Triumph Over Doubt

‘I wish I had your faith.’ I wonder if anyone has said that to you? Someone who doesn’t yet believe in Jesus – but would like to. Well, the part of the Bible we’re about to look at will help us to help people like that. But it may be that you are one of those people. You look around at others here and you think to yourself, ‘I wish I had their faith.’ Well, the part of the Bible we’re about to look at explains how they got their faith and how you can, too. But even Christians find themselves saying this. We look round at other Christians who seem more confident of what they believe and think to ourselves, ‘I wish I had their faith.’ Well, the part of the Bible we’re about to look at explains how faith can be strengthened, too.

So would you turn to John 20.

In the past couple of weeks we’ve been looking at John’s record of the first Easter. John 19 records Jesus’ death and burial on Good Friday. Then John 20 records the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. On the Sunday, his tomb is found empty (20.1-9). That by itself doesn’t prove anything – after all, bodies go missing (ask the NHS). What proves a resurrection is what happened next. As we saw last week, Jesus appeared alive again. Look back to v19:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" After he said this, he showed them his hands and side [ie, the wounds from his death by crucifixion]. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Only one of them was missing, which is where we come in tonight, v24:

Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve [ie, the 12 eye-witnesses Jesus chose to be with him – see Mark 3.13-19], 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.

Which brings us to my first heading:

Firstly, WHY WE FIND IT HARD TO BELIEVE (vv24-26)

The Christian message isn’t easy to believe. And we don’t do anyone any favours by pretending that it is. I mean, if I asked, ‘Do you believe the sun’s going to rise tomorrow?’ you’d say, ‘Yes.’ It’s easy to believe. But if I ask, ‘Do you believe Jesus rose from the dead?’ - that’s harder to believe. Some of us here would say, ‘No – I find that too hard to believe.’ And many of us who say ‘Yes’ would add, if we’re honest, that we did struggle coming to believe it and still sometimes struggle now to believe it - and other parts of the gospel.

So why did Thomas find this part of the gospel – Jesus’ resurrection - hard to believe? The main reason is: it was completely outside his experience and therefore his expectations.

Eg, when you opened the curtains this morning, to let in that wonderful stream of grey, you didn’t rock back on your heels and say, ‘Wow! The sun’s risen! I can hardly believe my eyes!’ It’s so much part of our experience, we expect it. The sun rises. And by the same working, the dead stay dead.

I’ve told before the story of a friend called Paul - how he once looked after the neighbours’ many pets while they were away. And the first day, Paul went round to feed them - and he took his dog with him for a walk. And he’d done all the indoors pets like the goldfish and was just coming out to do the rabbit when he saw the dog with the rabbit in its mouth, looking very dead. So Paul thinks ‘What am I going to do? Confess, or cover up?’ And he went for cover up. He decided to find a replacement. Thankfully it was black, so it wasn’t like it had any distinctive markings. So he trailed round various pet shops until he found a reasonable match; bought it, and popped it in the hutch. The day after the neighbours got back, they phoned him - the call he’d been dreading. So he said, ‘Hi! I hope the pets are OK.’ And they said, ‘They’re fine, thanks. We just wanted to ask about the rabbit. (Paul’s heart sinks.) We were just a bit surprised when we found it in the hutch. (Paul wishes he’d chosen more carefully.) It’s just that it died the night before we went away, and the kids insisted we bury it at the bottom of the garden… and we’re trying to explain to them how come Sootie’s back in his hutch and there’s only an empty hole at the bottom of the garden.’

And you can see their point. All experience says dead rabbits stay dead. (Although dogs will be dogs and dig them up again.) And all experience says dead people stay dead. Which is why Thomas finds it hard to believe when, v25, ‘…the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"

We all have what people call a ‘world-view’. Our world-view is the picture in our heads of how the world is. And it’s built up from all our experiences. So we’ve all experienced the sun rising enough that it’s become part of our world-view: the sun rises. And we’ve all experienced the finality of death enough that it, too, has become part of our world-view: the dead stay dead.

So what do we do when some eye-witnesses say there’s been an exception? When there’s a clash between world-view and witness. Well, either we let the witness of the Bible challenge our current world-view – we’re open to the possibility that this did really happen, in which case our world-view needs expanding. Or we let our current world-view dismiss the witness of the Bible. We say, ‘This cannot have happened (because my world-view doesn’t allow it to have happened), therefore it didn’t happen.’

So coming back to Thomas: he had every reason to trust the witnesses – he’d spent the last 3 years with them. His problem was his world-view. Which left him saying, v25:

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.

