Matthew 11:1-11 | "Dealing With Doubt"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Please take your Bible or your device if you have one and make your way to the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 11, the first book of the New Testament.

And as you do that, I have a question to place before all of us this morning.

How loosely do you hold your life?

Right after, or some moments after the first service, Webb came and told me we're doing things differently.

Second service.

Moving things around and shifting songs around was a test for me of this question.

How loosely do I hold my life?

Sometimes the most simple of things in life can throw us off, can't they?

Maybe it's a change in your schedule.

Maybe it's uh somebody calling up and saying, I can't do this today, or I can't do this this week.

And so you have to change everything.

Sometimes people have the audacity to die at the most worst times for a pastor.

And you just think, how do I do this?

How do I make it work?

Sometimes life throws curveballs at you and you have to adjust on the fly.

How loosely do you hold your life?

I'll confess there are times when I get really frustrated.

And I feel like, you know, Lord, you just had to do this to me now, didn't you?

Because I want to have control over my life.

If you're ever in that position, then this passage of scripture is for you.

Matthew chapter 11, beginning in verse 1.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Jesus finishes instructing his disciples.

And he goes on from there to teach and to preach, and verse 2 of chapter 11, it says, Now when John, that is John the Baptist, heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent words by his disciples and said to him, to Jesus, Are you the one who is to come?

Or shall we look for another?

Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.

And blessed is the one who is not offended or is not stumble by me.

And as they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John, and he asked them a series of questions that expect an answer of no, or a negative type of answer.

What did you go out into the wilderness to see?

A reed shaken by the wind?

No.

Well, what then did you go out to see?

A man dressed in soft clothing?

No.

Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in the king's houses.

What then did you go out to see?

A prophet?

Yes.

Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.

This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.

Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.

Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Amen.

Everyone has doubts.

Everyone has doubts in life.

Rarely can we go a single week, maybe even a single day, without doubts.

If you at all ever pay attention to the weather forecast, then you have doubts as to whether or not it's actually going to turn out the way that the weather is predicted to turn out.

You may have doubts as to whether or not you dressed warmly enough for the North Dakota winter.

Maybe you have doubts as to whether or not you sent the kids off to school with everything that they needed.

Maybe you have doubts as to whether you can make it through the day because you didn't sleep well that night.

We all have doubts of many kinds, don't we?

There are multitudes of things, little things even in life that can generate doubt in our lives.

And some of us are just more prone to doubting than others.

Sometimes there are certain events, certain situations, certain people that stir something up in us, something that triggers doubt and questions and anxieties because of things that we've experienced in the past.

You know, most often doubt overtakes us because of our inability to control life.

Think of the weather.

We cannot control the weather, and so we question all the time: is it going to be what I expect?

Questions, uncertainties, anxieties of all kinds sprout up within us when life throws something at us that we're just not expecting.

Imagining life from the perspective of a video game where we where the player controls the action of the player, Paul Tripp wrote this.

This means, he goes on, that those moments of difficulty are not an interruption in the plan or the failure of his plan, but rather an important part of his plan.

Paul Tripp continues, I think there are times for many of us when we cry out for God's grace and we get it, but not the grace we are looking for.

It comes in the form of something we never would have chosen if we were controlling the joystick.

Pretty profound.

If we control our lives, if we feel and have a sense of authority and control over the events of our lives, then we will be thrown into areas of question and doubt and anxiety if we entertain moments, if we live through moments, if we endure moments where we are not in control.

And in those moments, God's people are at a certain kind of crossroads, aren't they?

We can choose to let go of the joystick and trust that God is in control, that He has a purpose, that He has a plan, and it's for my good, or we can let ourselves be overcome with the raw emotions of the moment that push out trust.

Now, some of us, all of us maybe at some point in life, will even have times of doubt in our Christian lives and in our faith.

Difficult, stressful, straining times are prime moments for doubting God, for doubting his word, for doubting the substance of our own faith.

And our passage of Scripture for this morning contains an example of someone who is in that exact kind of situation.

