Title: Killing Lions-Doubt
Date: 7/19/15
Place: BLCC
Text: John 20.24-29; James 1.6-8
CT: Kill the Lion of Doubt keeping you from God’s ideal.
[Screen 1]
FAS: I need a volunteer today. This person needs to know me and have faith in my honesty. Come on up. Now, you ready. I have a $20 dollar bill in my hand right now. Do you believe me? Are there any doubts? (Show the bill to the person).
Explain how the person now had knowledge of what I had in my hand. Before it required faith to believe I had the bill in my hand. Why did you believe me?
Hopefully you had faith in me enough to know I would not lie to you. But this faith was only needed when you did not know for sure. There may have been doubts in your mind. I could have been trying trick you, right.
Sometimes a person is tempted to think, I can't become a Christian because I still have doubts. I'm still not sure. But as long as doubts exist, as long as the person is still uncertain, that is the only time faith is needed. When the doubts are gone, the person doesn't need faith anymore. Knowledge has come.
We need faith. This is exactly the point Paul was making in his first letter to the church at Corinth: [Screen 2] "Now we see [that a 'knowing' word] but a poor reflection [now we have confusion, misunderstanding, doubts, and questions] … then we shall see face to face [we don't see face-to-face yet]. Now I know in part [with questions and doubts]; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known"
(1 Corinthians 13:12).
LS: All of us, if we are honest have doubts in our life that can challenge our faith. We must be clear and firm in where our faith is placed.
[Screen 3]
I. We are in our second week of the sermon series “Killing Lions”. Last week we killed the lion of despair. [Screen 4] We learned that Satan is the Lion King of his pride of lions trying to devour us as Christians and tear us away from God’s ideal for us. We also made it clear that as Christians we must stick together to drive the lions away from our community of believers, our church. [Screen 5] We want the lions to look like this fellow running from the buffalo.
This week we are going to slay the lion of doubt. [Screen 6] This lion does its best to diminish our faith.
So what do we do with our doubts? Do we ignore them? No. God welcomes our questions. God wants us to believe in him and trust him by our own free will. We talked about free will last week.
Most of us hit a point of crisis at some point in our lives. It may be at a time of personal tragedy or maybe because our higher learning seemed to try and undermine the intellectual foundation of our faith. There is not much promotion of Christian faith at our schools of higher learning today. Just watch the movie Gods Not Dead. Though it may be true that as Christians there is a degree of mystery in our belief, there are answers to be found, not just wishes. This Bible is not a book of wishes.
Lets look at the most famous doubter in the Bible. This would be Thomas of course. Thomas had not been with the disciples when Jesus appeared the first time, after his resurrection, to the disciples. [Screen 7] We read his story in John 20. 24-29,
Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, 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.”
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, [Screen 8] “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!”
Then Jesus told him, [Screen 9] “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”
Blessed are those who believe and have not yet seen. That’s us. Thomas had heard rumors of a risen Christ but needed something more to go on. Jesus then addressed Thomas’ doubt directly and told him to stop doubting and believe.
Christian faith is not an act of mental suicide. God wants us to discern and use our minds to transform our way of thinking to follow His Son. In our society today, however it is almost considered a good virtue to doubt everything.
Doubt is easy. Conviction and faith requires courage.
So to be clear here, doubt is not a virtue when it just abandons the search for answers. The true virtue here is the humility to be open to God’s Word and His revelation.
But the Christian position is not to believe in spite of all reason. It is not just a blind leap of faith as some have called it. According to Jesus and the entire Bible, faith is trust and confidence in a person whom you have good reason to believe is trustworthy. So God welcomes our questions. He will provide the answers.
II. A. Sadly I have to say that a lot of the academic world wants to dismiss Christianity, even though they never look at the evidence for it themselves.
Yet there are many brilliant and gifted men and women who have come to follow Christ because of what they have discovered in science. I was a Chemistry and Biology major at UK. If anything my knowledge of the wonder and intricacy of God’s creation made my faith stronger.
Take the creation of the world for example. The more we learn about the complexity, harmony and interdependence of the natural world, the more we realize that to say this just accidentally came from some cosmic collision is a larger leap of faith than anything Christians are accused of. [Screen 10]
B. Dr. Francis Collins is one such intellectual who went from strict atheism to Christianity. Collins study of genetics had already begun to convince him that there had to be some sort of design for all the intricacies involved in human genetics.
