarded him at all... a
small boy, pitying the old man, approached him and said, “Sir, why do you keep crying aloud like this every day, year after
year? The people here will never listen to you.” “I gave up hope that they would listen to me
a long time ago,” said the prophet. “I
go on crying lest I begin to listen to them.”
5. To overcome doubt we must cling to and act on
the faith that we have...
CONCLUSION
1.
In paragraph are two statements by Thomas...
--The
first in v.25 is statement of doubt..."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” --The second, in
v.28 is one of the greatest statements of faith in the entire Bible...said to
Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”
2.
How did Thomas move from doubt to faith?...the answer
is clear—
--first, he did not ignore his
doubts...didn’t pretend weren’t there..
--second,
he was an honest doubter....sincerely desired to know the truth...
--third,
had courage to act on insight he had....
3.
That's the way to overcome the doubts which I suspect
most, if not all, of us experience at sometime or another in our pilgrimage
through this world....