And it's a person, no less, that Jesus considers to be the greatest person ever to be born at that point in time.

John the Baptist.

He's the cousin of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he has some questions.

Maybe we can say he's a bit confused.

Maybe he's experiencing some doubts in his faith, and we see here how God responded to John's doubts.

But interestingly, this passage is placed right at the end of chapter 10.

Now, Matthew didn't write those chapter divisions.

People put those in to help us grasp scripture a little better.

Matthew included this instruction and interaction between Jesus and John's disciples right after a very challenging point of instruction by the Lord Jesus.

He had told us last week, we looked at this, the end of chapter 10, that if you're going to be a disciple, you better be ready to take up your cross and follow Jesus because taking up your cross means being willing to give up your life.

Whoever finds his life will lose it.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Jesus challenged us to believe and then to act on the belief that to lose your life for Christ is actually the way to have your very best life.

But taking up your cross and following Jesus may land you right where John the Baptist found himself.

In prison and about to die.

Now I can see how that would bring some doubts.

Matthew, then I think, intends for us to hear these hard words from Jesus about being a disciple, about being a follower of Christ, and then he prepares us for the doubts and the questions and the anxieties that are going to come when life gets hard.

So let's look then at a couple of the questions that we see here in John the Baptist.

I think the first question that we find here is a question that is deep within him.

Why am I here?

Don't miss those two very important words in verse 2.

Now, when John heard in prison.

In prison.

That defines a host of elements for us in our understanding of this passage.

You see, the last reference to John the Baptist was all the way back in chapter 4, where Jesus first heard about John's arrest.

So everything that takes place in chapter 5 with the Sermon on the Mount, all the way through chapter 7 in the Sermon on the Mount, coming down and performing all of these miracles, healing the lepers, healing the blind men, healing the lame, raising the dead, all of this ministry of Jesus takes place while John is in prison.

Probably in a dungeon in one of Herod Antipas's palaces out in the desert.

So John is hearing everything.

He's gaining all of his information.

Everything that he knows is going to be secondhand or third hand or fourth hand information as it's allowed to come to him in prison.

He has been out free, doing ministry, preparing the way for the Messiah, and now he's in prison.

Interestingly, both John and Jesus preach the same message.

You can look back at chapter 3 of Matthew and verse 2 and chapter 4 of verse 17, where Jesus and John proclaimed the same message.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

So from his place in a desert dungeon, John could very well have been wondering if he and Jesus were still on the same side.

If they're proclaiming the same message and Jesus is free and John is not, what's gone wrong?

You see, John, John was in prison for speaking out about a politician.

Imagine that.

Herod Antipas is the ruler of Galilee.

And John called out the immoral actions of Herod.

You can look on your own and your own time in Luke chapter 3, beginning in verse 11, 12, 13, somewhere around there, all the way through about verse 20.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

It details exactly what happened.

Herod divorced his wife so that he could marry the wife that his half-brother had.

Well, that wife, her name was Herodias, was actually Herod Antipas' niece.

See, are you following along?

Herod divorces his current wife so he can marry his niece that's married to his half-brother.

And John has the audacity to say, God doesn't approve of that.

Herod didn't approve of John, so he put John in prison.

All the while the people are thronging out of the cities into the desert to hear John preach.

So much so that it's causing concern among the Pharisees, saying, all the world's going out to hear him.

What's going on with this?

Because the people were starting to ask questions.

Is John the Messiah?

Is John the one that we're looking for?

Is he the one that we've been anticipating?

Is he the one that we've been waiting?

And John's saying, No.

I'm not the Messiah.

The Messiah is going to come and judge his enemies with great power and authority.

And his bringing of salvation.

And now it's been about a year.

Since John's been in prison.

For a year he's in prison for speaking out about God's truth, and Jesus is out freely doing whatever Jesus wants to do.

Old commentator William Barclay imagines John's situation like this.

And I quote, he was a child of the desert.

All of his life he had been living in wide open spaces with the clean wind on his face and the spacious vault of the sky for his roof.

