Faith Greater Than Fear and Doubt

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Introduction

-{John 20}
-There was a little boy who cried out over and over, "Mom where are you?!" as he was walking back and forth in the front of the grocery store. He was lost. He decided to stop crying and start looking. He looked down the first three aisles and still no mom. All he did was go to the fruit snacks in aisle 3, and then she was gone. He began to wonder:
Had she left him at the store all by himself?
Had she decided he was too much trouble to feed... all he had asked for was fruit snacks!?
Had she left the store to head home and forgot all about him?
He went past aisle four and as he looked in aisle five, he found a man with a blue vest stocking shelves—so this must be a worker. He approached the man and said, "I think my mom left me at the store or got abducted by aliens or something."
"Now what makes you think that?" the man asked as he knelt down to look at the boy eye to eye.
"Well," the boy answered, "I was looking at fruit snacks and then she was gone.”
The man slowly stood up and said, “Let’s see if we can find her.”
As they walked the man asked, "So what makes you think that your mom left without you?"
"Because I don't see her"
"Has she ever accidentally left you anywhere before" the man asked.
"No."
"Has she ever been abducted by aliens before,"
"Not that I know of."
"So why would you doubt her now? I am sure she is here and we just have to find her,"
The man went to aisle ten and used the intercom system to make an announcement about a lost boy, and just as he finished the boys mother appeared with her full cart around the corner of aisle fifteen. His baby sister was bouncing up and down in the seat of the cart sucking on a bottle and sporting a different outfit than she had on when they entered the store.
"Mom!" the little boy cried out and sprinted down the aisles to meet his mother. "Mom I thought you left without me" the little boy said as he hugged his mom beside the cart.
"Honey I asked you to follow me to the bathroom so I could change your sister," his mother looked down and hugged him. "I thought you heard me. I looked around after I changed her and didn't see you. I went to the fruit snack aisle and you weren't there." His mom smiled.
"I forgot," the boy said.
"Honey I have never left you anywhere before... have I," his mother asked.
"No."
"Well then I hope you learned something about me today," his mother said.
His mom thanked the man in the blue vest, and as he began to walk away, the little boy asked. "Hey mom, can we get some fruit snacks?"
-Maybe we all can sympathize with the fear and doubt felt by the little boy in that story. It could be because of some personal issues that we deal with in our life, or it could be because of all the craziness going on in the world.
-Whatever the case may be, we allow the circumstances that surround us to dictate how we react, what decisions we make, how we feel, and (most importantly) what we think about God.
~As fear and doubt creep in, our thoughts about God and His dealings with the world and with us personally begin to sour.
~We begin to wonder: Has God forgotten about me? Has He decided I am not worth the trouble? And we may even get to the point of wondering if He even exists.
-Fear and doubt are powerful weapons of the enemy. The greater the fear and doubt, the smaller God seems.
-But there is something more powerful than fear and doubt, and it is faith—not because of the amount of faith we have, but because of the object of our faith. While that might seem simplistic, it is still the call of God on our lives. Do we have faith in God? Do we trust God?
~We have to ask ourselves something the boy in the story was confronted with. The boy was in essence asked if his mother gave him any reason to doubt her. The answer was no. Now, we ask ourselves, has God given us any reason to doubt Him? And I think we can all answer NO to that as well.
-What I want us to learn today is that while fear and doubt seem like natural reactions to personal and world circumstances, faith in Jesus’ person and work can overcome both.
READ John 20:19-31
John 20:19–31 ESV
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although 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, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
-I want to consider three reasons why faith in Jesus makes more sense than fear and doubt:

