Sin and Doubting
Well, praise Jesus
today everyone. Sin and doubting are a big problem in Christianity. If you call
yourself a follower of Jesus, yet you are in sin or you doubt, you will not
bear good fruit, you won't be able to walk forward in your faith with Jesus,
and you certainly won't encourage anyone else to come into the household of the
faith. Now I remember when I was living in sin, this made me doubt a lot. When
I was doing things that I knew Jesus did not approve of, I started to go more and
more into the world, and I doubted even to the point where I didn't know if
Jesus existed. Maybe He was a historical figure, but maybe He doesn't really
care for me, or maybe He wasn't even truly historical.
Now, during this
time of Easter, a lot of people are researching the synoptic gospels, Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, and how the account happened of Jesus resurrecting from
the dead. And if you look at this account of Jesus resurrecting in the empty
tomb, and Peter and John coming to the tomb, and the women, including Mary and
Mary Magdalene, each of these accounts are slightly different, which the
difference in the accounts allows Satan to be able to accuse the scripture, or
to accuse the accounts, or to even accuse you if you're reading it, and say,
why would you believe this when there are different accounts? One account says
there's one angel, another account says there's two, another says that Mary
Magdalene was by herself, and another says she was with these other women. And
when you look from these different accounts, the devil can easily say, “see,
look, these guys can't even figure it out, Jesus probably didn't resurrect from
the dead, and you shouldn't believe anyway.”
So sin and doubting will totally wreck your
faith. And even in the day that Jesus was resurrecting from the dead, the
disciples doubted. The women came back, and after seeing the angels, they spoke
with the disciples, including Mary Magdalene, and they said, Jesus is risen
from the dead. And all the disciples thought it was an old wives' tale, they thought it seemed ridiculous, just, you know, a fairy tale. They
did not believe. And then later, when Jesus appeared to the eleven, He rebuked
them for their unbelief. They didn't believe that Jesus had resurrected from
the dead, even though He had said He would. They didn't believe the women's
testimony. They just had all of this doubt, they were full of doubt. We also
know that Thomas doubted. He said, unless I put my hand in the Lord's side, I
will not believe. You know, unless I touch His hands and touch His side, I'm
not going to believe that Jesus resurrected from the dead. And to this day we
know Thomas as doubting Thomas.
But Jesus proved
that He did resurrect from the dead, and He told us that how blessed are those
that believe without seeing. So many of the early apostles got to actually see.
And some people that even saw the miracles, including the Pharisees, they did
not believe. They either doubted or they were wanting to live sinful lives.
They had hate in their heart. So seeing itself does not make us disciples of
Jesus. It does not make us good people or righteous, where a lot of Christians
go wrong is not having faith and allowing the devil to etch away at their
belief and destroy their faith due to unbelief.
And this is really
sad because as soon as we allow the devil in, no longer can we glorify God or
have peace in our heart. No longer are we going to want to share the gospel,
but we will become totally reclusive in regard to our faith. Because we won't
even believe ourselves that Jesus is the risen King. I'm telling you this is a
bad thing guys, because when I was in church, I got to the point where I didn't
know if I believed in the gospel. And I was not about to tell anyone outside of
church the gospel of Jesus Christ, because I knew I'd be a hypocrite if I did.
If I said Jesus is alive, instantly the devil would accuse me saying, “Well you
don't even believe that.” Or if I said you have to repent of sin and get right
with God. I couldn't say that because I knew I wasn't right with God. I was
messing around with women and doing things that I shouldn't do. So if we are
living a sinful life or if we are doubting God, it makes us 100% fruitless. And
one of the things that the resurrection of Jesus does is it asks us a question,
do we have faith that Jesus resurrected from the dead? Do we believe that He is
the resurrected Messiah? Do we believe that He is still alive today? Do we
trust Him? Do we see Him at work in the world and in our heart? Or are we like doubting
Thomas or the disciples who doubted? Are we like those who are caught in sin
and in doubt and fruitless?
As for me, I have
put my faith now in Jesus and I have seen His works personally. So even though
I was not physically there at Calvary, although I haven't physically went into
the empty tomb and seen the grave clothes sitting there like how Peter did, I
know that Jesus is alive because I have seen His supernatural works in my life.
When I asked Jesus to manifest to me, to reveal Himself to me in a way that
makes sense in my own life, He did that for me and I have confirmation that
Jesus is the risen Messiah.
Now if you are not
sure and you are plagued with doubt and with sin, I want to encourage you to
ask Jesus to reveal Himself to you in a way that makes sense in your own mind
and in your heart. I think Jesus will meet any doubter who has genuine doubt
that really wants to know the truth, but He is not just going to show up to
anyone who is an unreasonable doubter that for the sake of wanting to live
their own sinful life, doubt the gospel or doubt Jesus. There are a lot of
people who cast doubt on the gospels or cast doubt on Jesus' ministry simply
because they want to continue to live their sinful life. They actually don't
have legitimate doubt. It's not like, I wonder if Jesus will show up to me, I
wonder if there is hope for me in the name of Jesus. They are not hoping or
wondering about things like that. They are just trying to cast doubt so that
they can blur the lines of good and evil and continue to live their sinful
lives without anyone pointing out their sin. That's wickedness.
This is the same
thing the Pharisees did. The Pharisees were very jealous of the disciples
because the disciples could work miracles, the Pharisees couldn't. They would
watch Jesus and the disciples working miracles, and instead of being amazed
that someone like Lazarus was resurrected from the dead, all they wanted to do
was kill the disciples and kill Jesus, get Him off the face of the earth,
otherwise everyone is going to go after these guys. But our reaction should be
awe. We should be in awe that Jesus resurrected from the dead. We should want
to love Him because He laid down His life for us and He showed us what love
truly was, to lay down His life for His friends. If we have love for Jesus, He
will resurrect us from the dead. He will bring us back to life physically and
spiritually. He will give us the life that is meaningful, and He will make us
bear much good fruit.
So will we trust
Jesus? Will we have faith in Him and stop doubting and stop sinning? Or will we
continue to go the way of sin and doubt which leads ultimately to death? I hope
this encourages someone to seek Jesus, to have revelation from Him, and to find
the truth and to walk away from sin and doubting. May the grace of Jesus be
with you.