And now he's confined within the four narrow walls of an underground dungeon.

For a man like John, that must have been agony.

Mr.

Barclay continues by describing a little cell that is in Carlisle Castle in Carlisle, England.

He says, Once long ago they had put a border chieftain in that cell and left him there for years.

In that cell there is one little window, which is placed high up on the wall, too high for a man to look out of when he's standing on the floor.

And on the ledge of that window, in the stone, there are two depressions worn away.

They are the marks of the hands of that border chieftain who, day by day, would lift himself up by placing his hands on the ledge so that he might look out over the countryside.

John must have been like that, William Barclay says.

And there is nothing to wonder at, much less still to criticize, and the fact that questions begin to form in John's mind.

See, when things don't go as we expect, we start to wonder what's going on.

Where is God?

What is God doing?

How long is this going to last?

And the situation would have made John's expectation of the Messiah, I think, that much more anticipated.

His enemies were the same enemies as the Messiah's enemies, and according to John's understanding of Scripture, they were going to be judged.

So if they were going to be judged in the way he expected, then he would likely be released from prison.

Yet here he sits in prison.

And he's about to be beheaded.

The heart of John's doubts, then, are unmet expectations.

Isn't that so true of us?

For one reason or another, we look at life, we live life, we go about our days in and out.

And when it doesn't look like we expect it to look, we start to ask questions.

We start to wonder what God is doing.

This is why Matthew's context is so important.

Because a disciple takes up his cross and lays down his expectations.

When a disciple takes up his cross and follows Jesus, all he expects is to be treated like his master is treated.

When a disciple carries his cross, all he expects in life is to be treated the way Jesus was treated.

So Matthew records that John sent his disciples.

In prison, he he hears about what Jesus is doing.

Probably all the things that we've gone through already in chapters 8 and chapter 9, the healings, the raising from the dead.

These are great and wonderful things, but they're not what John is expecting.

He sends them to Jesus because they don't fit his perception of life.

John's life has not turned out the way he expects, and so he sends his disciples.

Go and ask Jesus.

That leads us to the second question.

The question he asked Jesus is, Who are you?

This is astounding, friends.

Who's John the Baptist?

John the Baptist is the guy who looked out when he was standing in the middle of the Jordan River baptizing people, and he saw he saw this guy walking towards him.

And John receives divine revelation.

He says, Behold, there is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This is the John who stood in the Jordan River, and Jesus came up to him and said, I need you to baptize me to fulfill all righteousness.

And John put him under the water and brought him back up.

And John saw the heaven opened and the Spirit descending as a dove, and he heard the voice of God the Father saying, Behold, my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.

This is that John the Baptist who's now wondering, Who are you?

Why is he wondering?

Because his life doesn't match his expectations.

Now John's disciples have been around Jesus before.

You might remember back in chapter 9 and verse 14, they they challenged Jesus about fasting.

Why do we in the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't?

Maybe some of them even saw some of the miracles of chapters 8 and chapters 9.

But what they heard being passed around by word of mouth, perhaps what they observed, they took all of that in.

They passed it on to John.

John compared it with what he expected in life, and it didn't match up.

And doubts then began to rise.

Questions began to come about the one that they were looking forward to.

And we're not surprised by that if we if we know our Bibles.

It's just like other faithful saints who have lived and died throughout church history.

It's like Old Testament saints.

You remember Elijah, that great prophet of the Lord.

One of the greatest stories in the Old Testament, I think.

Standing on top of Mount Carmel, challenging the 400 prophets of Baal, saying, let's have a challenge here, a duel, if you will, about whose God is real.

You offer a sacrifice and you call on Baal.

I'll offer a sacrifice and I'll call on Yahweh.

We'll see who answers with fire.

Elijah was so patient.

But in his patience, he was ridiculing them because nothing was happening.

He gave them time to cry out to Baal.

And all along he mocked them, saying, Why isn't he answering?

Why isn't he answering?

And then Elijah gets a few moments to pray about 30 words.

