I Doubt It: On Doubt, Evidence and Belief

Is there evidence to believe in God? What about my doubts? This sermon examines why it is good to have doubts, what the different kinds of doubts are, and whether there is evidence to believe in Jesus Christ.

https://www.anushjohn.com/post/i-doubt-it-doubt-evidence-and-belief

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Transcript

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Good morning Let's say that you received an email from a friend and it says, "I'm in deep trouble. Can you send me over some money right now?" Now you can have multiple reactions to that email. Maybe you get upset and think, "Man, how could this happen to my friend?" And you send over some money right away. Or you may be angry because this is an obvious scam, and you delete the email. Or you think, "Oh, I wonder what's going on." So you call your friend, and you find out, yes, they are indeed in some trouble. They got into a car accident, and now they're in the hospital, and you do send them the money after you found out that they are in trouble. This morning in a sermon entitled, I Doubt It, I want to look at the issue of doubt, evidence, and belief, and our text is from Luke chapter eleven. Verses twenty-nine to thirty-two, when the crowds were increasing, he began to say, "This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here." I've divided this sermon into three parts, and we will spend most of our time in the second part. But first, let's look at a sign to believe. The people in this conversation were seeking a sign to believe in Jesus. They were seeking evidence to believe. Let's say that for your twenty-first birthday, your friends surprise you with a trip, so you don't know where you're going, but you get into a car with them, and three hours later you are at this bridge, and you find out you're about to go bungee jumping. You're not particularly fond of bungee jumping for, for whatever reason. And, uh, and so what do you want to know before you bungee jump? And while you think about what you want to know, let me tell you the tragic story of this woman in Brazil who in June 2026 went bungee jumping with her friend, and after the three people threw her over the bridge, they realized that they hadn't tied the rope to her ankles. Of course, she did not make it. So what do you want to know before you bungee jump? Well, you want to know if the rope is strong, you want to know if the rope is elastic enough, you want to know if they're going to tie the rope to your ankles. You want to know if this is a reputed company. You want to know if they have had issues in the past. You want to know evidence before you make the jump, and it's good to want to know evidence. Yeah. Why then would Jesus call this generation an evil generation because they were seeking evidence to believe? And to understand that, we need to look secondly at the issue of doubt. Now, we all have doubts about different things. Some doubts are good, some doubts are not so good, but how do we know which doubt is good or not? There are three kinds of doubts which I want to look at this morning. The first is called intellectual doubt. Intellectual doubt is when something does not seem to add up intellectually. You have philosophical questions, you have rational questions, you have intellectual questions. This doubt is caused by a lack of information or evidence. So you ask, is there evidence for the existence of God? Can I believe in Scripture? Was the resurrection of Christ a historical event? How do faith and science fit together? Which worldview gives answers to our deepest questions? You want to see the evidence, and this doubt is answered by evidence. And based on the evidence, your doubt is clarified and you make the jump. You take a leap of faith and you believe. And so you call your friend, you find out they had a car accident and your doubt is clarified, and now you believe, and you send over the money. So doubt is a good thing. It helps you not to be naive. So when you see your next video on social media, you have to have a doubt. Is this real or no? Because many times it need not be real three days after Jesus was crucified on Easter Sunday, He rose up again and He appeared to the disciples in the upper room, and they were scared, and now they were shocked and surprised. They didn't know what to say. Jesus gave them evidence that He lived. But one of the disciples was not there. Thomas wasn't there in that visit. And so when he came back, the other disciples told him, "Jesus is alive. He appeared to us." And Thomas said, "Unless I put my finger in the wounds of His hands and on His side, I will not believe." Jesus let him sit with his doubt for about a week, and one week later, Jesus comes again to the upper room on the next Sunday and says this to Thomas in John chapter twenty, verse twenty-seven and twenty-eight: "Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Put out your hand and place it on my side. Do not disbelieve but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!'" Thomas wanted evidence. Jesus gave him the evidence to satisfy his intellectual doubt. Intellectual doubt is answered by reasoning and study and evidence. But when we study the infinite, when we have to do anything with God, we are connecting with the infinite, and we have got to allow for mystery. Not every question will be answered to your satisfaction when you're dealing with the things of God, and we will never understand everything perfectly. But you still can move forward in faith. So the goal in spiritual matters is not to have absolute certainty, but to have sufficient evidence to justify trust. The goal in spiritual matters is not to have absolute certainty, but to have sufficient evidence to justify trust. So intellectual belief means that you have reasons for your faith. You know why you believe what you believe. And this is what we do in apologetics. We explain intellectually why we believe what we believe. if there's somebody here who is from another worldview, you're, you're from a atheistic worldview, Muslim worldview, Hindu or Buddhist worldview, and you have intellectual doubts about the Christian worldview, I would love to meet with you. I would love to have a coffee with