1) Jesus offers peace

-The disciples were all huddled together in some house, with the door bolted shut. If the Jewish authorities dared to have Jesus killed, what in the world would they do to His followers? And now Jesus’ body was missing with the women reporting that Jesus was alive. It was crazy times with uncertain circumstances.
~Where would they go from here? What would they do? If Jesus’ abandoned them, did that mean that God abandoned them too? Were they all on their own now? They had a lot to wrestle with.
-Then, all of a sudden, Jesus appears in the room—how He got into a room that was bolted and sealed we just don’t know. But there He was—alive and in the flesh.
~Of course, this caused more of a shock—dead people don’t just start living again…unless you are the Son of God.
-The first thing that Jesus says to them is PEACE BE WITH YOU! While that may have been a typical Jewish greeting, the phrase became much more pregnant with meaning.
-The Jewish term SHALOM means more than a lack of hostility, but it is a hope of general well-being physically, spiritually, and mentally. And now, the only one who could give that well-being was standing before them alive from the dead.
-Our passage records Jesus saying this phrase three times, and He was not saying it merely as a catchphrase or as a hope (as in, I hope you have some SHALOM), but He was offering them the very thing that they sought—Jesus gives peace. Jesus alone gives us mental and spiritual well-being with the promise of eternal physical well-being in our own resurrection.
-Through His death and resurrection Jesus gives us peace with God—and since we have peace with God we can have peace of heart and mind and soul because our greatest problem (God’s wrath against sin) has been taken care of. And if Jesus brought peace into that situation, He can bring peace into any circumstance if we have the faith that He is in control.
-The thing is, fear and doubt are the robbers of peace. When your life is overwhelmed by fears and doubts and worries, there is no SHALOM going on anywhere in your life. We become emotional and spiritual and physical wrecks.
-Anxiety in our nation was already at an all-time high, and then the pandemic hit, and then the riots hit, and then political chaos hit, and then all sorts of other things happened, and fear and doubt took control.
-But Jesus offers PEACE to BE WITH YOU and ME and all who would trust Him. But that’s the thing—do you trust Jesus more than you trust yourself and more than you trust your circumstances and more than you trust the world?
-And yet, how do we know we can trust Jesus for peace?...

2) Jesus offers proof

-There is a common fallacy that is placed at the feet of Christianity. The enemies of the cross try to paint Christianity as a leap of blind faith. Unfortunately, that is the definition that many Christians give to the word faith and what it is that we are supposed to do.
~We know that salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but we think that faith alone means that we believe regardless of what the truth is…we believe regardless of the facts…we believe even though everything else says not to believe.
-So, with that in the back of our minds, it is no wonder that we are full of fear and doubt because it’s as if we think faith is believing something that we really have no business believing—we think it is believing things that we have no basis to hold onto. THAT IS NOT FAITH; and it most certainly will not give you any confidence to live in light of it.
-Nowhere in Scripture are we ever told to believe in something even though we really have no basis for believing it. When faith is presented in Scripture, it has a basis, it has a foundation, there are reasons and facts upon which it is established.
-So now, Jesus appears to the disciples and offers them peace—but there is a basis for them to believe it is Jesus and that He can give peace. There are facts that are presented to demonstrate that this really is the Jesus who died, He really did rise from the dead, and so He really can give SHALOM.
-The facts or the evidences that Jesus presented to the disciples are His scars. It says that after He said PEACE BE WITH YOU the first time that he showed them His hands and side. This proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was Jesus. It wasn’t a ghost it wasn’t a fraud; this was the same Jesus they always knew.
-But Thomas wasn’t there the first time. Thomas gets a bad rap—always referred to as doubting Thomas. When you look elsewhere in Scripture, Thomas can be a bit cynical and skeptical, but he is always true and loyal. He had a little skepticism when the disciples told him what happened with the resurrected Christ.
~So, maybe Thomas was from Missouri because Missouri is the SHOW ME state and Thomas says if you want him to believe, you’re going to have to show him the proof.
-A week after the initial appearance Jesus appears and immediately concedes to Thomas’ request—go ahead and put your finger and hand in the scars. Look at the evidence and believe.
-LOOK AT THE FACTS, LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE AND BELIEVE. But now, Jesus says that blessed are those who don’t see what the disciples saw and still believe. But that is not some sort of concession to blind faith. Just because people would not be able to see the resurrected Christ does not mean that there are no facts and evidences around. God has left Himself a witness. Be it scientific evidences that point to a designer for creation or philosophical arguments that point to the necessity of there being a God, these leave us with enough facts to make an informed decision in taking a step of faith.
-Then there is God’s self-revelation in Scripture and creation. God speaks to us through what He made and inspires men to write His Words. In fact, John says in our passage that it is a fact that Jesus did everything that he recorded in His gospel, and He actually did so much more than what could even fit in the book. But John recorded it, being an eyewitness, so that the reader would believe, and by believing have life; not just life through salvation, but then life to live by faith.
~John says I AM GIVING YOU FACTS TO MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION THAT FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST IS NOT IRRATIONAL AND LIVING FOR JESUS IS NOT IRRATIONAL. IN FACT, LACK OF FAITH IN CHRIST IS IRRATIONAL. BUT YOU HAVE A BASIS TO BELIEVE IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND BE SAVED AND TO LIVE FOR HIM.
~Now, just because Jesus offers these facts, we are not saying that every question we have is answered, and neither are we claiming that we can philosophically prove God and Jesus to absolute logical certainty. But we are saying that the facts are there, and that means that we can believe Him for salvation, and it also means we can have faith for living the Christian life.
-The thing is, fear and doubt focus all of our energy on what could be, what might be, instead of focusing on what actually is—what is real. Fear and doubt are always looking to the contingencies but are very rarely (if ever) based on fact. Fear and doubt lead us to the WHAT IFS (What if this or what if that) instead of leading us to see what actually IS.
~But Christ and His life and His death and His resurrection are based on fact, and so we have a basis to have faith in Him, even when circumstances might scream otherwise.
-Trusting Christ is not blind—it is not a shot in the dark. We can have faith instead of fear and doubt because we have facts and evidences that give us that foundation.