And all of a sudden, fire comes down from heaven and consumes everything.

What a high point.

What a mountaintop experience.

And then just within hours.

Elijah is asking God to take his life because he's all alone.

And he God can send down fire, but God can't protect him from a wicked queen.

Jeremiah was a prophet chosen by God before his conception.

And yet in Jeremiah 20, his life had gotten to such a place where he cursed the day of his birth.

Job looked at his life circumstances, all that he had been through, the loss of his family, the loss of his possessions, the torture of his own physical body falling apart.

And he knew that somehow there must be some kind of divine injustice, but he couldn't.

Make sense of it because he knew God would not be this unjust, so that's why he's begging for God, come and answer me.

When life doesn't turn out the way we expect, we begin to wonder what's going on.

We ask questions, anxieties rise, doubts sprout and take root.

Maybe John had heard about Jesus being in the synagogue in his hometown in Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

And being special guest, he's invited to read the scroll portion for that day and to comment on it.

And he reads from Isaiah 61, where the Messiah is prophesied as proclaiming liberty to the captives.

Then why am I still in jail?

And the flow of thought in Matthew's gospel, Matthew is showing us Jesus is the promised one.

He's the Messiah, He's the Christ.

And now He begins to show that the divinely appointed herald of that Messiah, John the Baptist, is starting to wonder.

There's some doubt creeping in.

But he's doing this as a means of encouragement for you.

As a means of encouragement for me.

Because many will have their faith tested when they come to faith in Jesus Christ.

Sometimes it will be tested when the way that God is working doesn't make sense to your understanding.

But there's an encouragement in verse 6: Blessed is the one who doesn't stumble because of me.

Now the disciples really ask a key question.

The disciples of John, that is.

Are you the one who is to come?

Or shall we look for another?

This is Jesus' cousin.

This is the man who heard the voice of God.

Here's the man who pointed people to Jesus.

Here's the man whose own disciples left following him to follow Jesus.

And he's wondering, are you the one that we should expect, or should we go in search of another?

And the word he uses here is another of a different kind.

Not this kind, but this kind.

Are we looking for the wrong kind of Messiah, Jesus?

Now we don't have a great deal of information about John's doubt.

And maybe doubt is too strong of a word.

Maybe perplexity or confusion would be better suited to the situation.

But John was a man who knew God's revelation.

And Jesus didn't seem to fit John's messianic mold perfectly, and it brought confusion.

Maybe he was perplexed by this situation, making him go so far as to wonder is Jesus really the one?

We're not surprised by this, are we?

We're not too far from Matthew 8, where Jesus took all of his disciples out onto a boat in the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night when he knew that there was a dangerous storm coming.

A storm that he knew would test those experienced fishermen's skills to the very end.

In the middle of that storm, they said, Jesus, we're perishing.

And he says, Why are you afraid?

Oh, you of little faith.

Just a few chapters from here in Matthew chapter 14.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

Peter is going to be at the high point of his walk with Jesus at this point in time, and he's going to be walking on water.

Astounded by his own ability.

And then all of a sudden he realizes how high the waves are.

And he hears the wind whistling through his ears, and he starts to sink.

And Jesus says to him, Oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt?

Why did Peter doubt?

He couldn't make sense of his circumstances and what was really happening in his life.

John, how could John not remember Jesus' baptism?

That's an unforgettable experience.

See the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove and to hear the voice of God speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ.

How could he have forgotten that he himself had declared that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?

But what he was hearing about Jesus from within those walls of his dungeon just didn't make sense.

So what does he do?

He sends his disciples right to Jesus to get the full story.

I wish that we would do that more often.

Go right to the one you need to talk to.

And that's exactly what he does.

He wants to confirm, he wants to get straightened out these stories, these things that he's hearing.

He wants to bring sense to his confusion.

It's really not difficult to imagine that any Christian, that any one of us, can have times of wondering, times of questions and doubt about God's care of us, about God's justice in the world, about his program for every person, about his love for his people.

You've likely been there.