So what? Well, if you’re not yet a believer but investigating, don’t be surprised when you find the gospel hard to come to terms with. Because what you’re trying to come to terms with is God, and the fact that you’ve built a world-view on your tiny experience and left God out of it. And if you’re a believer struggling to believe some area of the gospel – maybe miracles, maybe how God can allow suffering – don’t be surprised. Because we don’t come to terms with God the moment we come to faith. In fact, we don’t come to terms with God in a lifetime. The Christian life is one long process of getting to know him better and having our world-view progressively demolished and rebuilt. Either way, be patient. It takes time. And it’s not comfortable.

That’s the first thing. Why we find it hard to believe.

Second, HOW ONE UNBELIEVER CAME TO BELIEVE (vv26-28)

Verse 26:

A week later his 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!

What can we learn from how this unbeliever came to believe?

• Notice for a start that faith rests on evidence outside of us.

Look at v27 again:

Then [the risen Jesus] said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.”

Our culture thinks that beliefs are basically subjective – ie, they just pop up inside you, without reference to anything outside you – anything objective. So, if I say, ‘I believe in God,’ our culture thinks that belief has just popped up inside me – maybe because I’m the ‘religious type’, or psychologically unbalanced, or needy in some way. When I say, ‘I believe in God’ the culture thinks it’s just like saying, ‘I believe in fairies’. It’s a purely subjective belief with no objective evidence.

But that’s not what Christian faith is. Christian faith rests on evidence outside us. Look at v28. When Thomas came to believe that Jesus was his rightful Lord and God, it wasn’t a belief that just popped up inside him. He didn’t just suddenly ‘feel’ that’s who Jesus must be. It was a belief that rested on evidence outside him, staring him in the face and saying, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.”

Now why is that important? Well, if you’re not yet a believer, it’s important because you may think that having faith is like having perfect pitch - you either have it or you don’t, and you end up feeling fatalistic about it. But it’s not like that. Faith rests on evidence outside us, and faith comes about as we look at that evidence by reading the Bible. So if you’re saying, I’d like to believe’, don’t wait around passively waiting for faith to just pop up inside you. It doesn’t work like that. Be active and read the Bible – start with one of the Gospels – read it and keep asking yourself, ‘Do I believe this? If not, why not?’ Try to identify your doubts and questions and look for answers to them.

But it’s also important if you’re already a believer. You see, what do we do when we wake up and don’t feel like being Christian today? (Or is that just a problem unique to me?) Don’t feel God is there, don’t feel God is real. Don’t feel like reading the Bible or praying or going out to live for him today. That’s when we need to remember our faith rests on evidence outside of us. Our feelings may be flat for all sorts of reasons – but how I feel today doesn’t change the fact that 2,000 years ago Jesus walked this earth, said the things he said, did the things he did, died and rose again and is in fact alive and present with me even if I don’t ‘feel’ it right now.

So, faith rests on evidence outside of us.

• But then notice that faith is an act of the will.

Look at the end of v27 again. Jesus says:

“Stop doubting and believe.”

That’s not a great translation – literally it’s much stronger. Literally it reads, ‘Don’t be an unbeliever; rather, be a believer.’

Now don’t you think that’s a bit of an unnecessary thing for Jesus to say? I mean, there he is, risen from the dead, standing in front of Thomas, showing him the very wounds they’d seen inflicted 3 days earlier on the cross. Surely the evidence will make Thomas believe. And yet Jesus issues him a command: ‘Don’t be an unbeliever; rather, be a believer.’

Ie, ‘Exercise your will’. Faith does rest on evidence outside of us. But the evidence doesn’t ‘make’ faith happen. The Bible doesn’t ‘make’ faith happen. I can’t ‘make’ faith happen for you as a preacher. Faith isn’t something that happens to you, it’s something you do, something I do. It’s an act of the will. It’s a choice.

And that’s important. If you’re not yet a believer, but coming on Sundays, or you join our Christianity Explored course, or you read a Christian book for inquirers – those things won’t ‘make’ you believe. Now in one way, that’s a relief – it means you can be sure that Christians are not out to brainwash you or pressurise you, because they’re convinced that faith can only be a free act of your own will, a free choice. All Christians can do, and all they want to do, is to help you get to know about the person you’ve got to make the choice about – namely, Jesus.

But at the end of the day, once we’ve read and thought and asked our questions and got enough information, there comes the point where Jesus says to us, ‘Don’t be an unbeliever; rather, be a believer.’ The time comes where we have to choose. We have to decide.

