When Believers Doubt: John the Baptizer

Okay, again, my name is Brian. We have been in this summer series called the Cloud of Witnesses. And we have taken this out of Hebrews chapter 12. Really? And we've been looking at different characters in the Bible a lot from the Old Testament. Today we're going to be looking at a New Testament character and probably the most well known character that we'll have looked at in this series. And basically we're taking this passage from Hebrews chapter 12 that says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we just sang about this that their voices fill the sky. Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter, the beginner and the ender of our faith for the joy set before him. He endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him. So we look to Jesus and all these other people are helping us consider him who endured such opposition from sinners that you will not grow weary and lose heart. This is. I'm going to a little throwback here, maybe a little spoiler alert. This guy's name is Gandalf. Gandalf the Gray. Is that right? Gandalf the Grey, you nerds. No, I'm joking. This is from Lord of the Rings, okay? Well known movie. I asked, my son saw this picture and he was like, oh, that's from Boss Baby. Boss Baby has a little alarm clock with Gandalf. It's not. It's not from Boss Baby, actually. And anyways, you know the scene, right? He's. I don't know if he's fighting a Balrog or the monster's name is Balrog, I don't know. But he's fighting some kind of monster and he says this infamous line. You shall not pass. Right? And it's this big thing and he's there with Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli and Frodo and Samwise Gamgee and the other little hobbits that no one knows their names. And they're on this journey to get rid and destroy the ring, right? This ring of power. And so this thing happens and then as he's fighting, right, this monster kind of gets his whip around Gandalf's foot and he screams out, fly, you fools. And then he falls to his death, seemingly. And everyone that's watching this is looking at Gandalf in utter disbelief. Right. He's dead. He can't be dead. He's Gandalf. He's supposed to help us on our journey. He can't die. But maybe Gandalf isn't the hero. They have to wrestle with this. Maybe he's not the hero we thought he was. Maybe we had unmet expectations that Gandalf was going to help us all on this journey. And now he didn't. He didn't live up to those expectations. And we're gonna look at someone today who maybe their image of who they thought Jesus was didn't line up with their expectations and they start to doubt. And so we're going to be looking at. When believers doubt, we'll be looking at John the baptizer. We're going to be looking specifically at Matthew, chapter 11, verses one through six. And I'm just going to read this. It's a shorter text, shorter than we normally have. So let me just read this and then we'll walk through it and make some comments. Okay? So Matthew, chapter 11, I'm reading from the ESV. You can follow along in your handout. And so let's just do this. After Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else? Jesus replied, go back and report to John what you hear 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. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. So that's going to be the text that we're going to be walking through. So let's just give a little bit of context. And I think we know who Jesus is, right? Even if you've never been to church before, you've probably heard of this guy named Jesus, that he's supposedly the Savior of the world. And so we don't need to spend a whole lot of time on unpacking the context of Jesus. But who is this guy John? And specifically, what is Jesus talking about? Why does he say what he says back to John? John is imprisoned. We're gonna get into that a lot. I'll explain here in a minute, but let me just go on. So Jesus is starting off his earthly ministry, it's called. And he's about 30 years old. And this is what he does to Start his ministry in Luke chapter four. Says he went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And on the Sabbath day, he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He was Jewish. So he goes to his Jewish church, the synagogue, on the Sabbath on a Saturday. And he stood up to read, common thing. This would have been done all the time. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. And so it was just kind of like, hey, we're gonna do a scripture reading. Who's going to read it? And he stands up to read it. They give him a scroll of Isaiah, and he finds the place where it is written. So he reads this. The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then it ends by saying, today he says this in their presence. Today, this prophecy has been fulfilled in your hearing. Okay? So he reads this passage, which is about the Anointed One, the coming Messiah, the Savior of the world. He says, yeah, that's about me, right? There are some people who'd say, oh, Jesus never actually said he was God. He never claimed to be God. False, right? He never uses maybe the word in the English language of G O D. But when he says, before Abraham was I am. And he invokes the name that God gives Moses, and he says, that's me. Before Abraham was I am. And here he says, I am the Anointed One, I am the Messiah. This is. This passage that was written thousands of years ago is about me. It's happening now. So going back to Matthew 11 with a little bit of context of that, after Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John, who was in prison. So who is John and why is he in prison? Those of you who know me know that I have really been enjoying the TV series the Chosen. I think it does a really good job of portraying Jesus and his humanity. I think we miss that just on our own sometimes, but it's really good. Anyways, this is not Jesus in the Chosen. This is John the Baptist or John the Baptizer. And in the series, Peter calls him Crazy John. Okay? He's just got this stigma. He's got this Persona, right? And I even had my kids. I said, hey, if you had to describe this image of this guy in one Word, what