Sunday 11 • 10 • 19

Reality is that we live in a culture that values doubt. And it's actually kind of cool and trendy to be a person who's always skeptical and always cynical. Dallas Willard says it this way: we have a culture that has for centuries now cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes. You can almost be stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

This passage tells us one of the main themes is that there is a person that's called a fool. And this is offensive to us. But the fool is a person who is willing to say, "I am the ultimate arbiter of all truth in the world." They multiply words and live in a fantasy world that's based on the world as they want it to be, unwilling to ask the hard questions.

As we think about what doubt is, all doubt presupposes some belief. What is the enemy to belief in your life? What is point A that you're evaluating point B by?

What is Faith?

You think you know. We're in church. We traffic in faith and belief. But the reality is we need to ask the question: what is it really? Because I think we don't really know. I think a lot of times we're very confused by this.

If you go to any college campus in America, you'll find students who come to our church. Take any religion class at almost any college in America, and the way professors describe faith or belief is a leap—a leap into the dark. They set up a false dichotomy between rational thought and this kind of blind faith.

Now here's the problem: a lot of you are the Pixar generation. You grew up on Arthur and DW, on TV and movies that feed you the idea that faith is just something you muster up in yourself and you just need to believe everything is possible. It's something within you, more about that active believing.

I want to challenge that biblically in two ways. There are two things I need to say really clear quickly about belief.

Belief is not a rash decision. It's not an irrational leap. It is trust. It's confidence. Here's how I define it: faith is confidence that rests on sufficient evidence. Let me give you an example. Every day in Raleigh, you drive on roads and cross bridges. I doubt most of you are civil engineers who have gone and evaluated those bridges. But you drive over them based on sufficient evidence and confidence in our Department of Transportation. You've driven over them over and over. You've seen other people drive over them. It's confidence based on sufficient evidence. Faith is never all rational, but it is not irrational. That's the first thing I want you to know.

Second, faith biblically is not so much about the act as it is the object. It's not so much about the act of believing. It's about the object that you are believing on.

Les Newsome, who's an RUF pastor, gives this example. Imagine a frozen lake. Two people are going to cross the frozen lake. The first person is bold, charges across, and gets to the other side. The second person is fearful, carefully testing each step, and also gets to the other side. You interview them and say, "What was it that got you across the ice?" Both of them say, "It was my faith." No. It has nothing to do with the strength of your faith. It has to do with the strength of the ice. The ice was solid. That's why you got across.

But we are so confused, especially Christians. We think that our faith is about our faith. We put our faith in our faith. Biblically, strong faith, weak faith—it doesn't matter. Saving faith is all about the object, not about the believing.

So if you're a person who really struggles with doubts, who really struggles with "Is this real?" You're testing this with the Christian faith all the time. And then you have friends who are charging across. Both of you will be saved. Not because of your relative convictions or fears, but because of the strength of the ice, the strength of the Savior. Strong faith, weak faith, and a strong Savior—it's about the Savior.

This is what Thomas does. This is what he does, and this is instructive for us. He works his way through his doubts. He names them.

In fact, this is kind of humorous, right? He's gathered with the other disciples, and Jesus has appeared to them. He came back with the groceries, right? He's like, "Wait, what happened? I missed it." And then he says the statement: "Unless I put my finger in the hands and my hand in the side, I'm not going to believe."

And this is what's so funny. The next time Jesus shows up—and it's not like Jesus met with the other disciples and heard what Thomas said, you know, like, "By the way, do you hear what Thomas is talking about?" He just shows up in the room again and Jesus immediately looks at Thomas and speaks to exactly what he said. "Here it is. Put your hand right here. Put your hand right here." Like, he immediately answers him.

And I think this is interesting: Thomas vocalizes his doubts. Thomas gives word to his doubts. And suddenly, when Thomas works through them, he's able to make the most clear profession of faith in the New Testament: "My Lord and my God."