And it’s really helpful the way Jesus puts it: ‘Don’t be an unbeliever; rather, be a believer.’ Ie, you’re one or the other. There’s no middle ground called ‘thinking about it’ If you’re thinking about it, you’re thinking about it on the ground of still being an unbeliever. And Jesus says: is that what you still want to be? Can you really go on being an unbeliever, living on the belief that he is definitely not Lord and God, now that you know what you know? Perhaps once you could ignore Jesus in ignorance, but now you know too much. And to go on being an unbeliever now, you’ve got to prove to yourself that he didn’t rise from the dead, and that the Gospels you’ve been reading are not true - and so on. One autobiography of someone close to believing put it like this:

Christianity – in a word, the divinity of Jesus – seemed probable to me. But there is a gap between the probable and the proved. How was I to cross it?… One day later there came the… breakthrough: it was the rather chilling realisation that I could not go back…. I had regarded Christianity as a sort of fairy tale; and I had neither accepted nor rejected Jesus, since I had never, in fact, encountered Him. Now I had. The position was not, as I had been comfortably thinking all these months, merely a question of whether I was to accept the Messiah or not. It was a question of whether I was to accept Him – or reject… There was a gap behind me, too! (A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken)

Ie, he could not simply step back and undo the conclusions he’d reached about Jesus and the Bible, without acts of belief in the opposite direction – belief that it was all untrue.

I wonder if that describes the point you’re at? If so, Jesus says, ‘Don’t be an unbeliever; rather, be a believer.’ You may be able to take the step of trusting in him tonight – in which case, you could pick up a copy of this booklet Why Jesus?, and read it tonight and take action. Or you may need more information, more time, more questions answered. In which case, again, take action. Keep coming back. Join Christianity Explored. Above all, read the Gospels for yourself. Take action. Because faith, and coming to faith, is an act of the will.

And that’s important for Christians, too. If we’re stuck in doubt or a spiritual dry patch, we need to take action. Sit down – maybe with someone else – and work out what’s causing the doubts or the dryness. Then work out – again maybe with someone else – what to do about it.

And can I say: doubt is not the same as unbelief. That’s why the translation at the end of v27 is not helpful. Thomas wasn’t doubting, v27; he was unbelieving, v25 – ‘Unless… I will not believe.’ Doubt is different. Doubt is not when you say, ‘I don’t believe’, but when you say, ‘I believe, but I’m having difficulties believing.’ Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, it’s ill faith, struggling faith. And just like this side of heaven our obedience will always be imperfect – ie, we’ll disobey to some extent because we’re sinful – so this side of heaven our faith will always be imperfect – ie, we’ll doubt to some extent. So it’s not something to be ashamed of, or to hush up, when we hit faith-difficulties. It’s just like hitting obedience-difficulties: it’s normal; every Christian experiences it. Now I’m not saying that to be complacent: just like disobedience needs attention, so does doubt. I’m saying it because we often don’t talk about it and feel like it’s the unmentionable problem and we’re the only ones troubled by it. Not true. When you experience doubt, talk it through with another Christian, try to work out what the cause of the doubt is and how to tackle it. Take action. (For a good book on doubt – its causes and cure, see God In The Dark, Os Guinness, Hodder.)

So, faith rests on evidence outside of us. And faith is an act of the will. And that brings us to v28: Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" He’s looking at a man who 3 days earlier was killed on a cross. We don’t know what went through his mind. We don’t know whether or not he believed his own eyes to begin with – because not even your own eyes are always easily believable, are they? What we know is that, looking at this indestructible man and knowing that only God has indestructible life, he came for the first time to full-blown Christian faith. And he realised, like it says at the start of John’s Gospel, that Jesus was God become flesh (see John 1.1-2, 14):

Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!

And that’s the simplest definition of a Christian. A Christian is someone who says, ‘Jesus is my Ruler and my God,’ and who tries to live for him - albeit imperfectly. If you’re saying that and trying to live that - albeit imperfectly - you’re a Christian. If you’re not, you’re not. Not yet, anyway.

Verse 29:

Then Jesus told [Thomas], "Because you have seen me, you have believed…”

Which may leave us feeling, ‘Lucky old Thomas’. If only I’d been there and seen with my own eyes, believing would be so much easier.’ But Jesus immediately adds a word for those of us who weren’t there, and have to believe without seeing with our own eyes. Still in v29:

“… blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Ie, Jesus expects the rest of us to believe without seeing with our own eyes. Which brings us to the last heading:

Third, HOW WE CAN BELIEVE TODAY (vv30-31)

Jesus expects the rest of us to believe without seeing with our own eyes. And he’s made provision for that. Verse 30: 30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Jesus knew that we wouldn’t be there, wouldn’t hear his teaching with our own ears, wouldn’t see his miracles with our own eyes, wouldn’t see him die on the cross, wouldn’t see him buried, wouldn’t see his empty tomb, wouldn’t see him appear risen from the dead.