When God unexpectedly steals a loved one from us, when a spouse is unfaithful, when we lose a job or can't get a job.

But John knew where to find the answers, didn't he?

He knew that in order to resolve his confusion, to answer his questions, to bring certainty to his doubt, he had to have answers from Jesus.

And it should give us some assurance to know that someone of John's position in the plan of God had questions when life didn't make sense.

It's okay to have questions.

But we should also be encouraged to seek help from the same place.

The Lord Jesus Christ.

Seek help for your answers, for your questions from the revealed word of God.

And that's where Jesus now begins to direct our thinking.

The disciples of John are here, they've asked the questions, and Jesus gives them what we might be able to term some cures for our doubt.

And the first one that he, first step that he gives is review what you know God has said.

Go back to what you know to be true.

Speak to yourself.

People will think you're weird.

But talk to yourself.

Remind yourself of what you know to be true.

And where do you find truth?

Jesus says, you find truth in the Word of God.

You find truth in the revelation of God's word.

So Jesus says to John's disciples, go and tell John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

Look at all these wonderful things, Jesus says.

And that's how we would interpret that in a modern mindset.

Look at all of these wonderful things that I've done, Jesus says, and go and tell John.

But that's not what Jesus is saying.

Jesus is not telling the disciples of John, go back and tell John everything, all these good things that have gone on for people.

You might actually discourage him because he's not receiving much good right now.

That's not what Jesus is doing.

These all come from Scripture.

See, a Jewish person would hear these elements that Jesus is recounting, and while he did do them, while they are actions that he performed, what he's doing is sending them back to the Word of God.

These all come from the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 29, Isaiah 35, and Isaiah 61.

And as those disciples went back and told John, John would be reminded, yes, that's what God said to expect from the Messiah.

That's what God said to look for when his promised one would come.

Jesus knew that John would recognize the use of scripture applied to the Messiah and that Jesus was fulfilling it.

You see, the Lord's ministry fit perfectly within the prophetic framework of the Messiah and God's work in providing salvation.

Jesus was turning John back to revealed truth.

Remind yourself of what you know to be true.

Jesus was turning John back to Scripture, taking him back to what he knew to be true, and to focus on the Word of God.

Not just on the parts that affected him, but on the whole of God's revelation.

John was to take his uncertainties, his questions, his feelings, his being, and submit it to the revealed truth of Scripture.

Because truth wasn't found in John's circumstances.

Truth wasn't found in John's feelings in the moment.

Truth wasn't found in Herod's political power.

Truth was found in the Word of God.

Now what we see in Matthew 3 and in the parallel passages in Mark and Luke, it tells us that John's perception was mostly correct.

It was just incomplete.

The Messiah would come to judge.

He would come with the wrath of God.

But there was another purpose before dealing in final judgment with his enemies, and that was to provide a way of salvation, wasn't it?

John had correct perceptions, but his correct perceptions were incomplete.

Doubt often comes when we have some correct and yet incomplete information.

Let me give you a practical example.

You have a loved one that's traveling out in the middle of a North Dakota blizzard.

You know about North Dakota blizzards, you've experienced them, you've lived them, you know that your loved one is not at home.

You know that the weather is deadly, and so you begin to doubt as to whether or not they will actually reach their destination.

So as you think about that, and as you process this information that you know to be true, doubt begins to sprout.

Worry begins to grow.

Uncertainties begin to drive what you're thinking about.

And so you have doubt and anxiety and uncertainty that are building within you.

But what you do not know is that your loved one has stopped at a gas station along the way to wait out the storm.

You're missing that piece of information.

You have correct knowledge and understanding, but you're missing a part.

You don't know that they are safe in the middle of the storm because they've waited it out.

What you do know is that the storm is terrible, it's deadly, someone might die, you haven't heard from them, and you know they haven't reached their destination.

And so you begin to stress and worry and anxieties build, you begin to ask questions, all because you're missing some key information.

Have you been there?

Most of us have been there in one way or another.