Doubt and Faith

Tim Keller makes an interesting observation about doubt in church. In some conservative churches—if you grew up in conservative churches, many of them view doubt as a sin. And yet, the very presence of Ecclesiastes in your Bible challenges that, doesn't it? I mean, does it make us say like, surely God doesn't seem shaken by people asking hard questions. God doesn't seem upset by this.

Several years ago, I read a testimony of a man who had grown up in a conservative household. He'd gone off to college, taken some religion classes, and felt like his religion professor was kicking the foundation out from underneath him. And he was really struggling. So he goes back home to his church, talks to his pastor, and his pastor says, "You need to repent. You need to repent of your doubts. Get down on your knees right now." What a tragedy in his life. It took him years to recover from that.

Because the presence of doubt is not a statement—it's not an enemy to our faith. It's what we do with them. It's where we go with them. Honest intellectual emotional doubts shouldn't be condemned.

On the other hand, some of you are from liberal church backgrounds or traditions where it seems like the whole point is to always be in this place of doubting. Like, it's fine. Just camp out there. Everything's gray. There's no black and white. You're cool. Just be fine here. But the problem with that is that doubters—our doubts need to be challenged.

Notice what Jesus says to Thomas in this passage. He says to him, "Stop doubting and believe." He calls him to move through them, to move towards something.

So I recognize in a room this big, there are probably some of you who need to hear this this morning. Hey, you struggle with doubt and you need to know this: the Lord doesn't condemn you. He doesn't condemn you for those things.

Some of you though are in a place where you're like, "I love being in a place of doubt because to be honest, I really don't want to have to obey the Lord. I really don't want to have to be moved to a place of conviction where I'm actually called to live for Him." And you need to be challenged. It is not healthy just to stay there indefinitely. It's like camping in the middle of a highway. It doesn't work very well.

Three Steps to Belief

So how do you become a person who believes? Three things I want to show you from this passage. First, go into the house of God. Second, listen. Third, look at the wounds. Let's look at these together.

First, go into the house of God. Now Ecclesiastes 5—I've loved going through this book. It's such a challenging book in a lot of ways and it's sort of all over the place, but this section we read out loud here is kind of the turning point in the book. And I want you to notice the very simple thing that he says in verse one:

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. — Ecclesiastes 5:1

Not "guard your steps if you happen to go again to the house of God," but it's presuming you will continue to go. You will continue, even as a person who struggles with fears and doubts and skepticism, that you continue to show up. And this is really important for us.

He questions. He doubts. But he continues to go be with God's people. That is so different from what I find talking to a lot of people who are struggling. The tendency is to completely ghost the church in moments when you're struggling with doubts and fears. You're like, "They can't handle it here. I'm not showing up at community group again. They can't handle it here. I'm not going to raise these questions." So you disappear. You're like, "I'll just watch YouTube videos of Christopher Hitchens instead. That'll help."

The reality is that going and being with God's people—we see this in Thomas as well.

Thomas, who was not there when Jesus showed up. Thomas, who was like, I'm not going to believe it unless I stick my hands in the finger holes of his hands and his side. Thomas continues to go back to be with the other disciples. He continues to gather with them. That is so important. See, don't give up the fellowship of God's people. If you want to be a person who believes, if you want this, you continue to meet with the fellowship.

In his book Doubting Toward Faith, Bobby Conway writes that doubt is always directional. In other words, you can doubt toward God or you can doubt away from God. And our doubts can take us either direction. But he says this is what honest intellectual Christian doubt looks like. It's doubting toward God. It's continuing to wrestle, but also continuing to move toward Him. If you can't think of what to pray, pray like the great people who came before you. Ask for faith. Ask for reassurance. Ask for evidence.

See, Ecclesiastes continues to show that God honored His people bringing their questions. God honors the teacher who comes with his questions. God is honored by that. If Jesus could handle Kohelet's doubts, if he could handle Thomas's doubts, don't you think he can handle yours? Don't you think he's big enough for those things? Doubt toward him.

