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By Pastor Glenn Pease
It is a pain to struggle with doubt, but there is a great debate as to whether this is a helpful or harmful type of suffering.
In Camelot, King Arthur says to Lancelot that he is satisfied he did the right thing in starting the round table.
Lancelot replies, "Your majesty, did you ever doubt it?"
And Arthur responds, "Lance, only a fool never doubts."
An army of followers will march to that drum beat, and praise the virtue of doubt.
But they will face a mighty host who feel just the opposite; that only a fool would ever doubt.
One of these leaders writes,
Is there no knowledge to be had?
Has God not spoken once for all?
Indeed He has, all doubt is mad
And destined to disastrous fall.
For God is God, and truth is true.
All doubt is sinful in His sight,
And doubters will have cause to rue
Their doubt through hell's undoubted night.
So the authorities agree, you are damned if you do, or damned if you don't doubt.
Thus we are stuck with the dilemma of doubt.
It is always confusing when the same thing can be good or evil, for this forces us to think and be discerning.
We would prefer that all the good guys road on white horses, and all the bad guys road on black horses.
That way, you don't have to strain to evaluate and discern, for you just know by the visual evidence.
Have you ever turned TV on in the middle of a story, and watched it for a few minutes.
It can be very frustrating because you do not know the context of the story, and you do not know who the heroes are, and who are the villains.
The result is, you do not know where you stand, and who you are for or against in the conflict.
The bad guy may be so deceptively noble that you are attracted to him before you discover he is the villain.
We can only feel comfortable in our convictions when we have the whole context before us, and can see how each piece fits the whole.
Our text in Luke 7 will help us see the dilemma of doubt in its full context so we can grasp how people can come to such radically opposite conclusions.
In this text we see that both sides of the battle are correct.
Doubt is both demanded and damnable.
It has both positive and negative qualities that make it a cause for both helpful and harmful suffering.
In order to see the whole we want to examine the individual parts of this dilemma, and we start with the negative.
I. DOUBT IS DAMNABLE.
None are so blind as those who will not see, and Jesus describes the Pharisees, and experts in the law, as deliberate doubters who refused to see the light that God has put in front of their face.
They are locked into a damnable doubt that God would ever do anything apart from them.
The result is that no amount of evidence will overcome their blindness.
God sends John the Baptist as a solemn, somber, and serious prophet, and they reject him as a madman with a demon.
God then sends His Son as a life-loving leader who joins his people for the sharing of the enjoyable social events of life.
They reject him as too worldly; a glutton, wine bibber, and friend of tax collectors and sinners.
Jesus describes them like spoiled children who don't want to play funeral or wedding.
They will not be led, but stubbornly resist all evidence so that no light can penetrate their dungeon of doubt, and they remain in the darkness of disbelief.
You cannot find any better example of the danger of doubt.
These blind leaders of the blind were literally damned by their doubt.
Heaven was at their fingertips, but their doubt was leading them to hell and separation from Christ who offered them eternal life.
It is true that some of these leaders, like Joseph of Arimathea began to doubt their doubts, and came to the place where they believed.
But most never did, and must have had great fears that it might be true that Jesus was the Messiah, for He did many miracles before their very eyes.
The unbeliever has more to lose than anyone, and so his doubts are very frightening.
Those who attack the believer try to throw him into a state of doubt, but this is a two edge sword, and cuts even deeper into the unbeliever when you throw him into doubt about his disbelief.
A young skeptic said to Archbishop Temple, "You only believe what you believe because of your early upbringing."
Temple replied, "You only believe that I believe what I believe because of my early upbringing because of your early upbringing."
The skeptic was banged into silence by his own boomerang.
Remember, doubt is really the faith of unbelief, and you can throw a scare into the doubter by causing him to doubt that his doubt is a sure thing.
Doubt is a valid weapon for the soldier of light to use in combat with those in darkness.
Unbelievers must be tormented by the fear that maybe they are wrong, and belief is right.
This is the way the lost are saved.
But some are so blind they will not see the flaws in their doubt.