would it be? Henry said, funny. You know, he's got this big beard and old burlap, you know, clothes. Jack said he looks happy. Emma said, he looks silly. Right. That's kind of maybe this image that we have in television of John the Baptist. But I can't get into him a whole lot today because. Drumroll. We are actually going to be our next series. We're going to be walking through the Gospel of Mark. We're going to spend a couple of years going through Mark. And I'm really excited about this because we have. We're going to be celebrating our 8th birthday here in a couple of weeks. We've never preached through a gospel. Isn't that wild? We've covered a lot of books, we preached through a lot of books, but we've never done a gospel. And the reason for that is right before we launched and started this church, when we were only one church, downtown Minneapolis, we had just finished a couple years long series in the Gospel of Luke. And so we said, hey, let's take a little break where I think everyone's. A little gospel out. We did acts and it was just kind of like, all right, let's take a break. Well, now we're back. Okay. And the Gospel of Mark starts off with John the Baptist. So I don't want to give a ton of context with John the Baptist. I gotta leave a little meat on the bone, if you will, for me in a couple of weeks. So I don't want to get there a whole lot right now. But who is John? Because there's a lot that we're going to talk about in John when we get into Mark. But for right now, just know that he's a cousin of Jesus. Right? They're buds. They probably spent a lot of time as kids growing up together. But John, he starts this huge ministry that we'll get into in Mark, that Jesus is actually a disciple of John the Baptist, which we'll get into in Mark. He starts this movement out in the wilderness, and then he says, everyone, all of his followers, I want you to quit following me. I must decrease. Jesus must increase. He's got this huge ministry and he says, no, no, it's not about me, it's about him. I want you to go to Jesus. So I just want you to try to put yourself in John's situation. He tells all of his followers to go follow Jesus, and then he gets arrested for something. He calls out the King of the Jews, Herod Antipas. He calls him some bad names and he gets Arrested. And he knows he's about to get executed. And so he's in prison. He's this fiery preacher. He's intense. He's preaching of repentance and baptism, and he's heralding his little cuz as the Messiah. But now he's powerless and he's in a dungeon waiting his execution. Just try to. Try to grasp that. I don't know if we can, but I think we can put ourselves in our situation, in your situation. Let's go ahead and try to read ourselves into this story, if we can, a little bit. That you've remained faithful to Jesus and in your best way that you possibly can, you've maybe given something that you cared about to Jesus. You've prayed over something to not have it come to fruition. You've maybe lost a job. You've had health complications. You've had friends abandon you. And you did everything by the book. You're like, I'm doing it right. I feel like I'm doing everything that I'm supposed to be doing. But Jesus, I kind of feel like you're not holding up your end of the bargain here. And then doubt starts to creep in. Doubt often comes not in our strongest public moments, but in our darkest private sessions. And that's John in prison. And I think some of you are in your own dark cell of doubt. Let's expose some light to that. So let's look at the deeds of Christ. Get this from Matthew again. In verse 2. It says, When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, where John the Baptist is, he cannot see Jesus doing these things. He can't see it. He has to rely on the eyewitness account of followers of Jesus. He can't see it. What is Jesus doing? What does John want Jesus to be doing? He wants him to be kicking the Romans out. Get them out. We want independence. We want to be a nation again. We want to be the nation that Jesus or that God talked about in the Old Testament. This is. This is us. We're supposed to be restored to this position of power and authority and Jesus. You're just not doing what I thought you were going to do. You're not living up to my expectations. How about us? We can't see Jesus. We have to rely on eyewitness accounts, just like John did. Is Jesus doing what we want him to do, how we want him to do it? And when we want him to show up and do it, and when he doesn't, does doubt creep in? I thought I knew Jesus I thought, I know how he revealed himself in Scripture. And, oh, man, I'm struggling right now. So that's when we see doubt setting in. So when John, who is in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else? Like, are you really the Messiah? Because I've seen you do some crazy things. I've heard about you doing some pretty wild things. You've raised people from the dead. You've healed people. You've made unclean people clean again by touching you. I've seen this. I know who you are. But I'm really struggling because I'm about to die because of this. I'm about to get my head chopped off because of this. Should we expect someone else? Jesus isn't overthrowing Rome. John's own suffering might have made him wonder if the plan had maybe gone off track. And it's completely understandable. And so doubt sets in. So I think it begs a question. Is doubt bad? Right? Is it a sin to have doubt? And I want to say this, that John's doubt. And I think a lot of times our doubt is not even equal to unbelief. It's not unbelief. It's doubt. It's faith under pressure. Our doubts can become our greatest assets when we work through them. And there are times, I mean, I can look back at the things that I really struggled with. Some big theological. Theological. Easy for me to say. Some big theological concept of who God is that I struggle with for so long years. And then all of a sudden, it clicks. And now it becomes the thing that makes me praise God the most. We have doubts that pop in. We're going to look at it in Mark, this Roman father who had a sick child, and he says, I believe. Help my unbelief. I've quoted this guy now a few