OUR COMPLAINT: “This is not what I signed up for.”
- Matthew 11:2a – John in prison.
- I cannot read the mind of John, but I can’t help but believe that a prison cell was the last place he expected to end up.
- He is the great prophet of God, the forerunner of the Messiah. He is not simply hopeful about the Kingdom, he’s expecting to see it come to fruition in front of his eyes.
- Maybe when he was first arrested, he thought, “Alright, here we go.” The existing government is trying to shut down this move of God, but arresting the prophet of God is a good way to get the wrath of God after you. So he confidently sat in his cell waiting on everything to break loose. Days go by. Weeks go by. And here he is, day after day, sitting in a dark, dank prison cell. He gets updates from his disciples, but none of them give any indication of regime change in the offing. Doubts begin to creep in – “What is Jesus doing? Why doesn’t He make His move? Doesn’t He know I’m sitting in here? What’s the hold-up? Could it be that He’s not the Messiah? He certainly isn’t acting like the Messiah. . ..”
- One way to summarize John’s thoughts: “This is not what I signed up for.”
- All of his expectations have been dashed. All of his hopes are on life-support.
- He expected to be the forerunner of a conquering King, not prisoner #104566.
ARE WE GOING BACKWARDS? Confidence at first can give way to doubt.
- Matthew 11:2b – “or should we expect someone else?”
- What John’s disciples ask here is simply stunning. Here’s John the Baptist – the wild man in the wilderness, the one preparing the way for Christ, the one who first met Christ in utero, the cousin of Jesus.
- In all of Israel, if there was one guy who should have been confident in Jesus being the Christ, it was John the Baptist.
- And yet here come his disciples with a question that undoubtedly comes straight from John’s lips: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
- John is saying, “Being in prison isn’t what I signed up for. This isn’t going the way I expected. This was supposed to be all about a powerful move by the God of Israel and from where I’m sitting this thing is dripping with failure. Are you the guy or not?!?!”
- I wish I could tell you this morning that doubt is something that only unbelievers deal with and once you step across the line to belief that your walk will be one of regularly-increasing assurance. But it doesn’t work like that.
- Sometimes as long-term, mature believers we face new challenges that shake our faith to its very core. Sometimes we find things that we’ve taken for granted for years brought into question. Sometimes we find the confidence that we enjoyed for so long crumbling into a pile of doubt.
- It’s worth noting that the cause was not sin. It’s not that John got off track in his ministry and God has taken him out of the picture as punishment. Right after the passage we just read, Jesus goes on to say how great John is (v. 11).
- We may be right in the center of God’s will, faithfully and fruitfully serving, only to suddenly find ourselves in a situation where we’re inundated with doubt.
- This is not popular to talk about this because we want to believe that things are going to get easier the longer we go. But God is continuing to work with us and grow us into Christlikeness. Sometimes that means struggles.
- I want to talk for a while about four of the most common sources of this doubt, along with some Biblical examples.
WHERE DO THESE DOUBTS COME FROM?
1. God’s plan is rarely our plan.
- Matthew 16:21-23.
- Here in Matthew 16 we see the famous (infamous?) argument between Peter and Jesus over the prediction of sufferings to come. Jesus explains the plan that includes betrayal, death, and resurrection. Peter will have none of it: “Never, Lord!”
- Of course, we know that Jesus’ plan is essential for the salvation of mankind. It was a bigger plan, a better plan, a bolder plan, but it certainly wasn’t the expected plan!
- We often have in our minds the “right way” that God should bring about the promised result. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? This is the way that God will do this.”
- Of course, God sees more things than we do and God understands the best way to bring everything together. But that rarely causes us to lower our opinion of how great our plan is.
2. We presume being certain of some things means we understand all things.
- Matthew 3:1-3 vs. Matthew 3:13-15.
- Here is Matthew 3 we have John proclaiming Kingdom of God. He was preaching repentance (v. 2) and the results were dramatic (vv. 5-6).
- It’s obvious that God is working in and through John in a powerful way.
- And yet, John knowing the message of the Kingdom and seeing the fruit of the Kingdom doesn’t mean that he understands all things.
- First we see here in vv. 13-15 that Jesus comes to be baptized and John doesn’t have a grasp on the whole picture, because he questions why he should baptize Jesus. It’s a legitimate question – I’m just pointing out that there were pieces of the puzzle that he didn’t have.
