Thomas: When Faith Wants Proof

Why does God allow suffering?

How do I know God's really there?

Why does God answer the prayer that you've had?

How do you know the Bible is true?

Why are there things in the Bible we don't understand?

How can a loving God judge people?

Are heaven and eternal life for real?

Why does God sometimes stay silent and can I still be a Christian

and have doubts?

Well, most Christians have asked some version of these questions

at one time or another.

And the presence of questions does not mean the absence of faith.

Confusion is part of following Christ.

And the disciples were often confused.

We see this all through the Gospel.

They couldn't figure out what Jesus was saying, and they had to

ask.

And sometimes Jesus would preach to a loud crowd and they didn't

understand what he said to the crowd.

And they would pull him aside and he'd explain it to them privately,

but he wouldn't tell the crowd.

What matters is if we can trust even when we're confused.

And it's a critical path in following Christ.

At that path, you see, Jesus did not treat doubts and questions

as rebellion.

He met them every single time with truth and with patience and

with evidence and a call to deepen our faith.

And Thomas, who we're going to look at today, teaches us that having

those questions and doubts does not mean we have abandoned our

faith to have questions.

The real question is, how do we trust even when we doubt?

So first, I think it's important to understand Jesus is

not afraid of our questions.

He's not afraid at all of our questions.

Jesus was never threatened by questions.

Thomas said, I won't believe unless I see it.

I want to see it real proof.

The father in Mark 9, whose son was suffering, said, help my

unbelief.

And Martha, who was very close to Jesus, we're going to look at

next week.

Martha, in effect, said to Jesus, if you had been here, my brother

would not have died, and you should have been here.

You see, Jesus does not panic over questions or withdraw.

And he never shames people for asking questions.

Truth does not have to be protected by honest questions.

Truth will always stand up to us.

If Jesus is who he says he is, then no question is too difficult

for him because he's God.

And God designed how the whole thing's supposed to work so you don't

have to protect Jesus from your hardest questions.

He can handle them.

But Jesus does not simply leave us with our questions.

He uses them to lead us toward a deepening of our faith with him.

Now, I'm sure some of you have questions you Think you're not supposed

to ask.

You're not supposed to say them out loud.

If anybody heard your real questions, they think you're either

not a Christian or you're a pretty weak Christian.

You know what?

I've been there right with you.

I've been there right with you.

I've asked those same questions, hard questions, core questions.

I think every Christian who's serious about their faith has been

there asking hard questions.

And Jesus is not afraid of our questions.

He already knows we had them.

So don't hold back.

He already knows Your question is in your spirit.

You can't surprise him, you can't embarrass him, and you can't

expose some weakness in him.

That's not going to happen.

Our faith.

If our faith can't stand up to questions, it's really not much,

is it?

If it can't be examined, we don't have much to build our lives

on.

Bring your questions to Jesus.

And when you do open the Scripture, ask people you trust.

Keep seeking a genuine answer.

You see, Jesus did not run from Thomas Doubt.

Jesus walked straight into his doubt.

And we're going to see that in the story here in a minute.

The danger is not that we have questions.

There's.

There's no danger in having questions.

The great danger is deciding that our questions are more trustworthy

than Jesus.

Did you hear that?

Danger is our deciding our questions are more trustworthy than

Jesus.

So don't let questions pull you away from the one who can answer

them.

Well, if Jesus has never confused you, you may never have

wrestled deeply enough with what he said.

So if you've not had questions, you need to go deeper.

He talked about losing your life to find it.

He said the first would be last.

He said, love your enemies.

He spoke about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

And the disciples repeatedly asked, what do you mean?

What do you mean by this?

You see, confusion is not a sign that faith is weak.

Sometimes it's a sign that you're taking Jesus seriously enough

that you realize his way of seeing life is larger than ours.

And so you're willing to ask those questions.

Now, the Bible, understand this.

This is important.

The Bible does not answer every question you may want answered.

It tells us what we need to know about God, about salvation,

about how to live, about eternity.

But it doesn't explain every mystery of the world.

The Bible is not a textbook of science or math or physics or art.

However, it gives us the only worldview that makes all those things

possible.

In other words, the Bible not only Teaches us ultimate truths about

people, the world, salvation, the future, and a bunch of other

subjects.

They give us our worldview perspective so we can know God's

heart and desire for the world.

So why is the Bible sometimes confusing?