They believe their unbelief is the final word, and they doubt all that contradicts it.
Doubters give doubt such a bad name that we seldom see that it also has a positive side that we must consider.
II.
DOUBT IS DEMANDED.
John the Baptist represents the doubter who is just the opposite of the Pharisees.
Their doubt drove them to the denial of all evidence, but his doubt drove him to seek more evidence.
John was in prison for doing the will of God, and even one so use to being deprived of life's luxuries, can not be happy in such bondage.
John began to doubt whether or not Jesus was really the Messiah.
This one who said of Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," was now isolated and felt forsaken.
His personal crisis led him into the shadows of doubt, and he asked his disciples to go to Jesus and ask Him right out if He was the one who was to come, or if they should expect someone else?
John was saying, I have lost my certainty and lack assurance, and I need some evidence to eliminate the doubts that are creeping into my faith.
This kind of doubt can hurt, but it is like the pain of exercise; it hurts, but it leads to the strengthening of the muscle.
Doubt that motivates a man to seek for more evidence is not harmful to his faith, but helpful, for it will lead him, as it did John, to get that which supports his faith.
Jesus did not say, go back and tell John I've had it with him.
If he can't take a crisis like being thrown into a dungeon without doubt, then he is no friend of mine.
Jesus did not condemn this doubt at all, but responded with the very thing John needed-evidence.
The very things that were to happen when the Messiah came, are happening.
The sick are being healed; the blind are made to see; lepers are restored; and the dead are even raised, and the poor are receiving the good news.
The Bible does not call this kind of doubt damnable, but rather, says it is demanded as one of the weapons of warfare in the battle of light and darkness.
Paul stated it in I Thess.
5:21, "Test everything, hold fast to the good."
The Christian is to face this world of so many false prophets and cults with doubt; a doubt that refuses to accept anything without testing it according to God's Word.
Jesus expected to be tested Himself, and said, don't believe me because I say something, believe me because of my works.
In other words, talk is cheap, and we need to see the fruit of what is said in action, and until we do, doubt is our ally to keep us from being led astray.
If we care to avoid being tossed about by every wind of doctrine, we must be doubters who question, test, and evaluate, and be discerning as to what is of God and what is not.
Doubt becomes a partner with faith in helping us discern the will of God.
Tennyson said, "There lives more faith in honest doubt believe me, than in half the creeds."
Rosalind Rinker said, "Faith and doubt coexist to some degree within everyone."
We are all like the man who came to Jesus and said, "Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief."
He had both faith and doubt, and so it was with John the Baptist, and so it is with Christians all through history.
It is important that we see this so that we corral our doubts and make them servants of faith rather than enemies of faith.
It is not wrong or evil when you get overwhelmed by the burdens of life to doubt the workings of God.
This can be a time of great growth if you do not fear it, but recognize that the circumstances demand doubt that seeks for more light to support faith.
When Rosalind Rinker went through a time of doubt as a Christian author, Bill Stern, the director of Young Life told her, "You haven't begun to know what you believe until you have had a few doubts."
She came to the point where she learned not to fear her doubts, for they helped her become a more mature Christian by forcing her to probe and search, and think through her faith, so it could stand up strong under attack.
Those who have not faced the doubts can be overwhelmed and lose their faith, if they have not thought through a crisis before it strikes.
Rosalind Rinker pressed on into the ocean of infinite truth instead of waiting in the shallow water of superficial faith, and she became stronger, and wrote, "There was a time when people with serious doubts and questions about God disturbed me, now I can smile with understanding while assuring them they are on the road to new discoveries."
Young people are notorious for going through a time of doubting all they have heard in church, and what they have been taught at home.
They feel they cannot swallow all they have been fed.
This is no time to panic and condemn them.
They are simply going through the process of developing a first hand, rather than a second hand, faith.
This is good, and not evil.
Job was a great doubter, yet God preferred his honest doubt to the superficial faith of his comforters.
They were dogmatic believers in orthodox views.
They said all who suffer deserve to suffer, because they are being punished for their sin.
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