times. I'm sorry. John Dixon. He's actually my professor for my doctorate. I haven't even started my doctorate yet, officially. And it's been, like, the coolest thing ever. I love learning, apparently. I didn't realize I did. It's been a long time since I've been in school, and I've loved it. And so he has. I assume he's got all these awesome podcasts, and I don't like podcasts. I don't listen to podcasts. I only listen to it because I have to for class. Okay. But it's been really good. And in this, I was like, oh, I bet he has something on doubt. And I found one on deconstructing. And I was like, oh, I bet there's something in there on doubt. And there is. Imagine that. And so anyways, he kind of has three layers, if you will, or three different types of doubts. Let me just kind of walk through those three and then we'll get back into our text. The first one that he mentions is intellectual doubt. Right. This is one where we would say, I can't wrap my head around the Trinity. I can't wrap my head around Jesus being fully God and fully man. I can't wrap my head around the virgin birth. And because I just can't get it. I don't know if this can be true. I want to be able to get and understand God fully. I don't know if that's ever going to happen. Right. But. But we struggle with, with maybe some intellectual doubt or I heard growing up this thing about creation and I just read, read in the newspaper. Who does that? I just watched on TikTok that they discovered life on Mars and it's making me doubt everything that's not true. I mean, maybe they did. I feel like they're always finding life somewhere. Maybe they did, right? They found intelligent life and man, I don't know. It's just crumbling everything. And we have some intellectual doubt that's that starts to creep in. The other one is moral doubt. This would be. The church is terrible. People who call themselves Christians are some of the worst people existence. Yeah, I would kind of agree with a lot of that sentiment. Right. Just the church and the authority and the people that are there and running it. They are sinful jerks and they cause pain and hurt to people. And so because of that, I'm out. Or the church says this moral thing or teaches this moral thing about a specific sin or they call it a sin. Well, my best friend likes that sin and I want to love them. And so therefore, because the church is saying that and there's this moral rule or law, I'm out. We have moral doubt. The last one, the third kind of doubt, is psychological doubt. This doubt isn't about arguments or morality. It's about our emotions. It's when you wake up and you just don't feel like God's presence is there. You don't feel forgiven of your sins. You don't feel like you're able to fight your sin the way that you think you should be able to fight your sin. You don't feel the joy that passes all understanding like the Bible promises you Just don't feel it. It's that gap between what we know in our heads and what we experience in our hearts. I think it's the most dangerous, to be honest. That's where a lot of us live and remain. But that isn't unbelief. It's doubt. It's human weakness under pressure. It's not a sin. So what do we do with our doubt? How do we see Jesus respond to people who have doubt? We get a little bit of a clue, very specifically in Jude. Tiny little book at the end of the end of the Bible. There's only one chapter. So Jude, verse 22 says, Be merciful to those who doubt. Be merciful to those who doubt. In one of the other Lord of the Rings movies, you can tell I'm a big fan. There's this scene where Gandalf the Gray comes back, but he's no longer Gandalf the Gray. He's now Gandalf something else. What is he? Oh, the white. No. Okay, that's simple enough. Changes colors. All right, now he's ganned off the white. And what happens? He comes back, and all those same people that were like, whoa, dude, you were dead, they don't believe it. They can't believe this guy came back. And it takes a little bit. They have doubt at first until they see his words and his actions and his deeds and it convinces them. And like John, they had the evidence before them. But yet grief and unmet expectations maybe clouded their vision, and doubts started to set in, similar to full circle to the question, like, when we look outside, remember what. You know what this is like, it's coming. It's coming in December. There's not snow on the ground yet. And you look outside and it looks like it's 72 degrees and sunny. You know what I'm talking about? And then you look at the Google machine and it's like, no, it's negative 15, actually. But it just look. And you have unmet expectations. You're like, I don't know if I can believe that because it sure looks nice. That was the whole point of the question. All right, let's see what the Savior's response is to his cousin doubting who he is. What would your response be? Let's maybe think about that, too. I know what my response is when people doubt me, people that know me, that I've known for a long time, that we struggle with trust and love and compassion and mercy. I know how I respond to that. And I don't think it's Being merciful, the way Jesus is about to respond. Jesus says this. Go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, and those who have leprosy are cleansed. The deaf hear and the dead are raised. And the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Okay, now this is really cool. Okay, this is just a fun little thing here that Jesus does. He's quoting here, Isaiah 61. I'm going to read that. Let me quote Isaiah 61, 1 2, see if you pick up on anything different about what Jesus said to John. And then the actual passage in Isaiah that he's quoting says this. