Doubt

Isaiah 26, please turn the Word of God to Isaiah 26. I mentioned it on Wednesday night, but just in case you were not there, thank you if you were praying for me in the past week in our ministry at Bob Jones University. I appreciate your prayers, and I trust that the Word brought, especially in the main session, Tuesday morning, will have been of help. There was a discussion panel as well on Wednesday, and no warning, no heads up what the questions were going to be. And so you’re sitting there wondering what they might be, and of course you do your best to answer. You’re always concerned because you may not have qualified some statements, and here and there someone’s gonna run away with a soundbite, make of it something you never intended, but we trust it was helpful.

I mentioned this morning that I want to begin a more of a topical series that I have titled Bible Answers for Inner Battles. And what I’m going to look at over the course of the weeks that lie ahead and these Sunday evenings are various matters, and it’s in the title, the inner battles, the inner challenges. Many of these will cut across the entirety of humanity. They will be things that anyone may and can experience. Part of us looking at them is acknowledging that believers have these challenges also. And we’re not to ignore it, we’re not to imagine that these things we are immune to because, well, I’m saved, I’m a Christian, I’m immune to whatever it might be. We’ll be looking at things like depression and other aspects like that. We’re not immune. We’re still in this body.

And so we will endeavor to give some help. It will not be exhaustive. Not any message will be exhaustive on any of these subjects. But I trust it will be helpful, and it will sow little seeds that will encourage you and help you understand what to do and where to go should you be challenged by, currently or in the future, some of these things. So tonight we begin with doubt, and I feel like we’ve been dealing with aspects of doubt and unbelief and believing repeatedly over recent times, but I thought, well, we’ll begin here. I think it’s one of the perennial challenges of the people of God, and I want to look at it in a very concentrated way with you.

And the text that I’m using, that we’re looking at, and I will come back to it near the end of the message more specifically, but Isaiah 26, verse 3, a text that no doubt many of you have turned to, many of you have used, many of you have thought upon at various junctures in your Christian life. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. It’s tremendous. Perfect peace for those whose mind is stayed on their God because they trust in their God. This is God’s Word. And you are to receive it, believe it, and obey it. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray. Lord, help us tonight to clarify our thinking. We still have things that are incorrect in our minds. And we need to be more conformed. We need to be helped, strengthened, empowered; even the things we already know need to come back to us. I pray tonight as we look at this particular subject, and even over the course of the weeks that lie ahead, as we, God willing, will look at other battles that we face and feel, that there would be great light and help to the church of Jesus Christ and to all who assemble here.

God, we pray that you will equip us. We don’t want to be weak. We don’t want to be floundering in our Christian life. We don’t want to be making missteps and going in the wrong direction or trusting in that which is uncertain and cannot help us. We pray that you’ll deliver us from all thinking that is carnal and worldly and secular. While there may be aspects we may draw from all the wisdom within this world, we come back primarily to consider the Word of the living God. As we sang, we rest, we trust in the Word, the living Word of God.

Help us, Lord. Bless now this time of thinking upon this subject. Give power, give the Holy Spirit, and should someone go beyond doubting and be in a state of unbelief, save them tonight, we pray in our Savior’s precious name. Amen.

If there be one thing more lamentable than the presence of sin in this world, it may be the lingering shadow of doubt in the hearts of those who have been redeemed. That God’s people, saved, redeemed, washed in the blood of Christ, should doubt is not something for us to turn a blind eye to. Recently I gave a quote from Spurgeon along those lines. It’s important for us to see sin for what it is. And the enemy of our souls is never so pleased as when he can shake our confidence, causing us to stagger, bringing us to a position of uncertainty. Doubt is a constant challenge to us. Like a chilling mist that creeps into our souls, it dampens our joys, it obscures our hopes, and muffles our prayers. That mist must not be permitted to enshroud us. We must not stand in it accepting this as our lot. We have to see that this is not the will of God.