Doubt can come from inaccurate information as well, which is why we need to always be directed back to what is true.

Friends, God does not always act the way his children expect him to act.

There may be information that we're lacking that would help us to not doubt.

I can remember asking my dad, Dad, why are we doing this?

And he would say, You don't need to know.

Yes, I do.

Now, and that's the way we act about God, isn't it?

Our father says to us, you don't need to know right now, you just need to trust me.

The difference between John and us is that we've been given the whole of Scripture.

John had the Old Testament, we have the Old Testament and the New Testament, so that we don't doubt or worry.

You remember those disciples that were walking on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection?

They didn't know that Jesus had been resurrected, raised from the dead.

They were just still buried in their grief and their sadness.

And they're pouring out their grief to this man that's walking with them, not knowing that it's Jesus.

And what did Jesus do?

He says, beginning with the Old Testament, he showed them everything about Jesus.

He said, Go back and look at what you know to be true.

But that then leads us to another point.

It's one thing to know what's true.

It's another thing to trust it.

We don't have a whole lot of time here, but look with me at Isaiah chapter 8.

Isaiah 8 · chapter mention

Isaiah chapter 8.

Isaiah 8 · chapter mention

I'm hoping that this will come up more next week, but we'll see.

Isaiah chapter 8 is a very pivotal portion of Scripture in Isaiah's life.

Isaiah 8 · chapter mention

In many, many ways it's a parallel to where John the Baptist is, although Isaiah isn't in prison.

Instead, God says, I'm going to give you a name for a son that you're going to have.

Name him Maher Shalal Hashbaz.

Okay.

And God says, I want you to give him that name because I'm about to do something that none of you is expecting.

He says, I'm going to bring up a foreign invader who's going to trample all over your land.

He's going to destroy your people, he's going to destroy your property, he's going to take away everything here.

People are going to be broken and shattered.

Now notice Isaiah 8, verse 11.

Isaiah 8:11

For Yahweh spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me.

And he warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.

He says, Look, look, Isaiah, your people are going to be thinking, they're going to have a perception of reality that is not true.

But Yahweh of hosts, him you shall honor as holy.

Let him be your fear, let him be your dread, and he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling.

Says Isaiah.

And it's going to be presented as though you're talking about a brand new conspiracy out there.

Don't believe it.

Come back to what God has said to be true.

But then right in the middle of it, he says, the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy, let him be your fear, let him be your dread.

See, here's an amazing thing.

When you are afraid of God, all other fears fall to the wayside.

When God is the one who is the primary place of your focus, of your trust, of your reliance, everything else begins to fall by the wayside.

When God is the one in whom you find your soul focus of truth, then everything else begins to fall in line.

He says, listen, everybody around you is going to be going crazy because of the world and what it's going to experience.

Isaiah, don't go along with them.

Be focused right here and trust me.

And that's exactly what Jesus does with the disciples of John the Baptist.

He says, Go back to Scripture and trust God's plan.

Look at what he does.

So the disciples go, and Jesus turns to the crowds that have gathered.

And he says, What did you go out into the wilderness to see?

A reed shaken by the wind?

Maybe that's not very clear to you, so picture in a in a North Dakota kind of way, a one of the cattails that's around Devil's Lake or something.

Did you go out to the lake to see the cattails waving in the wind?

No! What then did you go out to see?

Did you go out to the desert to see a man dressed in a suit?

No.

What then did you go out to see?

A prophet?

Yes.

Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.

You see, John was an uncommon kind of guy.

He lived a sacrificial lifestyle.

You might say that he was the very first one to take up his cross and follow Jesus.

He didn't wear fancy clothes.

He ate grasshoppers.

Maybe dipped in some honey.

And his life ended up in a dungeon and being beheaded.

But what Jesus is doing here is he's comparing situations that people understand.

You see, King Herod, who put John in his dungeon, King Herod minted his own coins.

He made his own gold and silver coins.

And as all rulers of that time did in their pride and arrogance, they had one side stamped with their image.

Then on the other side, they had something else that was important to them.

