Have you ever believed something so strongly that you staked your life on it? Maybe you were ostracized for it, perhaps even persecuted? Then you came to question if it was true. Maybe doubted you were on the right path. John the Baptist had such an experience.
Yes, that John the Baptist, a distant relative of Jesus, the fearless preacher of repentance. The religious star of his day. Great crowds came out to him in the wilderness, repented, and were baptized. John was uncompromising in his faith and defiant in the face of persecution. John who, when he saw Jesus, boldly declared, “Behold the Lamb of God.”
But in Luke 7, John found himself in prison and in danger of being put to death, and still the kingdom had not come. So, he sent two of his Disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Verse 20). Was John struggling with doubt? Had he lost his faith? Was he experiencing spiritual defeat?
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For a clue, let’s look at John’s expectations of the Messiah. John said in Luke 3:17 the message: “He (the Messiah) will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house — make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
John’s problem was that Jesus’ ministry simply did not fit his expectations of the Messiah. Jesus’ style was different. He taught in parables, healed the sick. Jesus didn’t hesitate to call sin, sin but he did it with a loving invitation to come to him and learn a different way of thinking and living.
Note how Jesus reacts to John’s question. Did he condemn John? No! He noted the prophetic image of the Messiah was not a political kingdom, but the kingdom of God. He told John’s disciples to look around and see “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” Jesus’ ministry was fulfilling the prophecies of the Messiah.
What about our doubts and questions? First, we need to see the difference between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is a matter of the mind: we cannot understand something. Unbelief is a matter of will: we refuse to believe something. In John’s case, his inquiry was not born of willful unbelief, but of confusing questions nourished by physical and emotional strain.
Being a Christian doesn’t mean we never have any questions. God can handle our doubts, and he welcomes our questions. Oswald Chambers wrote, “Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong, it may be a sign that he is thinking.”
What is doubt? The Greek word often used for doubt is to be caught between two ideas. Picture an inability to decide, to act. God wants us to wrestle with our questions. Clarify what two ideas you’re caught between. How Biblical are the two ideas? What is your hang-up in choosing between them? Are you scared to choose one over the other? Pray about these things and ask God to clarify them for you.
Only as we face our doubts honestly can we begin to resolve them. Your doubts can be the gateway to a better perspective of a trustworthy God who wants a closer relationship with us.
Tucson faith leaders, we would like to include your original sermon or scriptures of encouragement. Sermons must be written by the person submitting them, not borrowed from another source or writer. If you are a faith leader from any religion or denomination, please contact Sara Brown at sbbrown@tucson.com.
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