The whisper of our enemy, the serpent in the garden, is, “Yea, hath God said?” to lead us into a standing of doubt. Having said all of that, doubt is not necessarily the absence of faith. We must not mix that and imagine that doubt and complete unbelief are the same thing. Doubt is not the death of faith. It’s not the destruction of faith, but rather it is an infirmity of faith. It is a weakness of faith. It is a sickness, if you like, of faith. When you think of the child’s trembling grip upon the father’s hand, you’ll realize that that grasp isn’t so much dependent upon the strength of the child. The union, the strength of the union is by the father’s grasp.

And so it is for the believer. At times as we’re hanging on to the Lord, as we’re reaching out to the Lord, it is with this feeble grasp that isn’t quite sure or certain as far as we’re concerned, but because it lays hold upon, because there is an indissoluble union between Christ and His people, we will never perish. We will be carried along. He will never loosen His grip. And if you’re in His hand, you will never be taken from it.

The question is not whether doubts will come, they will. Many of you have heard the quote again by the Baptist Spurgeon, that he doubted the man who never doubted. The real question is what we do when we doubt. So we want to look at this subject with the Lord’s help. This is an inner battle. This is something that you all are going to face. At some point, it will be doubt where the battle is raging in your soul. And there may be various reasons for it. But we’ll look here tonight briefly at the character of doubt. We’ll see then its causes and its cure.

So let’s consider the character of doubt. We find doubt everywhere in the Bible. You can see our Lord Jesus addressing His disciples on various occasions, such as in Matthew 14, when He says to Peter, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” Now, Peter was not rejecting the Word of God. He was not living in rebellion against God. As has been observed, at least Peter got out of the boat. At least Peter had a sense of believing that God could sustain him, that our Lord Jesus would enable him to walk upon water just as the Savior was. It’s not the same as unbelief, but it is present there, causing us to hover, causing us to hesitate, causing us to halt. It’s constantly threatening our peace, our inner peace.

There are times in life when you hit a juncture where it’s, as it were, a fork in the road. Am I going to trust God, fully lean upon God and what He said, or am I going to read something else, the circumstances, my feelings and emotions, or even the words of the devil or some other person? Doubt is like smoke accompanying fire. It’s always indicating that there’s something going on there. You can never have smoke without fire, and so it is for the believer. There’s a sense in which the fire of faith is always mixed with an element of smoke, and sometimes the fire seems very dim and the doubt seems to cloud. There seems to be more smoke than there is fire within our souls. But we are the Lord’s. We belong to Him.

But many of the sufferers in God’s Word find themselves struggling, find themselves doubting. You think of Job, brought to a point where through God’s dealing with him, there were struggles in his heart. Read the book of Job. Read it. See a man struggling. And we have this introduction concerning him, and all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. But as you read on, you see the frailty of his faith. Though he never cursed God, he was a man like many, tested, tried, but not cast away. Often the wavering that coincides with doubt is a tool in the hand of God to be used in our lives and to further refine us. It’s not something God wants us to do. He does not want us or wish us to doubt. But He will use it as an instrument. He will harness it for His purposes.

So keep in mind, when you think about doubt, the presence of doubt does not nullify the reality of your faith. So when you’re doubting, it doesn’t mean you’re not saved. It doesn’t immediately default to a position in which you say, I must be lost. I never believed in the first place. The flickering candle still gives light. A weak pulse, weak as it may be, still beats. And a trembling hand may still cling to the sufficiency of Christ. So I don’t want you to confuse doubt with rank unbelief. I don’t want you to mischaracterize it because I think that would lead into even more despair than is necessary. You are to realize that your doubting times, your experiences with doubt, is just something you’re going to go through, and again, for different reasons. But when you find your soul struggling with it, don’t say, the Lord has cast me away.

So that’s something of the character of doubt. But we come to then the cause of doubt. And again, this is not exhaustive. There are many things that could be looked at. When we see doubt, there are different angles from which it attacks, directions from which it comes. So let’s think of, well I have seven here. So we’ll look at them. And again, there are more. There are different ways you could go here. But the first I have here is ignorance of doctrine. Ignorance of doctrine. Ignorance opens the door to doubt. Not knowing things that God would have you know opens the door to doubt. In Hosea 4, verse 6, we read, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

And I’m tempted right now to take a little deviation into some examples of this, even recent things that I’m hearing, not here, but just reminding me, constant reminders of how ignorance is a real problem in the church. We wonder why people drift, we wonder why they fall away. Never rightly taught in the first place. Many believers stumble because they do not fully understand. And you say, well, what? What do they need to understand? Predominantly, they need to understand the person and work of Jesus Christ. I cannot overstate that focus. The anchor of our soul, the hope of the believer, the focus of their heart, that which is to fill their gaze is Jesus Christ.