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted and to proclaim freedom to the captives and to open the prisons of those who are bound to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Did you catch it? He leaves out, I'm going to set the captives free. As he's reporting back to a captive who's about to be decapitated, he leaves it out. So did Jesus just forget the passage or did he purposefully omit something to prove his point? That sometimes Jesus knowingly does things that we least expect because his kingdom is not of this world. It's not only about the physical, tangible aspects that we so want him to be part of. My health, my happiness, my peace, my fill in the blank. He says, it's not about that. It is about so much more. His kingdom is not of this world. He's at work whether we see it or not. As we looked at last week, that cool theological word of providence that he will see to it that his will is accomplished. Says, go and tell John what you hear and see. Jesus quotes Scripture and says, I want you to look at my works. Look at what I'm actually doing here. What else is missing in Jesus response to John? Who's doubting? He does no lecture. He's not lecturing. He doesn't chew John out for lecturing. He doesn't say, how dare you question who I. You've seen me. You've seen what I can do. He just gives evidence and encouragement. So the final point here, faith. Oh, not the final point. Sorry, I got ahead of myself. Faith and blessing. He says this, though. Jesus says this to report back to John. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. He says, blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Jesus acknowledges that his ways will sometimes offend Our unmet expectations. Faith equals trusting his character, even when it doesn't match our timeline. Jesus, I see who you are. I've seen what you've done. I know what you can do. And maybe I haven't seen it with my own eyes the way that John couldn't because he was in jail. And we don't see it because he's dead and we're thousands of years removed. And yet I can have beyond a reasonable doubt that this is true and right and good, and he's trustworthy and true. And so those of us who have doubts, anyone that might fall into any of those categories that I listed before, we can rest in Jesus. Our doubts today are met with the same evidence that John had, and honestly, even more so because John never got to witness Jesus raising from the dead. We get that. We get to see that and feel that and experience that. So in Gospel application, the application today is stop doubting. Just do better. Don't doubt. Hey, God, it's all good. Believe me, we're all good. No, no, you need to work through that stuff. I need to work through that. So it's not just stop it. It is in some way stop it, but it. Stop beating yourself up when you have doubts, because Jesus didn't do that. Jesus doesn't beat people up when they have doubts. He encourages them and says, when you do have doubts, I want you to look at me. I want you to see me. I want you to see what I've done. Look into it, do the research, do the homework, see if this is real. See if this is true. There's some book somewhere in some library, I'm sure, about anything that you have a question about Jesus. Then it says, I have here on there, Jesus is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Is that enough? Is that aspect of his kingdom of setting the captives free from sin enough? Or do I want to be happy, wealthy and wise, and fill in all the blank blanks, plural? Is that enough? I want to end by reading just these two verses from Jude 24 or Jude 24 and 25, right after where it says, be merciful to those who doubt. Just kind of this benediction, this closing that Jude gives to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his gracious presence without fault and with great glory to the only God, our Savior. Be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore. Amen. We're going to have a time of communion right now. We do this every Week at Hope Lowertown. You don't need to be a member of this church or a member of any church. This might be your first time ever in church. This might be your first time coming back to church in a long time. You might say, what's going on here? This is a time to remember the finished work of Jesus Christ our savior. And so we take the juice that represents his blood that was shed for us, this little cracker that represents his body that was broken for us, and we remember again, this is different from John. We have evidence that we get to look back and see his finished work. And that when you have these doubts again, you don't need to be ashamed of them. I want you to expose them. Talk to your small group about it, talk to me about it. We all are wrestling with these things and that's okay. And then you would also be merciful to somebody who has a doubt or a question in any one of those categories. So if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're like, yeah, man, Jesus is great, he's king, he's lord of my life, I've bent the knee to King Jesus. I would love for you to take these elements with us this morning. There's a gluten free option on my left, your right, if that is a dietary restriction. And I would love for you to just take these elements, Repent if necessary. Praise, worship, glorify and remember, remember who Jesus is and who he said he was. I'm going to pray and the worship team is going to come back up, they're going to sing two more songs. And so feel free to grab those elements in the time that you see fit and worship as you feel led. Let me pray. Father, thank you for our time again just to gather this morning. Thank you. That we can look to John, someone who is so close to Jesus, someone who physically interacted and knew Jesus and still have doubts about him. Would you help all of us, those of us who might have some intellectual doubt or moral doubt or psychological doubt or all of the above, that you would just help us to talk about it, to expose it where it needs to be exposed, to talk to our communities, to bounce ideas and questions off of one another and that we would expose that. And those of us who might hear some doubt or questions would be merciful in that process. The way that you are merciful to us, the way that you were merciful to John, that you didn't lecture him, you didn't chew him out, you said, I just want you, John, to look to me. I am the author and the finisher of your faith. The beginner and the ender. Look to me. So, God, we love you. I pray now, as we take these elements, you'd receive honor and glory that is due your name. And it's in Christ's most precious name that we pray. Amen.