you to, to hear the reasons for your worldview and answer any questions you have about the Christian worldview. The second kind of doubt is called emotional doubt And this is due to previous experiences, and this is usually due to negative experiences like pain and tragedy and suffering and disappointment, which results in fear and anxiety and, and worry and anger and hatred. And the emotional pain results in distrust and doubt So you were hurt by people that you trusted, and now you doubt relationships in general. That is emotional doubt. Maybe you had a prayer that was not answered, and now you have a doubt if God is gonna answer your next prayer. That is emotional doubt. Or you had a personal tragedy, a grief or suffering, and now you have doubt whether God is good, whether God is loving, or whether His promises are for you. Emotional doubt is the skepticism when belief is based on emotions. Jesus had three friends by the name of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and they lived in this little town called Bethany, which was about two miles away from Jerusalem over the Mount of Olives. And they were good friends, and one day they sent a message to Jesus saying, "Your friend Lazarus is sick." And for reasons that they did not know at that time, Jesus delayed His coming. He delayed His coming so that by the time He got there, not only was Lazarus worse in his sickness, he had died from the sickness. Not only had he died, he was buried for four days. It was the Jewish custom at that time to bury somebody on the day that they died. So Jesus came four days after he died, and Martha, his sister, meets Him, and this is what she says. In John 11:21-22, "Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.'" Now, Martha had two things going on. One is she had intellectual belief. She said, "I know that whatever you ask God, He will give you." That is intellectual belief. But she also had emotional doubt, and that's why she says, "If you had been here, my brother would not have died." The pain from her brother's death led her to express doubt about Jesus's concern and care She was essentially saying, "Where were you when I needed you?" The issue with emotional doubt is that it is very raw I can give you a thousand reasons to satisfy your intellectual doubt. But if you have one reason that causes emotional doubt, you will forget about the thousand reasons for your intellectual doubt and hold on to this one reason for the emotional doubt When you have a conversation with a Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim, those three religions are from Eastern cultures, are predominantly in Eastern cultures. And one of the important distinctions between the Eastern cultures and the West is that there is a very strong family bond in Eastern culture. So if you're from any one of these backgrounds, you will be able to recognize it. There's a very strong family bond in the Eastern cultures. So when you talk to a Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist, you can give all the intellectual evidence for who God is and what the Bible means. But because of their emotional bonds to their family, it is very hard for them to believe But what is more important? Are facts more important or feelings more important? Let's say that you slept late on a Sunday night. You have teenagers at home, and as we all know, teenagers love to spend time with their parents. So you were talking to your parents late into the night till 2:00 AM. And so you slept late and, uh, you had to wake up early. So you slept and your alarm went off at 6:00 AM. When your alarm goes off at 6:00 AM, it may not feel like 6:00 AM, but the fact is that it is 6:00 AM. What do you do? Do you say, it doesn't feel like 6:00 AM, so I'm gonna sleep some more"? No. You will get fired from your job. Instead, what you do is you base your decision on the fact that it is 6:00 AM and not on how you feel about 6:00 AM or not. That's good. All right. That's good. So how do you overcome emotional doubt? If you have intellectual doubt, we can give evidence and overcome intellectual doubt. How do you overcome emotional doubt? Is it through more evidence? No C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity said this in his chapter on faith, "This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why faith is such a necessary virtue. Unless you teach your moods where to get off, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion." How do you fix the emotional doubt? Well, you fix it by recognizing it and not misclassifying it as intellectual doubt. The problem that happens is that you have emotional doubt, and you think that that emotional doubt is reason enough to act on. And with emotion, it's not reason, it is feeling. So you need to recognize that what you have, the doubt you have, is emotional doubt and not intellectual doubt, and you need to intentionally act upon the intellectual doubt and not on the emotional doubt. And by doing this, you are not ignoring your emotions. You are recognizing your emotions, you are recognizing your emotional doubt, but you're choosing to act on your intellectual doubt. With Martha, Jesus did not ignore her emotional problem. He responded to her emotional doubt with His presence. But if you don't separate the two and you continue to act on your emotional doubt, it may lead to the next kind of doubt, which is the most dangerous, and that is volitional doubt Volitional doubt is when you're unwilling to believe or obey what you know is true. Philosophically, the soul of humans are divided into three, not psychologically, but philosophically. They're divided into three. The mind, emotions, and will. Intellectual doubt has to do with the mind. Emotional doubt has to do with the emotions. Volitional doubt has to do with the will. Volitional doubt can come from a weak or immature faith, but many times it comes from a willful choice. When our kids were younger, we would send them up to sleep early. Um, around seven thirty or eight o'clock, we would send our kids to-- up, up to sleep because we, you know, for obvious reasons, we wanted them to grow Uh, y- I mean, you have intellectual doubt, I see. So let me- Let me, let me answer that. Well, the reason why I sent them is because