And it’s utterly amazing how the church constantly goes into these subjects and topics that are peripheral and sometimes tangential to the Christian life. I’m so caught up. I see it. I see on social media people saying, this is a great preacher. And then I look at what he’s saying and I look at various recent sermons. It’s political. It’s all politics. They think, what kind of an appetite is this? What difference is there between someone who comes to the house of God to be fed some political information? It’s the same as a child who just eats candy entirely. It might give some sustenance to go a little ways, but it is not the means whereby Christians become strong because it does not give glory to Christ. The focus of heaven is Christ. The focus of the believer on earth is Christ. The appetite of the Christian is for Christ.

Now, again, it doesn’t mean to say you can’t go and study engineering or accounting or teaching or anything else. Of course, there are subjects within the breadth of this world that we can study. The appetite, especially as we come as believers together and congregate, coming together for the purpose of worshiping God, the focus is Jesus Christ. And there is a dire ignorance when it comes to the gospel. People do not know the grounds of their salvation. They do not understand their hope. They cannot even distinguish what makes the Christian, the Bible-believing Christian different from Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. They don’t know the difference.

This happened 30 years ago. I read something, this not prominent pastor. He has a little bit of a following and he was pushing for all these groups under the banner of Christendom should all come together to help America find its way to get back to its roots and its Christian heritage and so on and so forth. And so I was listing all these people, you know, in terms of framing sometimes with caveats, Pentecostals and Lutherans and you name it, Presbyterians, Baptists, all of them. Roman Catholics, Orthodox, they’re all there. And I read it and I immediately thought, we tried this before. Evangelicals and Catholics together was meant to pull all of Christendom together for social causes.

And ecclesiastical working together, ecclesiastical machinery for social causes. And when the arguments were happening between those who were for it and those who were against it, some of the most well-known ones who were against it were James Kennedy, John MacArthur, and R.C. Their voices were opposed to it because the voices were saying, well look, they’ve reformed, they’re different. Their understanding of justification, look they’re saying it’s faith, justification by faith. That’s what we believe, justification by faith. The problem was that Luther and those who were with him understood that what the Bible teaches is justification by faith alone, sans everything else. That Jesus Christ is sufficient, absolutely, entirely, to justify the believer. And by His pure righteousness, nothing can be improved on. Your works can only tarnish the works of Christ.

And we’re coming into it again. Prominent evangelical leaders, conservative, you know, liberals. Conservative evangelical voices saying, let’s all hold hands. They don’t know. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. You’re going to send people back to a system of doubt? A system, a system that makes use of doubt. A system that lifts up and exalts and sanitizes doubt. That for the Christian who says, the Bible-believing Christian who takes God as word and says, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, it’s presumptuous.

To say you need to go to suffer and experience a further purging after this life to be ready for heaven is to take away entirely from the finished work of Jesus Christ. The only purgatory, as I’ve said before, when we were dealing with Hebrews, going back to Hebrews 1, verse 3, where it says, but him, our Lord Jesus, having purged our sins, he sat down. He was satisfied with his work. And those who believe in him also may be satisfied. There’s no additional purging necessary. So ignorance makes room for doubt. Go into the Roman Catholic system. Go into the Orthodox system. Ask them, do they absolutely know? See what their trust is.

Pointing back to regeneration by baptism. Hoping things will be well because of some procedure by the church rather than saving work of Jesus Christ alone. We need to understand Galatians 2.16, what does Paul say? Knowing, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. So what are the causes of doubt? Ignorance. Are you furnished? Do you know the gospel? Do you study the person and work of Jesus Christ? Does our focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ sometimes wear you? Would you like if I would deviate into other things relevant to what’s happening in America today or in the wider world? I hope not. You need, I need, we all need Jesus Christ. We preach Christ and Him crucified.