The Power of Listening

Second is this: listen. Again, this passage, five one through seven, I think is really a turning point in this book. Koheleth operates like an empiricist. It's all based on what he observes, what he sees. But in this passage, he says something really profound in verse one:

When you go guard your steps when you go into the house of God, to draw near, to listen. To listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools. — Ecclesiastes 5:1

He talks about talking too much. He says, you know what? You need to be quiet. There's a great theologian named Vanilla Ice who puts it this way: stop, collaborate, and listen. Right? Listening. This is profoundly biblical and so simple.

But Deuteronomy six, the great Shema, the call to worship, what does it start off with?

Hear, O Israel. — Deuteronomy 6

It's a call to listen. Jesus comes and shows up and says things like:

For him who has ears to hear, let him hear. — Matthew 11:15

This tells us something. There are limits to what you and your perspective, with your observations about the world, can understand. And the ear, not the eye, is the Christian's primary sense organ. Listening to what God has said. Listening to His interpretation of the world. Listen to what He values. Hearing is our main spiritual discipline.

If you merely just observe, if you give up listening to God and you merely just observe the world, where do you come out? The teacher's shown us it over and over again. Hevel. It's empty. It's meaningless. It looks like it's not going anywhere.

If we don't stop to listen, the Canadian Catholic philosopher of our day, Charles Taylor, says, you know, we're in a very secular age. And the reality of that is because we look at the world as an immanent frame—a world where there can't possibly be anything other than what I can see. But the great minds of the past—Pascal, C. S. Lewis, William James, Francis Bacon—are all people who have said there is a limit to what you can observe. Bacon says it this way:

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

In other words, there are things that you can't connect through what you see. There are things that you have to listen to. William James writes it this way:

There lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different from our rational empirical way of looking at the world.

So again, look at John 20. Jesus comes to Thomas with this odd statement:

Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe. — John 20:29

Isn't this bizarre? It's a weird one because Jesus says, hey, blessed are you. You don't have to be able to see to be a Christian. And then look at my wounds. He does this. And I've always scratched my head like, why does He do that? There's something going on here I want to show you.

Listen, when he says, blessed are those who do not see yet believe, he is talking about us. He's talking about the centuries and generations that would come after, who, like Thomas in this moment, are confronted with: will you believe? Will you believe?

The whole driving point of the book of John is verse 31:

These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in His name. — John 20:31

Thomas doesn't technically need to see anything in order to be a believer. In fact, Jesus shows him for a completely different purpose that's entirely different from where you sit. Thomas was one of the 12. He was called to be an apostle. Technically in the Bible, the definition of apostle is someone who has seen the resurrected Jesus. The apostles spent forty days with Jesus after the resurrection. They got empirical proof that He was raised from the dead. That's the whole purpose of the apostles. And Ephesians tells us all the teaching of the church is based on the apostles' testimony.

So here's Thomas. He's supposed to be one of the 12, but for an entire week, he has to only listen. He has to listen to the apostles' testimony about what they've seen and decide if he's going to believe it or not. In other words, he's just like you. For one week, Thomas' life was just like yours. Are you going to evaluate the testimony of the apostles and believe or not?

So here's the question: how can you, two millennia, two thousand years after this, how can you be a person who believes? Again, the question: will you listen to the apostles' teaching? As you wrestle with what it means to be a Christian, if you wrestle with your doubts, whether you call yourself a believer or not, hearing not seeing is the Christian's primary sense organ. Are you going to continue to listen?

One of the things I find over and over with people who say, "Yeah, I'm not sure I'm still a Christian. I'm wrestling with my faith," is that they've given up on this book, which is foolishness. Even if you're like, "I don't even get what you're talking about. I don't get what's in here"—one of my calls to you is if you're going to be a person with intellectual integrity and push through your doubts, you've got to be a person who's willing to listen to this book. God speaks through His word. This is the apostle's testimony to you. How are you doing with listening to it? Are you making this, even with the parts that are hard, part of the daily diet for you?