their growth hormone or people's growth hormones are secreted maximally during the third phase of NREM sleep and REM sleep. So the longer you get the first three hours of sleep, your growth hormone is, is maximal. So we sent them to sleep around seven thirty or eight o'clock. But they were avid readers, so what would happen is every now and then when I went up for something else, I would find the light in their room turned on, and I, I tiptoe to their room and they have heard me already, and because they've heard me, they quickly put their book down and they pretend to sleep. Not knowing that we've all done the same thing. But the issue is, if they were really sleeping, I could wake them up. But when you're pretending to sleep, I can't wake you up Isn't it? When you have chosen to be asleep, you cannot be woken up The people of Israel were slaves in the land of Egypt for 400 years. And through Moses, they were led out of Egypt to the land of Canaan, and it took them about, uh, one and a half years. So one and a half years after they left Egypt, they are knocking on the doors of the promised land. They pick 12 spies from amongst their 12 tribes and send them to the promised land to spy the, uh, land and to, and to give them a report. They come back and give a report and say, "This land is not for us. We are too weak there. There are too many people there. They are too strong. We cannot conquer it." This is how the people respond. In Numbers chapter 14, verses one through four, it says, "Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, 'Would that we had died in the land of Egypt, or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?' And they said to one another, 'Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.'" Now, they had seen the hand of God for about two years. They had seen the 10 plagues afflict Egypt. They had walked through a dry path in the middle of the Red Sea. They had been fed with manna every day. In fact, in their bellies at that time, there was manna. They had drunk water from the rock in the middle of the wilderness, and there was the evidence of the presence of God in a cloud. So they had evidence to satisfy their intellectual doubt but they did not act on it. They chose to not believe in God. And as a result, of the two million people that were in that gathering, just two of them made it to the Promised Land Once you have volitional doubt, there is no amount of evidence that can satisfy you. No amount of evidence So how can we overcome volitional doubt? We overcome volitional doubt by recognizing volitional doubt as a will issue, not an intellectual issue. The problem, just like with emotional doubt, is by thinking that volitional doubt is reason for me to reject. No, volitional doubt is a choice you make. Your reason is in the intellectual part of it. Why did Jesus call them an evil generation? Was it because they had intellectual doubt? No. Thomas had intellectual doubt, and Jesus gave him evidence. Did they have emotional doubt? No. Martha had emotional doubt, and Jesus gave her his presence. They had volitional doubt, and therefore Jesus called them an evil generation. Which brings us to the third part of the sermon, the evidence for belief. So the question becomes, was there enough evidence for them to believe that Jesus was the Christ, or Jesus had divine authority without any more evidence? Because they were asking for more evidence. Turn your Bibles to Luke chapter eleven, verse twenty, this is what it says. "But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." Jesus said that the exorcism that he does is evidence of his divine authority. In fact, miracles happen throughout the Old Testament as evidence for the divine authority. In Peter's first sermon after the resurrection, this is what he says in Acts chapter two verse twenty-two: "Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs." The miracles of Jesus show his divine authority. So then the question is, did Jesus do enough miracles prior to this conversation to give them enough evidence that he had divine authority? Last night, I gave a talk on the miracles of Jesus, and I talked about the four different kinds of miracles he did. There is the healing miracles, there's nature miracles, there's exorcism, and there's the resurrection miracles. Of these four categories, he did at least one miracle from each category prior to this conversation. In fact, I looked at all the miracles that Jesus did prior to this conversation, there are 26 miracles that He did. And I looked through the 26 miracles. Out of these 26, five of them were done with His disciples or with a very small group. But 21 of them, including raising a dead person to life, was done in public. So was there enough evidence? Absolutely. They just rejected the evidence that was already there. This was not intellectual doubt because the evidence was already there. This was volitional doubt, and there is no amount of evidence that is going to satisfy them. There's no one more miracle that Jesus could do that would satisfy them. Have you wondered why Jesus, after the resurrection, He did not show Himself to any of the Jewish authorities? Why? Because they didn't have intellectual doubt. They had volitional doubt. Even if Jesus came and showed Himself to them, they would not believe This incident was likely happening in Judea. About one year prior in Galilee, a similar question was raised, and this was Jesus' response to that. In Matthew chapter 12 verse 40, it says, "For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." The three days of Jonah in the belly of the fish was a sign pointing to the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and the death and the resurrection of Jesus is the greatest miracle. All these other twenty-one and the thirty-nine individual miracles that he did notwithstanding, the greatest miracle is the resurrection of Jesus. There is significant evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. If you have intellectual doubt, there is significant evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. About two months ago, I gave a lecture in Thailand on the topic of the evidence for the resurrection, and there is more evidence for the resurrection of Jesus than most things