So ignorance of doctrine, that’s one way. All doubt just floods in, it pours in there where there’s a void of understanding. But also corruption of nature. The corruption of nature. The best of believers struggle with their nature. Even those who have poured into books of doctrine their entire lives. The man who has written a systematic theology is still going to struggle because of the corruption of his nature. We are ever at war. Romans 7, the Apostle Paul, Romans 7, verse 21 and following. What does he say? I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind. and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members.

The corruption of our nature. So again, this is something that you can’t banish in this life. It follows you around because it’s you. It’s you, it’s your members, it’s your flesh. And doubt comes in there, there’s a, remember what our Lord Jesus said, the prince of this world cometh and finds nothing in me? But the enemy comes and doubt may come and find a foothold in you. The corruption of the nature then is a constant battle. Galatians 5.17, the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. Constant warfare. Even right now, right now to hear the word. Let’s say I’m preaching here trying to preach a message to help you with the problem of doubt. This inner battle that many of us will face, if not presently, at some point.

And even as I’m preaching it, you’re battling the corruption of your nature. Heaven’s going to be wonderful. For many reasons, not least of which is that when God communicates, when Christ communicates, we will not have any hindrance to hear what it is He is saying. This battle will be won finally when this vile body shall be likened unto His glorious body and so on. But here now you find this flesh, this body of yours, lusting against the Spirit, in a battle of the Spirit against the flesh. So part of it relates and pertains to this problem of doubt.

So as oxidation eats away at iron, so indwelling sin and the corruption of our nature gnaws away at assurance. And you may find yourself assured, feeling yourself assured, walking in assurance, and yet you can’t stay that way. Your nature will not permit you to stay there in a constant state of assurance. The flesh wants to pull down, pull you back to a state of doubt, because that’s in its character. So what do you need? What do you do for the corruption of your nature? You go to God for strength. If the thing that fights against the flesh is the Spirit, what is it you need? You need the Spirit.

And I don’t mean just in the sense that the abiding, indwelling experience of the Spirit, which is true for every Christian. You need Him empowering you. You need to be inviting and praying for the Holy Spirit. Asking for it. You need God on your side. That’s the only hope you have. When you’re asking for, when you’re fighting the flesh and you say, how do I win this battle? It is not by trying harder. It’s not by endeavoring to do better. It is reliance upon. You can’t do it by sheer force of will. Your nature, it’s your nature by force of will. You’re going to harness the will of the nature that you’re fighting against. How does that work? You can’t harness yourself to get deliverance from yourself. You need the Spirit of God, need the help of God.

When you’re sick, I hope this isn’t true, you don’t will yourself better, do you? You don’t just say, well, I’m just, okay, This morning, I’m feeling a little under the weather, I’m just gonna take five minutes and will myself into a condition of health. Now, some of us do try to maintain a positive frame, and in our house, sometimes we talk about this because I just try to ignore sickness, right? In my mind, I was like, I ignore it. It’s not there, it’s not there, I’m fine, and I ignore it. And sometimes it beats me down and wins the day, but usually I just, it’s not there, I’ll carry on.

But you think about it, what do you do? You take medicine, right? You’ve got a certain problem, and that’s the solution. This medicine, you take the medicine for the problem. You don’t will it, you’re taking an outside force, as it were, to help with the issue. So it is with the corruption of your nature. Its natural tendency is to doubt, that this problem of doubt is inherent in you, and you need help outside of yourself, and that’s where you go to God. You pray, Lord, fill me with your spirit, empower me with your spirit, that I may walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh, things even as doubt.

Third, reliance on sense rather than scripture. Another cause of doubt is to rely on our senses or what our senses perceive rather than Scripture. Now, we’ve been looking at this so I don’t need to dwell upon it, but Hebrews 11, you know, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So we are not to look to that. We are to look to what is permanent and what God has given. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever.

So we go to scripture. We must go to scripture. Don’t be looking and trying to assess. Again, I need to just, let me just leave it here. Whatever you’re going through, stop, whatever’s feeding the doubt, when you’re reading something that’s going on, and you’re trying to assess it, and you’re not going to Scripture, and you say, you look at the scenario, it feels like based on this providence, God is against me. Let me take that as an illustration. Based on this providence, it appears that God is against me. You go to Scripture and see what Scripture says about you, a believing soul. Instead of the doubts, you go to the Word and believe what He has said.