- More profoundly, Matthew 11:2-3 indicates that John’s early understanding of the presence of the Messiah and the need to preach the Kingdom did not mean that he had the larger picture. Far from understanding that Jesus would also suffer a violent death, John is sufficiently disappointed and confused to send his disciples to Jesus try to figure out the missing pieces of the puzzle.
- Today we may start our walk of faith with a clear grasp of what God wants from us, only to have that fade over time or disappear with the arrival of an unexpected challenge.
- We’d like to think that the walk of faith gets easier the longer you go along, but that’s often not true.
- C.S. Lewis, speaking of time of grief in his life, wrote, “... Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing [God], so happy that you are tempted to feel [God's] claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to [God] with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms. But go to [God] when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is [God] so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”
- Often as we mature, God pushes us further by bringing greater trials and struggles into our life. He doesn’t do idly, but so that we can become more and more like Christ.
- Where this leads can be a place of frustration and uncertainty. Rather than increasingly seeing things more clearly, we find ourselves with doubt and confusion.
- This serves the purpose of increasing our trust in God. But it is most unpleasant to endure.
3. We often add our expectations to His call.
- Matthew 11:4-5.
- John the Baptist, like most of those who thought of Jesus as the Messiah, presumed that would have immediate and dramatic political implications. As in, Romans running for the hills. As in, Jews back in charge of Palestine. As in, a new King in Jerusalem. As in, Kingdom Come.
- Instead of that, John sits in a Roman prison. As I said earlier, he must have thought, “This isn’t how things were supposed to turn out.” In the dark prison of doubt, he eventually decides to send some of his disciples to Jesus to find out what’s going on.
- They ask Jesus, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
- There are several things implied there, I think:
a. When are going to start acting like a king?
b. Why aren’t you doing what everyone is waiting for?
c. When does the fighting with Rome start?
d. C’mon, let’s get on with this thing!
e. You do realize I’m stuck in a prison, right?
- Jesus points out to John’s disciples what all He is doing daily (vv. 4-5): the blind seeing, the lame walking, the leprous cured, the deaf hearing, the dead resurrected, the good news preached. These are all predicted activities of the Messiah.
- Now, here’s the thing: Jesus hadn’t broken any of the promises that He made. Jesus hadn’t told the people He was going to do one thing and then reneged on His promise.
- The problem is that as soon as the word “Messiah” is breathed by anyone, there are a whole host of expectations that come with that. Those include a political regime change.
- Complicating matters is that there are promises in the Old Testament about the restoration of Israel. But those promises were not what Jesus came to immediately fulfill. They’re still off in the future. So sometimes we can be well-intentioned in our claiming a Biblical promise – it’s just that what we’re claiming isn’t relevant to our situation right now. (You’ve always got to keep sight of the context of the Biblical promise.)
- Then we end up getting disappointed because God didn’t fulfill all our expectations. Of course, He never promised He would – they’re things that we added on.
4. We forget that greater trust in God enables God to do greater work through us.
- Mark 9:23.
- God doesn’t work through programs – He works through people.
- He is seeking hearts that are wholly devoted to Him.
- The catch in this arrangement is that for us to become people whose hearts are wholly devoted to Him we usually have to go through circumstances where we’re forced to give up our lesser desires.
- Those circumstances are usually ones that cause us struggle, confusion, and sometimes even pain. It’s redemptive difficulties, but difficulties nonetheless.
- I heard Rick Warren say once that if God wants to go you in one direction He’ll allow you to be tempted in the opposite direction. That’s a little bit like what we’re talking about here.
OUR CHALLENGE: Are we among those who are offended at Christ and walk away?
- Matthew 11:6; John 6:66.
- Jesus knows what He’s asking from us is challenging. He knows that many will walk away.
- Jesus has not come to confirm the conventional wisdom. Jesus has not come to invite us to walk the easy road. Jesus has not come to make us feel better about ourselves.
- As John 6:66 points out, even among those who got to hear Jesus speak and witness His miracles, there were still many who walked away.
- Today there are many who walk away from Him. Some come to Him in a frenzy of emotion and their spiritual life dies as their emotions calm. Some come to Him but walk away because He demands obedience. Some come to Him but walk away because they have to give up their wealth and comfortable lifestyle. Some come to Him but walk away because they won’t forsake a certain sin.
- There are so many who say, “I used to go to church” or “I belong to xyz church, although I haven’t been in while.” There are many who would claim to still be a Christian even though to them it means nothing more than a vague, undemanding belief.
- The bottom line is that if we’re an active disciple, a daily follower of Christ, then we’ve walked away.
- There are tons of reasons to do this, but all lead to the same tragedy: life without Christ.