that we believe in. God wants you to come to Him God wants you to get baptized and be part of a church. God wants you to grow in fellowship, in community. God wants you to read His Word and spend time in His presence. God wants you to get involved in the ministry. We know all these things. Why don't we do them? Have we chosen not to do that? What sign are you waiting for? The evidence is already there. If you're waiting for a sign when the evidence is already there, that is not intellectual doubt, that is volitional doubt, and no sign is good enough because you have already made a choice. On January 13th, 1982 Air Florida Boeing seven eighty-seven, flight ninety left from Washington National Airport. This plane had come from Miami earlier on in the day, and the pilot was trying to get back to Florida. But there was a snowstorm in Washington, and so the airport was shut down for a few hours. When they finally opened it back up, only one runway was open, and everybody was waiting to get on the runway. They de-iced the plane. He came to the runway, but he had to wait there for forty-five minutes. At the end of forty-five minutes, when the signal was given, the pilot, Larry Wheaton, should have turned back to de-ice the plane again because ice was accumulating on the wings of the plane for forty-five minutes. Worse, he did not turn the de-icing system of the plane itself. Instead, because he wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, he got on the runway and took off The plane reached an elevation of only a few hundred feet when less than a mile away from the runway and less than two miles from the White House, it crashed into the 14th Street Bridge and into the Potomac River Of the 79 people on board, all of them died on impact except six of them. But now the six people that had survived the impact had to now survive the icy waters of the Potomac River. There was bad traffic that day, so rescue was not easy to come. People were watching as the six people were struggling in the icy waters. Their horrified silence was broken by a rescue helicopter that hovered over these six people and let down a rope, a rescue rope. And the rope happens to land into the hand of a man you've not heard before. He's a forty-six-year-old bank examiner by the name of Arland Williams. Arland Williams gets the rope, and he has life in his hands. Instead, he turns to his stranger, to his co-passenger on the plane, and gives the rope to them. That passenger gets up and is rescued. The helicopter comes back again and back again, third, fourth time. And every single time, Arland Williams has life in his hands because the rope falls into his hands and all five times he gives it to a stranger that's next to him The helicopter comes back a sixth time. But this time, the wreckage of the plane that Arland Williams was on overturns, and overcome by exhaustion and hypothermia, he died He was the only passenger on that plane to die by drowning. Ladies and gentlemen, Arland Williams made a choice to save people, and in the process lost his life Two thousand years ago, Jesus made a choice to go to the cross. And through the cross and the empty tomb, to those with intellectual doubts, Jesus gave the evidence that he fully satisfied the demands of justice and the demands of love. And the resurrection shows that he is indeed divine. For those with emotional doubt, he shows that he will go through any extent to save humanity. And because of what he went through, when a person with emotional doubt goes through the darkest of nights and the deepest of valleys, the cross shows that no one else will support you more than Jesus, who has been through the darkest of nights and the deepest of valleys. And for those with volitional doubt, Jesus shows that he willingly chose to give up his life to save humanity, and because of that, we can willingly choose to follow him. Let's pray. I'm gonna give the opportunity for three groups of people to respond to this And in response, I'm going to ask you to stand up. If you're one of these three groups of people, I'm going to ask you to stand up and we will pray together. Maybe there's somebody here who had or has intellectual doubts, and you're not a believer. You are from another worldview, and you've been exploring the Christian faith And today you want to decide to become a believer, to follow the Jesus who gave his life for you. I'm going to ask you to stand up and we will pray together Or maybe there's somebody here with emotional doubts Maybe you're a believer, but things have gone wrong. Your prayers have not been answered, and you have been doubting God's goodness I'm going to ask you to stand up and we can pray together Or maybe there's somebody here with volitional doubt. You may be a Christian but you have chosen not to follow God fully for whatever reason, you can also stand up and we will pray together If there's anyone here who's never invited Jesus into your life, I'm going to pray a simple prayer. It's not a magical prayer, but if it's a prayer that comes from the bottom of your heart, God will hear it and he will answer it. You can pray something like this, "Dear Lord Jesus, I am a sinner and I cannot save myself." I have intellectual doubts, but thank you for the evidence that you have given through your life, your death, your resurrection. And the basis-- and on the basis of the facts, I want to decide to follow you. I ask you to come into my life and make me complete Help me to live a life that's worthy of you, and thank you for the promise of eternal life Heavenly Father, I pray for those of us who struggle with emotional doubt Things go wrong all the time, Lord But we have used those things to doubt you even when there was clear evidence that you are good and you're kind and you're trustworthy Help us to believe on the intellectual reasons, on the facts, and not on our feelings I pray for those of us who have volitional doubt. We know what needs to be done. We have seen the evidence. We have seen your goodness. We know that we need to follow you fully, but we don't. We have reasons that we are convinced in our own mind are good reasons, but they are not. They are just excuses Help us to intentionally decide to follow you and follow you fully. In Jesus' name, amen