If you want to be a person who says, "Actually I really want to move through my doubts," you don't just watch YouTube videos. You give yourself to this book. You give yourself to this book.

See His Wounds

And finally: see His wounds. The center point of the Christian faith is not teaching. It's not obeying Jesus' teaching. It's believing in His resurrection. Let me show you this. Again, Thomas had spent three years with Jesus. Three years walking around place to place with him. Three years hearing the Sermon on the Mount and all the great teaching of Jesus. Jesus' teaching is incredible. But if Thomas only needed Jesus' teaching, he would not have needed this post-resurrection appearance from Jesus to him, where he calls him to believe.

The center point of the Christian faith is not just Jesus' teaching. A lot of people like to think, "Hey, maybe Jesus was this historical kind of folk philosopher who wandered around the Judean hillside. And later on, there are all these myths applied to him about resurrection." Well, what we see from this passage is very clear: the center point, the main point that Jesus calls him to, is not "follow my teaching," but "see my wounds. See my wounds."

And the fascinating thing is Jesus offers to him. He's like, "Hey, want to come stick your hands in here?" And Thomas does it. He's like, "I'm good. I'm good."

This is one of the things I want to call you to: the center point for you of the Christian faith. I know some of you really struggle. You read this book and you're like, "I don't know about Jonah's whale. I don't know about how the seven days of creation worked. I don't know about all these things that you seem to believe so fervently." But what I want to point to you is like the center point, the very high point of all this book is about the wounds and the resurrected Lord. And what it means to believe in Him is not to buy into an ism or a life philosophy. It's not signing on the dotted line for "do you agree with all these statements of faith?" It's "do you have a relationship with the living Lord Jesus Christ?"

We don't have an airtight philosophy for you to buy into. We have an airtight person. We have a living resurrected Jesus. And I want to invite you—for the first time, for the thousandth time, this morning—to lay aside some of your doubts and lay hold of him. He is the center point. And that's our confidence. He is the sure foundation. He's the bridge over which you can drive. He's the ice over which you can walk. He is the sure foundation. Let's go to Him together.

Father, I pray for myself and my brothers and sisters this morning. Lord, this world is confusing. Your word is at times hard to understand. We are riddled, many of us, with fears and doubts. We read things that confuse us. We're unsure. We thank you that the Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

And that our faith is not based on our conviction or our act of believing, but on the sure foundation of Jesus Christ. We pray that You would help those of us this morning who are feeling defeated, Lord, to recognize that doubt is not a threat to their faith, and they are not to be condemned. And Lord, for those who are too comfortable, I pray that You would motivate them to push through, to keep moving toward You and listening and coming and being a part of Your body and looking to the wounds and the resurrection. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Lord's Supper

The high point of our worship every week is responding to God's word by going to the table together. And I invite you to respond as we go using the liturgy here as we call each other to go to the Word Supper. Let me read the regular font, you can respond with the bold font.

In the past, God miraculously fed his people with manna from heaven. Jesus declared:

"I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day." — John 6:35, 54

Together. Where else can we go? Christ has given us the words of eternal life. He has nourished us with himself. He is the holy one of God. The holy one of God, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread and broke it and said, "This is my body broken for you." Took the cup after the supper and gave it to them and poured out. "This is the new promise in my blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins. Drink this all of you in remembrance of me."

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you this morning that you invite us to lay hold of Jesus. Lord, I pray, Father, as we come to this act of worship around the table that you would, as you promised, as you always do, meet us at this table. Lord, that we're not—this is no mere spiritual memorial to what happened. This is a living where we have fellowship with a living resurrected Lord. Come feed your people and encourage us by your power today. In Jesus' name, amen.

"Therefore, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way he opened up for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." — Hebrews 10:19-23

Come this morning remembering the sacrifice of Christ and the benefits of knowing Him and being in Him. Come. I invite musicians, if you guys would come forward at this time, and those members of our church who are helping distribute the elements under the oversight of our elders, you guys are welcome to come forward at this time. Here's how we're going to participate.