And do you know what was on the other side of Herod's coin?

A reed.

His personal image symbol was a reed.

So Jesus is saying, did you go out into the desert to see the politician?

Who gets blown around by every wind of fancy?

No, you went out, you went out to see a man of conviction.

Did you go out to see Herod in all of his finery?

Dressed in his soft clothing?

No, no, Herod's in his palace in the desert.

Even in the desert, Herod had magnificent palaces that would be cool during the daytime.

He was a fabulous engineer.

Is that what you went out to see?

No, you went out to see John, a guy who wore camel's hair clothing and ate whatever he could find.

See, Herod is the opposite of John.

And I think Jesus is going here in a purposeful direction to say, listen, who is John?

What is John all about?

What is it about John that piqued people's interest?

What drew his interest, what drew people's interest was that John.

John was fulfilling prophecy.

Jesus says, John, did you go out to see a prophet?

Yes.

Why?

Why did you go out to see a prophet?

Because he's fulfilling the word of God.

Behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way.

Imagine that.

And what encouragement is it for John to trust in God?

John, you're prepared by God to prepare the way for God.

God has prepared you, specifically, John the Baptist, to prepare the way for Emmanuel, for God to be with us.

And guess what, John?

That plan, that purpose that has been prepared for you and that you have been prepared for includes what you don't expect being in prison.

Now, John can understand a little bit more of that because he's been redirected back to the fountain of truth in pages of scripture.

But it still comes back to living that out in trust, doesn't it?

Comes back to saying, okay, am I going to believe where I've been directed and to trust the one who has written it?

See, even though John had his doubts about Jesus, he was still God's instrument.

As is everyone who trusts in Jesus after that.

Jesus tells us.

John came before Jesus and pointed to him, prepared the way.

Everyone who comes after John and trusts in Christ, in essence, points back at Jesus.

John pointed to Jesus and said, There he is, there's the one we've been looking for.

We all point back and say, There he is.

He's the one who hung upon the cross, who paid the price for our sin.

There's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We get to proclaim the same message as John.

And we might have the same questions as John.

And so we too then need to be reminded to go back to the Word of God, to read it, to immerse ourselves in it, to look beyond our circumstances, our situations, and find out what God says, get his perspective.

And friends, you may have doubts and still be used by God.

John had doubts and was used greatly.

But the servant is not great in himself.

It's the Lord of the servant that makes him great.

John is the greatest human being at this point in history because he had the privilege of introducing the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John's role was great because of the greatness of the one he introduced.

Do you want to find purpose and greatness even in the midst of your questioning?

Then point to the one who is great.

He's not saying, John, get over it.

He's not telling John, you know, no, you don't really understand pain and suffering.

That's not what he's doing at all.

What he's saying is that what John is experiencing and yet doesn't understand is still part of God's purpose and God's plan for him, and that John needs to recognize that God's purpose is still working on, God is still doing what he's going to do, he's accomplishing his goals, he's accomplishing his ends, and somehow this fits into that, even if John can't understand it.

So, John, read your Bible, understand what God has proclaimed, understand truth from God's perspective, and then trust the one who's leading you, even if you can't make sense of life.

God's plan is going to be accomplished.

We understand that we haven't been given all of the details.

But when we don't have the details, are we going to fear God?

Are we going to trust Him?

Are we going to allow those doubts and those anxieties and those uncertainties to creep in and push out the trust?

Or will we, as Jesus told us last time, lay down our expectations and take up our cross and follow Him?

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus.

We know that life brings storms of all kinds.

We we can't we can't predict the weather with perfect precision.

So we're not going to be able to predict our lives with perfect precision.

There will be uncertainties, there will be anxieties, there will be times when we have all kinds of questions.

Lead us, we pray, into all truth, to understand what is right, what you have said, and to be able to trust you.

As many through the ages have said, when the fog is thick and the night is dark, and we can't see your hand of leading, help us to trust your heart.

And so be your people who follow you, taking up our cross.

In Jesus' name, amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.