Another cause of doubt, another thing that doesn’t help us here is sluggishness in duty. Sluggishness in duty. Why do you doubt? Well, again, because you don’t do what the Lord tells you to do. Remember at the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord in Luke 22, why sleep ye? Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. Rise and pray. Awaken yourself. Seek God. Just as your body grows weak without nourishment, so your soul will falter when it neglects prayer. All the means of grace, word, prayer, the gathering of the saints, But especially this aspect of prayer, forsaking communion with God. How can you have assurance? How can you retaliate or respond to doubt if you will not seek God? You have to be praying. Prayer will help you. We take the shield of faith whereby we quench the fiery darts of the devil. We need to be constantly engaged in prayer, seeking God.

We were memorizing Romans 12. What does it say? Instant in prayer. Instant, steadfast, persisting, like a soldier on guard, watching. Don’t drop the ball. Don’t take your eye off that which is your duty to oversee. Instant in prayer. I’m sluggish about this. I’m reading the word. And for some people, even attending the means of grace. You’re sluggish. I struggle with doubt. How frequently do you go to the house of God? We’re at a point where the evangelical church says that the average attendance of churches is one to three times a month. One to three times a month. You wonder why the church is weak. You wonder why people vacillate in their faith. You wonder why they explore other ideas and they don’t know their left hand from their right. I mean, they’re clueless. In part, sometimes because of the places where they go, but also because they don’t even go to the places available for them to go to.

The fifth thing, discouragement from perceived barrenness. Sometimes doubt arises because we perceive ourselves to be barren. That is, not bearing fruit, or fruit that we think should be there in our lives. And we expect to see more spiritual growth. We expect to see and perceive in ourselves a strength that maybe we don’t see. And so we struggle, begin to assess ourselves based on, again, our assessment of fruit. And what’s the answer to this? What was the answer? How do you make something that is struggling to bear fruit, bear more fruit? Do you just stare at it and say, I wish it bore more fruit? Do you look at your own life and just say, I wish I bore more fruit?

Be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. For as much as ye know, your labor is not in vain in the Lord. You’ll bear fruit. Fruit that remains, as you focus on your labor for Christ. Don’t be weary in well-doing, in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not. Herein is our Father glorified when we bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples. So what’s the focus? Is our focus on the fruit or being a disciple? Be a disciple. Submit under the rule and reign of Jesus Christ. Focus on Him.

Oh, how we assess ourselves at times, and sometimes we’re wrong in our assessment, even again when we consider providence and the struggles that God may permit in your life, and things aren’t going exactly as you may have hoped. You may feel a chastening rod upon you, and you struggle with that. You begin to feel a wave of doubt come over you about this fresh new hardship that’s come into your life. But we’ll get to it in Hebrews 12. No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous. Nevertheless, it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness. It will bring fruit.

So maybe you’re desirous. I wish I had more fruit. I have doubts. More fruit, and then God’s going to bring you into a season of pruning. You’re saying, this is hard. Does He love me? Well, yes, He loves you. He’s doing for you the very thing you have been desirous to see accomplished. I want to be more fruitful. The Lord says, all right, a bit of refining, a little bit of pruning is just what you need. It’s because He loves us.

Remember, who started the work in you? Who started the work? Did you? Did you save yourself? Did you put the spirit into your own heart? Paul writes in Philippians 1, 6, being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. He’s gonna keep working in you. He began it, He’s gonna finish it.

Another matter, misreading God’s dealings. Misreading God’s dealings. This plays on what we’ve already considered a little. We go through these times when, again, it may not even always coincide with a hard time, so I’m keeping it separate. It doesn’t always mean that some difficulty has come upon us, but we can just fall into an experience where it feels like God has hidden Himself from us. And doubts arise. You see this in the psalmist, Psalm 13, verse 1. How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? You start having these doubts. God is distant. Prayer is a struggle. The Word seems flat. There’s no life in it. But remember, the sun still shines behind those clouds. God’s silence does not mean, by default, that He has abandoned.