3) Jesus offers power

-vv. 22-23 are unique to John, and at first glance might seem a little confusing, saying that Jesus breathed on them and said to receive the Holy Spirit. The breathing thing seems weird in and of itself, but then we also know that the Holy Spirit didn’t actually indwell them until Pentecost.
-I think it is best understood that Jesus was acting out a parable that pointed forward to the full endowment of the Holy Spirit that was to come a few weeks later.
-The word that is used for Jesus’ breathing is the same word in the Septuagint used in Genesis for God breathing life into man to make him a living being, and in Ezekiel when God breathed life into the dry, dead bones in the valley.
~Jesus, through salvation, breathes spiritual life into the believer through the Holy Spirit, and then that Spirit of life gives power to live for God while in enemy territory on the earth.
-Jesus, in this enacted parable, told the disciples that they would receive supernatural power to go forth and live courageously and boldly to fulfill the mission God has for them.
-That helps explain the kind of confusing things said in v. 23 that having received the Holy Spirit the disciples could forgive or withhold forgiveness. It is not speaking about the disciples making their own decision about who to forgive and who not to forgive. It is the giving or withholding of the gospel that will either open the door of forgiveness and give someone a chance to believe or will keep people in the dark. The Holy Spirit empowers to live and minister for Jesus.
-This explains how a group of fearful people locked in a room all of a sudden openly preached Jesus to the very people they thought sought to kill them. How could a group of scaredy cats all of a sudden turn the world upside down? It was because they had new life in Christ and they had a new power through the Holy Spirit.
-But even though this power is available to the believer, it does us no good if we don’t tap into that power and step out in faith. When the disciples fully received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, they still had to step out in faith and go out into the temple area and begin preaching Jesus. They could have decided to ignore the gift and remain hidden in their fear and doubt. But instead, they allowed the Holy Spirit to embolden them, and they were changed and then through them others were changed.
-Maybe that’s where we are in the modern American church. We have the Holy Spirit, but we decide not to actually allow Him to do anything with us, so we decide to live in fear rather than faith, and then we live powerless lives instead of powerful lives.
~God has given us everything we need to live boldly and courageously in our circumstances. Through Christ we have peace, through Christ we have a factual foundation for faith, and we have been given the power to live it out.

Conclusion

-Christian, maybe you have lived in fear and doubt; come to the altar today to ask for the audacity to live by faith. God has given us no reason to doubt Him. He has provided all we need to fully rely on Him by faith. Come and ask God for strength to live by faith, not fear and doubt.
-But others may have a different kind of fear:
When Larry King was celebrating the 20th anniversary of his TV show, he was interviewed by Barbara Walters and she asked him, “What is your greatest fear?”
He immediately replied, “Death.”
Her follow-up question was, “Do you believe in God?”
King stated, “Not sure. I’m an agnostic.”
-Only with the Christ who makes peace with God on your behalf can you then be at peace with your future. John said that everything recorded about Jesus is so that you may believe and then have life. Would you like true life today?...
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