Full sermon follows the handout version. Dealing With Your Deepest Needs
DEALING WITH DOUBT
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John 20:24-29
I. Doubt defines our age.
A. Old authorities and truths are questioned, if not disparaged.
B. Thomas is not the only one who has doubted.
II. Why some people doubt God's existence.
A. The competing views about God cancel each other out.
B. Competition from science and rationalism.
III. Why some people doubt God's character.
A. Existence of suffering and evil.
B. Is the problem due to God, or the shallowness of our faith?
IV. Not certainty but confidence.
A. Christians are not stupid.
B. Not proof, but evidence.
V. Doubt can have its benefits.
A. It teaches us what a comfortable life cannot.
B. The answer to doubt is faith.
C. Do you have a real, tested faith?
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Rev. David Holwick D Dealing With Your Deepest Needs
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
January 23, 2011
John 20:24-29
DEALING WITH DOUBT
I. Doubt defines our age.
A. Old authorities and truths are questioned, if not disparaged.
1) The $404,000 letter.
In January 1954, one of New Jersey's most famous citizens
wrote a letter to a philosopher.
Albert Einstein only had a year to live, and in this letter
he gave some of his conclusions about religion.
He wrote, "the word 'God' is for me nothing more than the
expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a
collection of honorable but still primitive legends
which are nevertheless pretty childish."
Two years ago the letter was sold.
The auctioneer called it an extraordinary letter and said
it seemed to strike a chord, since Einstein was one of
the greatest minds of the 20th century.
It sold $404,000 -- 25 times what they thought it would be
worth. #35343
2) Most of you are not an Einstein.
Perhaps you are more like former First Lady Laura Bush,
who as a teenager lost her faith after running through
a stop sign and killing a 17-year-old classmate.
Or the tragic Elizabeth Edwards, who lost a son in a car
accident, got cancer, then found her husband was cheating
on her while running for Vice President.
Raised a Methodist, in her final farewell she did not
mention God, but only "a faith in the power of resilience
and hope."
Earlier she had said, "I do not have an intervening God.
I don't think I can pray to him to cure me of cancer."
#62953
B. Thomas is not the only one who has doubted.
1) Any thinking Christian is going to have questions.
a) The Bible says God's thoughts are not our thoughts -
our feeble minds cannot grasp God's plan.
b) Many of the people in the Bible struggled with
reconciling what was happening to them with the
image of God they had been brought up to believe.
2) Can a thinking person believe in God?
II. Why some people doubt God's existence.
A. The competing views about God cancel each other out.
1) Christianity is certainly not the only game in town.
a) 5,000 British converted to Islam last year.
b) Eastern religious practices like yoga and meditation
are gaining in popularity here.
My daughter Sarah's Facebook page showed her
snuggling up to a guy, whose name was listed.
I googled him.
It turns out he is a yoga instructor.
My daughter is going to marry a heretic!
But then I found a page that says he is engaged.
She is going to marry a two-timing heretic!
2) All these religions contradict each other.
a) They cannot all be right.
b) Most of them even have contradictions within their own
scriptures (religious books).
Stephen F. Roberts has a popular quotation:
"I contend that we are both atheists.
I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
When you understand why you dismiss all the other
possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss
yours." [1]
B. Competition from science and rationalism.
1) Many people, like Einstein, think science is the best
way to establish what is true.
a) Modern medicine works better than prayer.
b) Evolution makes more sense than a divine creation.
2) The universe isn't designed very well.
a) Diseases are programmed into us, humans have many
limitations, catastrophes regularly happen.
b) If there is a God, wouldn't he have done a better job
creating everything?
3) Christians should have a high respect for science.
a) We believe the principles of science are based on the
Judeo-Christian worldview.
b) But we argue science cannot answer everything.
c) It is limited to what can be observed and tested.
III. Why some people doubt God's character.
A. Existence of suffering and evil.
1) These are the kind of doubts that Laura Bush and Elizabeth
Edwards had.
2) Sometimes God doesn't seem that good.
3) Many of us have had religious disappointments.
a) Prayers that weren't answered.
b) Good people who suffer and evil people who don't.
B. Is the problem due to God, or the shallowness of our faith?
Commenting on an Army chaplain who had almost lost his faith
after he was immersed in the trauma of the Iraq war,
Felice Sage made this comment:
"While one can only sympathize deeply with chaplains for
the horrors they have endured,
it's puzzling that it comes as an unwelcome surprise to any
adult that terrible things happen all the time to people
no worse than themselves....
Hasn't that always been obvious?
Genocide is committed, little children die of starvation,
people are tortured and maimed, and killed in wars.
None of this is new nor have these things happened only to
bad people.
Why then should those who have had no trouble maintaining
their faith question it only when they see such things
happen close to them?
Did they suppose that all those other suffering people
weren't deserving enough or praying hard enough or not
praying in the correct religion?
Did they believe in a God who would allow such things to
happen to millions but never to them because they had
chosen the right spiritual formula?
If that's the sort of nonsense they are losing faith in,
it's hard to see that as a bad thing."
#34488
IV. Not certainty but confidence.
A. Christians are not stupid.
1) We believe unusual things but so does everyone else.