Job again, Job 23, verse 8. Behold, I go forward, but He is not there. and backward, but I cannot perceive Him. On the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him. He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him, but He knoweth the way that I take. When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Job was seeking for God and couldn’t find Him. But he knew God was still there.

The seventh thing that opens the door to doubt is heeding Satan’s accusations, hating Satan. He’s described and titled, designated the accuser of the brethren, Revelation 12. He seeks to undermine your assurance. He might do something like point to past sins. I know what you did. I know what you did. And oh how he accuses, and he will whisper, you’re not forgiven. You’re not forgiven that sin. David was conscious of his past sins, sins committed years prior. In Psalm 25, this is many years into his life, he says, remember not the sins of my youth. I have to believe in some way they troubled him. Some of the sins of his youth still troubled his mind.

As devout as he was as a boy, and he was devout, sold out to God as he was, yet David had sins in his youth. And as an old man, his mind still went there and certainly Satan would have been encouraging such things. Ah, David, I remember. I remember before you were king. I remember before you were the hotshot. I remember, and you remember. And David’s cry is, as long as the Lord doesn’t remember, Lord remember not the sins of my youth. And the only answer David had is the only answer any of us have, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins. And so Paul can write in Romans 8, who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died.

It’s his mind onto the grounds of his assurance. Recently, I was reading Micah 7, and I was really encouraged by the language of verses 8 and 9. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall, I shall rise. My mind went straight to the devil. Oh, rejoice not against me, you diabolical character. When I fall, I shall arise. Your life is hid with Christ in God. The resurrection is assured. Life is guaranteed. He that hath the Son hath life.

So these are some of the ways in which we open the door to doubt. Again, there are others. It floods in because of these things. So, quickly, the cure. What’s the cure? We see it in our text. Isaiah 26, verse three. There’s a remedy for doubt. What is it? It’s here in this text. Not first the source of it, the source of this cure is thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee. The source of peace is not going to come about by a change of our circumstances. There are people who have everything this world could ever ask for, and they are still riddled with doubt and miserable. But it is God who keeps us. It is our Savior we look to. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace. Only Him. And we need Him. Oh, how we need Him. We need to turn to Him. This peace depended on us, it would be fleeting indeed. But the source is to go to Him. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace. It’s God’s work to keep you in peace. It’s God’s work.

But there are stipulations, not only the source, but the stipulations. The stipulations for this cure. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. So there’s a mind that has stayed on God, it’s settled, it’s fixed, it’s anchored in God or in Christ. So there are a number of things you need to do. And it ties into this. this text, but I want you to do something for me. I want you to go to John 20. I was thinking about this this afternoon. I’m thinking this is perhaps the best way to illustrate this problem of doubt and how the three things, the three stipulations I’m putting for you is helping you with doubt, are illustrated for us in John 20.

Now, we all have heard of doubting Thomas. Who hasn’t? Poor Thomas, forever etched into the history of the world, doubting Thomas. This man who did tremendous good with his life and did through faith and tore up parts of the world with the gospel for the Lord’s glory and went far, as far as we’re aware, way out east. Taking the gospel, doing a work for God, and yet here we are, doubting Thomas. Well, part of the reason for it, at least, is because of this chapter. So I have three things that really is pulling this all together. If you’re dealing with doubt, first, take Christ at his word.

Now, when you come to John 20, you have this occasion, the evening of the day our Lord rose from the dead. And you see, verse 19, The same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands on his side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you, as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained. But Thomas, one of the twelve called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

Oh, there’s so much here. Our Lord had told them time and time again, I’m going to Jerusalem, I’m going to suffer under the elders and the chief priests, I’m going to be put to death, and I will rise again. Thomas had seen all that unfold. He knew they had been arrested, for sure, there in Jerusalem, crucified, and the other part of it. Why, what’s the struggle? Why not believe? It’s not like he hadn’t seen the Lord Jesus walk up in the middle of a funeral and raise the dead. He knew what the Lord was capable of. But here he is in a period of doubt.

What does he need to do? He needs to take the Lord at His word. Verse 26, after days again His disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace be unto you. There’s the Lord speaking shalom, peace. He’s giving peace. He’s removing doubt. His very utterance here is to drive out doubt. It’s by His presence and His Word, it drives out the doubt. The disciples were made glad when they saw the Lord, but it was also in pairing with the things that He said.