And yet you know about all those things. Many of you can visualise them accurately. Why? Because Jesus arranged for a group of official observers, the 12 apostles, to eye-witness it all and then pass the information on. This Gospel was written by one of them, and all the evidence points to it being by the apostle John.

So this Gospel was written by an eye-witness. It’s not like the game ‘Chinese Whispers’ where Tom saw it and told Dick who mentioned it to Harry who said something to Fred who passed it onto John who finally wrote something down that may or not bear any relation to what actually happened. This was written by an eye-witness. Which is the next best thing to being there yourself. In fact, it’s better. After all, if you’d been there, eg, you might have been in the crowd when Jesus miraculously fed the 5,000 (see John 6). But you’d almost certainly have been at the back and not realised what was really going on. And you’d almost certainly have missed everything else. Missed the conversation with Nicodemus about being born again (John 3.1-15) because you weren’t invited. Missed the resuscitation of Lazarus (John 11) because you didn’t live in Bethany. Missed the crucifixion because you weren’t in town early enough that day (John 19) Missed the empty tomb. Missed the appearance to Thomas (John 20).

Whereas we’ve got it all. All carefully selected, laid out and explained, so that we can come to faith like Thomas did - only not in quite the same way Thomas did. He believed by seeing the evidence in the flesh. We believe by reading the same evidence on paper.

So we’re at no disadvantage. I mean, if Jesus appeared in his risen body here and now at the centre microphone, clearly I would shut up and sit down. But would it be of any greater help to you than this account in John? Would you actually see any more evidence? The answer is: no. Which is why Jesus won’t appear like this again until he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

The big difference between us and Thomas is that whereas he only had to trust his own eyes, we have to trust John’s eyes and John’s writing. Now why we can trust the Gospels would be a separate sermon – and I’ve written a booklet on that, called Why Trust Them? which you can pick up from the Welcome Desk.

But to close, look at v30-31 one last time:

30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

From that, you could say that Christian faith has three strands:

• Strand one: we have to trust the book – the Bible

Now if you’re not yet a believer, that doesn’t mean you have to trust it from the outset. You can be, and almost certainly will be, as suspicious as you like to begin with - asking questions like, ‘Who wrote? When? Can they be trusted?’ (See Why Trust Them?) I came to faith in Jesus (strands two and three below) before I’d done much thinking about the trustworthiness of the Bible – I took that largely on trust and had to think and read about it later – because I hit doubts about it. And to have confidence in the Bible as a Christian, you may need to read a book, not just a booklet, on this. (Eg, The New Testament Documents – are they reliable? F. F. Bruce, IVP.) We have to trust the book. Then:

• Strand two: we have to ‘believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.’

Through the book, the evidence, we come to believe that certain things about Jesus are true - that Jesus was who he said he was. But Christian faith is more than just believing that certain things about Jesus are true. I mean, I believe that Victoria was Queen of England, but that doesn’t make me a Victorian (ie, it gives me no living experience of her). I certainly don’t have a relationship with her – she’s dead; she’s a figure of the past. Whereas Jesus is not. He’s risen from the dead, alive, and a figure of the present and the future. Which makes possible:

• Strand three: believing in Jesus

Verse 31 ends, ‘… and that by believing, you may have life in his name.’ And that ‘believing’ is not just ‘believing that…’, but ‘believing in’ Jesus: trusting him, praying to him, asking him for forgiveness (for the first or umpteenth time), asking him for the work of his Spirit in our lives to change us (for the first or umpteenth time), asking him to work through us in the lives of others. Believing in Jesus is ultimately a relational thing – just like marriage, where you live by trusting the promise and commitment of another person. So that a Christian can say he or she has actually experienced Jesus. So, when I speak to people who aren’t yet Christians I want to major on the primary evidence of the Bible – like the passage we’ve looked at tonight – the evidence ‘back then’. But we should also talk about our experience of Jesus, what he’s done for us, the difference he makes. Because that’s the evidence today.

Here’s the bottom line. Back then, Thomas and John could see Jesus.

Today, we can’t:

Jesus is back in heaven, we’re ‘down here’. And we can only relate to him and, through him, to his Father through the Bible. If I had no Bible, I would know, and could know, nothing of Jesus. Feelings wouldn’t reveal him to me; nor would mysticism or meditation; nor would my unaided thinking (rationalism). But put the Bible at the centre of our church and our lives, and read it and pray to the Lord Jesus and trust him and obey him in response, and you have a picture of what a living relationship with God, through Jesus, looks like.

‘I wish I had your faith.’ Well, that picture is what faith looks like. So let me end by asking a very simple question: which of those ingredients is missing in your life, or weakest in your life, and what are you going to do about it?