Understand this.

Here's why.

Jesus often speaks from a perspective of eternity while we're

trying to understand from a perspective of today.

And if we could see the world in the perspective of eternity that

he does, many of those things would make a lot more sense.

He taught his disciples this.

He said, mature faith is, is not the point where your questions

disappear.

It's the point where we know Jesus well enough to trust him with

the questions that remain.

That's essentially what he was trying to teach them all the way

through.

And that's what we find in the story of Thomas.

Thomas was a very committed disciple.

Don't ever question that, Thomas.

You know, we talk about doubting Thomas in this one incident.

He wasn't a doubting type guy.

He was very committed.

In fact, when Jesus at one point was going to go to Judea, the

disciples said, you can't go there.

You're going to be killed if you do.

And Thomas was the one who said, let's go with him.

We'll all die.

He was that committed.

But after the resurrection, as was read for us today, Thomas wasn't

there when Jesus first appeared to the disciples.

And Thomas wouldn't believe it when they told him without the proof

does raise the question a little bit.

Was he not trusting Jesus or was he not trusting his friends to

tell the truth?

Kind of interesting.

But like Thomas, the most committed followers can have doubts.

Faith is not the absence of every doubt.

Faith is following even when there are things we don't understand.

And that happens.

Well, Thomas was willing to admit when he didn't understand,

he said it straight out.

You know, there was one time earlier, Jesus was talking about

heaven and he said, I'm going to prepare a place for you, and in

my Father's house are many mansions, and I'll come again and

all this.

And Thomas, Jesus said, you know where I'm going.

That's Jesus words.

You know where I'm going.

And Thomas said, lord, we don't know where youe're going, so

how can we know the way because we don't know what yout mean.

And the other disciples were often confused.

There's nothing spiritual about pretending you always understand.

Operating on God's timing for answers is sometimes difficult.

And for Thomas, he didn't see the answer until after the resurrection

of where God was going quite a bit of time later.

But often faith and doubt can exist together.

In Mark, chapter nine, there's a heartbreaking story of a father

who's desperate about his son, who's suffering, absolutely desperate.

And he comes to Jesus and he says, have mercy on us, please, if

you can help us.

Jesus says, what?

What do you mean, if I can?

Anything's possible if you believe, Jesus said, and the father

cries out the most honest answer in the Bible.

He says, I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief.

I believe, but I'm still struggling.

I don't get it all.

You see, doubt and questions are not rebellion.

They're not a weakening of our faith.

Uncertainty is okay.

Faith does not pretend that there are no struggles.

Faith brings the struggles directly to Jesus.

Well, Thomas doubt grew out of a very, very deep disappointment.

It wasn't an intellectual question.

You see, Thomas was there at the crucifixion.

It was horrible to watch the one you loved so much, the one you

had hope in, to be brutally killed that way.

And for Thomas, all hope was lost.

The future was gone.

Everything he'd imagined evaporated.

And he was grieving.

His world was falling apart.

Sometimes doubt comes through intellectual questions, and sometimes

doubt begins with a deep wound.

Something happens that you can't reconcile with what you believe

about God.

And you say, is God real?

Why did you let this happen?

Well, that's where Thomas was.

Thomas made his struggle harder, though, because he was absent.

You see, the disciples were all together, and Thomas wasn't with

them when Jesus came.

Now, we don't know why, because the rest of them were there,

but Thomas wasn't there.

And when we're disappointed with God, one of the first temptations

is to withdraw.

To withdraw from church, from friends, from scripture, from prayer.

You can sit in chapel and be mentally withdrawn.

You can be here and get your credit, but you're still mentally

withdrawn.

You can do that.

You draw away from people who can help carry you for a while when

you have questions and doubt.

And it's a natural temptation.

But if you will stay in there, Christ will come to you with answers.

And for Thomas, it was eight days later.

Scripture tells us, eight days later, he finally saw Jesus.

That must have been a tough eight days.

A really tough eight days.

But here's what happened.

The doors were locked.

But suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them.

Peace be with you, he said.

And then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and look at

my hands.

Put your hand into the wound on my side.

Don't Be faithless any longer.

Believe.

Jesus knew exactly what Thomas had said.

He wasn't there when he said it, but Jesus knew he said it.

Jesus knew exactly where Thomas was struggling.

Jesus meets him right there.

He comes into the room, says, peace be with you to all the disciples,

and goes directly to Thomas.