So, our Lord continues to deal with them. Verse 27, “Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands. Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side and be not faithless, but believing. Be not faithless, but believing. Believe what I’m saying. Believe what you see. Believe what is going on. Believe.” Finally, then, Thomas. He takes the Lord at His word. I don’t believe that he thrusts his hand into His hand. I don’t believe he does any of that. Some people have said, Thomas thrust his hand into the Lord. No, I don’t say that. That’s what he said was the stipulation, what was required, and the Lord invites it, go ahead. But I don’t believe Thomas needed it. He answers, he doesn’t thrust his hand in, he answers and said unto him, my Lord and my God.

So take Christ at His word. That’s the first thing. Just take Him at His word. You need to go to the word and take the Lord at His word. Secondly, rest in Christ’s person and work. That’s the focus of this passage. The Lord shows, in both occasions, verse 20, to the other disciples, shows His hands and His side, and it makes the disciples glad. It is Christ’s person and His work. This is the same Jesus. It’s the same one we walked with. We’re not hallucinating here. It’s the actual, real Jesus we walked with, raised from the dead. There are his wounds. We saw. Some of us know. We were standing there. We can testify to his death, his person and his work, himself and his work.

That’s your study. That is your study. You want deliverance from doubt, Christ Himself and His work. That’s your study. And you pray for this preacher. I’d be quite happy for you to pray, Lord, let him never deviate from Christ’s personal work. Never let him. Let our preacher focus, laser focus on the personal work of Christ. That will help. You see the sufficiency of His work, the completion of His atonement. The wounds are visible, but the victory is secured. Here He is. But also, repent and return to Christ after sin. Repent and return to Christ after sin. Satan loves to come in on the back. He comes and tempts you at the front, and then he comes in behind to taunt. He tempts. And you fall, and then he comes back and he taunts. And your only hope, Christian, is to flee to Jesus Christ. Get out of the presence of the devil. Resist the devil, he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, he will draw nigh to you.

So return to Christ. And this is what Thomas needed to do. He needed to return to the Lord. He needed to get away from being isolated. Yes, be with the disciples, be with other believers, but also get with the Lord and where He is. Return to Christ, and this is what the Lord does for him. It leads him to repentance. Can you not hear? It’s not language of repentance in terms of the specific speech, but you have to feel the repentance in his language, don’t you? In verse 28, my Lord and my God. It’s the expression of a man finding relief, a man who’s turning from his doubts, bearing his own soul, all of him before his God with a quiver in his voice. That’s what you must do. Take Christ at His word, rest in Christ’s person and work, repent and return to Christ after sin.

That is your life. What is the tonic for doubt? Take Christ at His word, go to it, read it, meditate every day, take Him at His word, rest in His person and work, and every time you fall, every time you fail, every time you succumb to any sin, quickly repent, return to Christ. Doubt, it’s a battle. Doubts will come, but they need not conquer. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee. See the focus? Get on, get your focus on Jesus Christ. Stay there. Study His character. Understand His attributes. Fill your heart with His omnipotence. Reassure yourself of His covenant love. By God’s grace, there will build in you a resilience to this inner battle of doubt. May God help us all.

Let’s pray. As we close, maybe you’re beyond doubt and you are in a condition of unbelief. The answer for you is the same. Go to Christ. Read his word every day. Focus upon who he is and what he has done. See that thread, that crimson thread from Genesis to Revelation that keeps you focused upon the atoning work of Jesus Christ. See the glory of who He is, the wonder of what He has done, and then see, it was all for me. And when you can get there, get to the place where you see that what He did was all for you, then do not linger. Him that cometh to me, Jesus said, I will in no wise cast out.

Lord, we ask for blessing upon this Thy word. To the end for which it has been preached, that for the glory of God may aid us in our battle against doubt, help. We ask that we would be strong in the Lord and our faith might increase. So bless this people, give them this peace in this text and give them the grace that their minds would be stayed upon thee because they trust only in Thee. Bless our fellowship. Strengthen us for the week ahead. Keep our step from falling. Deliver us from evil. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of all the people of God now and evermore. Amen.