What finally won him over to Christianity was the large number of people he encountered as a doctor whose faith helped them deal with their severe illnesses. Though they experienced terrible suffering, they maintained a strong reassurance of ultimate peace. They did not blame God for their struggles; they looked to Him for comfort. Collins concluded that if faith were a psychological crutch, it sure was a powerful one.
Then it happened. An older lady suffering with untreatable pain still shared her faith with Collins and asked him, “What do you believe?”
He was stunned as he realized he did not know.
He started a quest to find out. He studied the teachings of Jesus to understand why these people had so much faith. Science had fallen short of disproving the presence of God for Collins. He read of the resurrection and the way it changed everything for the people around Jesus.
Collins wrote in his book, “The Language of God”, The scientist in me refused to go any further along this path toward Christian belief, no matter how appealing, if the writings about Christ turned out to be myth or a hoax. But the more I read biblical and non-biblical accounts of events in 1st century Palestine, the more amazed I was at the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ.
This led Collins to believe maybe Jesus was just a great teacher, until he read what the great Christian writer of the WW2 era wrote. C.S.Lewis [Screen 11]
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
[Screen 12]
In 2009 Collins delivered a speech that included pointers to God. [Screen 13]
1. There is something instead of nothing.
2. The simplicity of mathematics. It was designed well.
3. The big bang. Someone caused it.
4. The physical constants of nature that can’t be explained. If gravity was only one part per billion weaker the universe would collapse.
5. Moral law. Why would another man risk his life for another? Goes against evolution as the basis for our existence.
Science is not threatened by God. God enhances it. God is definitely not threatened by science, He made it possible. So let us seek Him to know Him and what He is
calling us to do. Science does not give us reasons to doubt our faith in Jesus Christ. Despite what most in the science and academic world may try to report.
III. If we are followers of Christ, our slaying of the lion of doubt should be easier. Jesus has shown us the way. Even though we know Jesus and have faith in Him, do we still doubt? Peter did. [Screen 14]
Matthew 14.28-31, “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
“Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. [Screen 15] “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
Jesus may not call us to walk on water, but he does call us to follow him and be his disciples. Will we keep our eyes focused on him or we will be distracted by the waves and worries of the world and fall prey to the lion of doubt ready to take us down.
Jesus even went a little deeper with how we should view our doubts in [Screen 16] Matthew 21.21, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done”
Jesus is saying to the disciples and us that if we have faith and no doubt, there is no mountain life throws in front of us that can’t be conquered though Him.
We must keep our focus. The lion of doubt is deceiving. He plays on our weakness. He tries to make us believe our faith is in vain. He tries to make us feel lost and alone. He is looking for an opening to pounce.
James warns us to not fall prey to this lion. [Screen 17]
James 1.6-8, But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double- minded and unstable in all they do. [Screen 18]
To “believe and not doubt” means not only believing in the existence of God, cause even the Devil believes in God, but also believing in his loving care. It includes relying on God and expecting that he will hear and answer when we pray. We must put away our critical attitude when we come to him. God does not grant every thoughtless or selfish request. We must have confidence that God will align our desires with his purposes.
How can we help our brothers and sisters who are doubting God. I’d like to share a story.
In his book Stories for the Journey, William R. White shares the story of Hans, a European seminary professor devastated by the death of his wife, Enid. Hans was so overcome with sorrow that he lost his appetite and didn't want to leave the house. Out of concern, the seminary president, along with three other professors, paid Hans a visit. The grieving professor confessed that he was struggling with doubt. "I am no longer able to pray to God," he admitted to his colleagues. "In fact, I am not certain I believe in God any more." After a moment of silence, the seminary president said, "Then we will believe for you. We will pray for you." The four men continued to meet daily for prayer, asking God to restore the gift of faith to their friend. Some months later, as the four friends gathered for prayer with Hans, Hans smiled and said, "It is no longer necessary for you to pray for me. Today I would like you to pray with me."
[Screen 19] Jude 22, Be merciful to those who doubt.
Let’s not stand by and let our friends lost in their doubt be devoured by this lion from Satan. Let’s vow to be like the buffalos in this picture running this lion as far away as possible. [Screen 20]
CT: Kill the lion of doubt trying to keep us from God’s ideal.
Conclusion: We know doubt is easy to have. Its opposite takes courage and willpower. Where do we get this? There is but one place. That is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Depend on Him and the Holy Spirit to strengthen you for all the lions this world has waiting to attack. God will do what He says.
The opposite of doubt is confidence and we are told in Hebrews 11.1, [Screen 21]
(Stand and read together) Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see.
Won’t you cast your doubts aside and come forth with confidence today to claim the assurance found by being baptized into Jesus Christ.