And he showed him his identity in the wounds, and he showed him

his power over death.

Jesus is patient with Thomas.

Jesus doesn't humiliate him in front of the other disciples, but

he also challenges them.

He doesn't say, just keep doubting forever, because it doesn't

matter.

Yes, it does matter.

Jesus says, believe, believe.

Faith is not believing without evidence.

But faith is choosing to trust when the evidence is sufficient,

even though every question hasn't been answered.

And sometimes that's the point at which we have to live.

So the scripture goes on then, and it says, my Lord and my God.

Thomas exclaimed.

Then Jesus told him, you believe because you have seen me.

Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.

Your questions don't have to take you away from Jesus.

If you bring them honestly to him, he'll take you into a deeper

relationship with him because of your questions.

You see, Thomas went from simply believing to worshiping my

Lord and my God.

A completely different level of trust in God, John.

Then right after this, really interesting in the scripture, right

after this, Nick's words summarizes the purpose of the gospel.

When Jesus says, you believe because you see me.

Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.

John then says, the disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous

signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book.

But these are written so that you may continue to believe that

Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in

him you will have life by the power of his name.

Thomas saw John recorded what we need to know.

And then we have to decide.

So do the hard questions get answered?

I told you, I've been there with them.

Same questions for me.

They have.

Why does God allow suffering?

Because there's sin in the world.

If you take all, evaporate all the sin out of the world, there wouldn't

be suffering.

How do you know God's really there for me?

I look at the vastness of the universe, we just barely begin to

scratch the surface of what it is.

And I look the intricacy of biology.

The there has to be a God who designed all that.

How do you know the Bible is true?

Well, there are endless proofs to that.

From prophecy to how the stories are told, to archaeological

research, all kinds of things that show Us, the Bible is true.

Why are the things in the Bible I don't understand?

Because so much of it's about the perspective of eternity, and

we're thinking about how to make it through tomorrow.

How can a loving God judge people?

Because God is forgiving, but God is also just, and both are important.

And he's not going to be one without the other.

Are eternal life and heaven for real?

100%?

They are.

Absolutely 100%.

I have no questions.

If you haven't read it, there's a wonderful book called Heaven.

Read that book, you'll be convinced.

Can I still be a Christian and have doubts?

Well, I'm one.

I still have doubts, and I'm a Christian.

Early in the walk of faith, most of my questions were intellectual

questions and doubts.

But life has also taught me that knowing the theological answer

does not make every question go away.

Right now, I got tougher doubts.

Toughest one has to do with my daughter, who is 32 years old.

Madison went with me seven years ago to China.

We had an MBA program in China at the time.

We had a commencement going on.

I needed to do some work with our partners in China.

Madison was a theater major here, and she did her MBA here, and

she was done.

And I said, hey, why don't you go with me?

It'll be fun.

We'll have a great time.

And it was.

It was an incredible trip.

We went to the main place there.

We climbed the Great Wall of China together.

I kept saying, do you want to stop?

She said, I'm not stopping if you don't stop.

I said, why don't you stop?

And she said, no, we've got to keep going.

And we both wanted to stop, but we kept going.

About killed us both.

But we climbed the wall together.

We went to the Imperial palace and saw all the stuff.

But while we were there, we had dinner with the group that we

were doing business with, with Belhaven.

And it was a big, large table and one of these, you know, Peking

duck dinners kind of things.

And so there were a number of us around the table.

We had four from Belhaven plus Madison.

And then we had the people from this group.

Well, the chair next to Madison was empty.

And as we were into dinner, a guy came in and sat down by her,

and he was horribly sick.

Horribly sick.

This was seven years ago.

And she said, are you okay?

And he said, yeah, I just flew in.

And so I'm really running late.

But I flew in because his dinner's important.

I wanted to be here.

And she said, oh, where'd you come from?

He said, oh, I came from a town you've probably never heard

of in China.

Its name is Wuwon.

Wuwon was where Covid started.

Madison got sick.

We all got sick on that trip.

I got sick.

Provost got sick.

Dean of education got sick.

Dean of our China program got sick.

We all got sick.

But Madison didn't get better.

She had what eventually became known as Long Covid.

She had horrible brain fog for nearly two years.

Couldn't watch a television program, couldn't read a book.

No ability to concentrate.

Debilitating headaches.

She would spend days in bed, covered up because the headaches

were so horrible.