2) Scientists believe weird things too.
Pinch yourself. (If you are related to the person next
to you, pinch them too.)
What you feel is flesh, which is made of chemicals, which
are molecules composed of atoms.
Atoms have protons and neutrons and electrons and all that
stuff you learned about in high school.
But did they tell you that ordinary matter and energy,
the stuff we can see and measure, make up only 2% of
the universe?
According to the latest estimates, dark energy makes up
75 percent of the universe and dark matter accounts
for another 23 percent.
They know it is there, but they have no idea what it is.
Christians aren't the only ones who believe in things we
can't see.
B. Not proof, but evidence.
1) Many people want their beliefs backed up.
a) Thomas was this kind of person.
b) He did not believe something just because other people
made a claim.
1> He wanted to see for himself.
2> The way we would put it, is that he wanted evidence.
c) Is there evidence for God?
2) We cannot prove God.
a) There are no arguments that would force you to believe.
b) In the same way, atheists cannot disprove him.
3) However, we have evidence to back up our belief.
a) The incredible design of the universe.
b) Personal testimonies of people who believe in God,
even miracles.
c) The necessity of having an absolute basis for human
morality and ethics, rather than one we make up.
d) We are not alone. Although others have different
views about God, the majority of people in the
world believe he exists.
V. Doubt can have its benefits.
A. It teaches us what a comfortable life cannot.
1) Mother Teresa's doubts.
A few years ago it was revealed that even Mother Teresa
was almost overwhelmed by doubts.
She confessed to a spiritual adviser that within her heart
"the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look
and do not see, listen and do not hear."
In one of her letters, addressed to Jesus, she wrote,
"So many unanswered questions live within me...
If there be a God -- please forgive me...
I am told that God loves me, and yet the reality of
darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that
nothing touches my soul."
#34771
Atheists loved his.
Christopher Hitches wrote that she must have realized that
"religion is a human fabrication."
2) The Dark Night of the Soul.
Charles Colson notes that what Mother Teresa experienced
was described by John of the Cross in the 1500s.
John was a priest who faced a lot of conflict and suffering
in his life, but it led him to a deep passion for God.
He called his famous book "THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL."
It is about having times of darkness and dryness in the
spiritual life.
John's view was that the dry seasons teach us about our own
powerlessness and our own need for complete reliance on
Christ.
It is like Jesus on the cross, feeling forsaken but still
calling out to God.
It's the shallow faith, the kind that focuses only on our
own happiness, that can't last.
The times of darkness, the dark nights of the soul,
ultimately serve to make our faith stronger and deeper.
#35985
B. The answer to doubt is faith.
Paul de Vries had a crisis of doubt when he was 19 years old.
He was so involved in his church they made him chairman of
evangelism.
Bear in mind that this church had over 2,000 members.
He did all he could to bring people to Christ.
But something began to bug him.
It struck him that they could continue to do their church
work, preach, try to obey the Scriptures, and even win
people to Christ, whether or not Christ was in their
enterprise at all.
His problem was that he did not experience the living Christ.
When witnessing to people, he claimed that he had this
personal awareness of Christ's presence.
But he lied. It wasn't there.
He also began to doubt whether anyone he knew had the personal
relationship to Christ that they all professed.
19-year-old De Vries decided to right to the top.
He made an appointment with the senior pastor and explained
his problem.
However, before the pastor had the chance to counsel him, Paul
wanted to know if the pastor had what Paul lacked.
He looked the pastor in the eye and asked him if he had the
personal experience of Christ that he preached.
The pastor swallowed and quietly admitted, "No."
To me, that would be pretty depressing.
But to Paul, the doubts gave him hope.
He doubted that this formal profession of faith was all God
had for him.
He sincerely hoped that there was more.
Still believing the Bible, he asked questions.
Strangely, he would not have asked, knocked, or even sought,
if he had not doubted.
Professing what we do not have, and promoting what we do not
know is a deceitful form of unbelief.
It is deadly, but also amazingly attractive.
Our lives are perfectly under our own control.
But it makes us miss the incomparable power of God's presence
and the authentic light of his truth.
#897
C. Do you have a real, tested faith?
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
[1] For the history of this quote go to <http://freelink.wildlink.com/
quote_history.php>
# 897 “The Death Sin - Unbelief and Doubt,” by Paul De Vries,
Christianity Today magazine, August 29, 1993, page 22.
#34488 “A Chaplain Who Hated God,” by Eve Conant, Newsweek Magazine;
article: Faith Under Fire, May 7, 2007, page 26. The letter
to the editor was written by Felice Sage of Littleton, Colorado.
#34771 “Mother Teresa’s Dark Night of the Soul,” by Dinesh D’Souza,
<http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/bloggers/dinesh-dsouza>,
August 24, 2007.
#35343 “Einstein Letter Sells For $404,000,” America Online, Associated
Press, May 16, 2008.
#35985 “The Dark Night Of The Soul: What Makes Faith Real,” by Charles
Colson, BreakPoint Commentary, August 28, 2009.
#62953 “Why Elizabeth Edwards Left God Out of Her Last Goodbye,” by
David Gibson, <http://www.politicsdaily.com>, December 9, 2010.
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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