Respiratory problems that she couldn't catch her breath even enough

to get up and go to the restroom.

She had organ failure, had to have surgery during it.

Her instability was so much.

She fell one night and broke her leg in two places.

Had to go through all that complete fatigue, 23 hours a day

in bed for seven years now.

That's not how I remember my Madison.

My Madison was vibrant, happy, a life of energy.

She was a theater major here.

This is how I mostly remember Madison.

She was Donkey and Shrek.

Everybody loved it.

I loved it.

She had a vibrancy and a spirit about her that was remarkable.

And seven years ago, she thought she'd be on Broadway by now,

but she's not.

She's home in bed.

And for me, for her, it's horrible.

For me, it's really tough, you know, because dads fix things.

That's what we do.

We fix things.

When you're a dad, you'll know you fix stuff.

And I can't fix this.

I've tried.

We have the best doctor in the world.

We have the number one doctor from the Mayo Clinic in Long Covid,

and he can't get a solution.

We have hundreds of people pray now.

Most of them have probably forgotten by now because it's been

so long.

If you want to pray for Madison, I'd be thankful because

prayer is our only hope.

And we made sacrifices like crazy.

I stay away from crowds.

That's why I sit up here.

I have not been to a restaurant in seven years because

I don't want to expose her to anything.

So we make sacrifices to try to protect her.

But there's no answer.

There's no answer why.

I know God could heal her.

I absolutely know God could heal her.

And sometimes I'll go by her bedroom at night and she's asleep,

and I'll put my hand on the door and I'll pray God wake her up

in the morning and make her okay again.

Make her be donkey again.

That's what I want to see.

And God doesn't answer that prayer.

Now, the first few years, I thought I knew why.

I would explain it.

I'd say, well, God's either preparing her for something or he's

protecting her.

And I believe that there are some times in our lives where God

closes the door, makes things hard, and he's either preparing us

for something harder yet to come, or.

Or he is protecting us from something that could be worse.

But, you know, after seven years, that answer is not standing

up for me anymore.

That's no good.

Now, I can explain to you what the Bible teaches about suffering.

I can tell you we live in a fallen world.

I can tell you God can work through suffering.

I can tell you that his purposes are bigger than what we

see.

Excuse me.

I went one slide too far here.

But I still can't answer the core question that I care most about.

Why is Madison still sick after seven years?

And there's only one answer to that question.

Want to know what it is?

I don't know.

And this side of heaven, I don't think I'll ever know why she's

sick.

But I do know this.

God loves her more than I do, which seems impossible, that she

could be loved by God more than my wife.

And I love Madison.

God hasn't abandoned Madison or us.

And I can keep trusting God even when I don't know and never

will know.

The Apostle Paul had that same kind of doubt.

The greatest theologian of the New Testament, one of the builders

of the Church, one of the people we look up to most as one

of the strongest Christians that ever lived.

But he talked about a thorn in his side, and he asked God to remove

it.

And God didn't remove it.

And he got the answer.

He recorded it in the Scripture.

I begged the Lord to take it away each time he said, my grace

is all you need.

My power works best in weakness.

Then Paul says, so I am glad to boast about my weakness so that

the power of Christ can work through me.

God did not give Paul an explanation.

God gave Paul himself.

He gave Paul his grace.

He gave Paul his power.

Sometimes faith in our doubts is receiving a clear answer.

And sometimes faith is trusting God when there is no answer.

Thomas wanted proof, and Jesus gave him enough to believe.

God gave me enough proof to believe, even when I don't have an

answer about Madison.

Jesus did not promise Thomas or any of us that every question

in life will be answered.

Thomas had more questions after that.

I'm sure that's part of being a follower of Christ, going up that

path in this difficult step.

So don't hide your questions from Jesus.

Don't run from Jesus because you have questions.

Don't isolate yourself when your faith feels weak.

And don't make doubt your permanent home.

Because faith is not reaching the point where you have no unanswered

questions.

My question hurts every single day and many tears at night.

But I'm convinced of this.

Absolutely convinced of this.

Faith is reaching the point where.

Where you know Jesus well enough to trust him with the questions

that hurt the most.

And I know this.

The promise of our benediction is as true today as it was before

Madison got sick.

So say it with me.

No eye has seen, no ear is heard.

No mind is conceived.

What God has prepared for those who love Him.

Have a great day.