Luke 7:18-23 – Room for Doubt and Room for Growth
Today we are looking at a story not mentioned very much in sermons. The problem with the story is that it paints a hero of the faith with a quality that we aren’t comfortable with him having. The hero is John the Baptist, and that quality is doubt. Let’s read Luke 7:18-23.
Now, I can see why this has not been an often-preached message. Christians are generally uncomfortable with doubt. We are so obsessed with labels: Are you in, or are you out? Are you saved? Is that person over there saved? Well, if they do this, they must not be saved. So when doubts arise, we’re afraid of being labelled by other Christians as backslidden or carnal or just plain “out”. We often don’t want people to know that we are having doubts because we don’t want them to worry about our salvation. We don’t want them to think we are giving up on God, just because we have unanswered questions.
And we hear things like this quote from J.F. Clarke: “All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen; He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.” Did you catch that: “He who doubts is weak”? Well, who wants to be weak? Who wants to be known by other Christians as the weak one? So, what happens is that we hide or bury or deny our doubts. We pretend like everything is simple, like everything has an easy answer, and we know what that answer is.
But if having doubts makes someone weak, then I guess there’s not much room for most of us. John the Baptist, of all people, had doubts. Jesus said this about John: “No one in history surpasses John the Baptizer.” John the Baptist, miraculous birth, set apart by God, following in the spirit of an OT prophet, divine messenger to the Messiah, John the Baptist, had doubts.
He was in prison at the time of this story. He was there because he had told the king, Herod, that he should not have had his brother’s wife. Herod himself did not care to put John in prison, but Herodias, Herod’s wife, had John put in prison. John eventually lost his life, with his head being presented to Herodias on a platter at a dinner party. That was the end of a good life.
But at this point, John is only in prison. And he sends his followers to ask Jesus the question: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” That is, are you the Messiah, or is someone else going to come? Are you the one we should be looking for, or should we be looking for someone else?
So what happened? The one asking if Jesus was the Messiah is the same one who had said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, `A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” He was convinced that Jesus was the Savior, but now he’s not so sure.
I think that if you were to point to one reason why John has grown some doubts, I think it would be “expectations.” V20 asks: “Should we expect someone else?” That is, what Jesus turned out to be wasn’t exactly what they were expecting. That’s not a bad thing, but it certainly matters. But the rest of the passage, all the way to v35, people over and over had the wrong expectations.
In v24 Jesus asks the people about John the Baptist: “What did you go out into the desert to see?” He asks them, “What did you expect? Did you expect a wishy-washy guy with no convictions? Did you expect a rich guy, one who looks as if he has everything he needs? Did you expect a prophet, an in-your-face individual? What did you expect of John the Baptist?” Again, expectations of what someone thinks someone else should be.
The passage goes on to see Jesus asking the question: “To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like?” Jesus goes on to quote a common saying at the time: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.” The NLT puts it this way: “We played wedding songs, and you weren’t happy, so we played funeral songs, but you weren’t sad.” In other words, no matter what we do, you’re not happy. Nothing we do for you makes you happy.
That makes sense when Jesus describes people’s attitudes towards Himself and towards John the Baptist. The NLT puts it this way: “For John the Baptist didn’t drink wine and he often fasted, and you say, ‘He’s demon possessed.’ And I, the Son of Man, feast and drink, and you say, ‘He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of the worst sort of sinners!’”
John didn’t make you happy with his strict rules, and I don’t make you happy by being with sinners and not having strict rules. No matter what anybody does, you’re not happy. Reminds me of some people who idolize their former pastors. No matter what anybody else ever does, it won’t be as good as so-and-so. Nobody else will ever visit as well, or preach as well, or pray as well, or joke as well, or encourage as well, or reach out as well, or evangelize as well as that wonderful so-and-so.
Now, what this means, of course, is that even Jesus can’t make everybody happy. Did you see that? We say that Jesus will satisfy your soul, but the fact is, Jesus didn’t make everyone happy. Some rejected Him then, and it’s no different today. If Jesus couldn’t make everybody happy, then who’s to think one person could do it today?
Well, if everybody else is surprised or let down that Jesus isn’t who they expected Him to be, then what about John the Baptist? It seems that was the source of John’s doubts: that Jesus was not who John had thought He was. John asked his disciples to ask Jesus if He, Jesus, was the one. John had expected someone else, or at least had expected Jesus to do something different.
After all, when someone does something for God, they naturally expect to be rewarded for it. John was in prison, though. That doesn’t sound like a reward for doing good. John was likely wondering what went wrong? Why was this happening? John had expected that Jesus would be the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world, not someone who would let evil people get away with it. Take away sins, not let people carry on with them. Do away with evil, not let it rule.
Things were not turning out the way John expected. And if Jesus wasn’t who John thought he was, then what was John doing in prison then? If Jesus isn’t who John thought he was, then what’s the point of preaching about Him then? If John was wrong about Jesus’ mission, then maybe he was wrong about his own. Maybe John got it all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t God calling him – it was his imagination. It boils down to this: if John was wrong about Jesus, maybe he’s wrong about it all.
Hard times often force us to wrestle with issues like that. Hard times drive us to re-evaluate what we believe. Hard times even drove the spiritual giant like John the Baptist to have doubts. I know that many God-fearing, Jesus-loving, Spirit-filled believers have doubts. Well, maybe not in this church, but in other good churches. (Laugh) So what can dedicated believers do when they doubt God’s creation of the world or God’s goodness or God’s truths or God’s plans or God’s love? They can do what John the Baptist did: go looking for answers.
John sent his disciples to find out about Jesus. He didn’t let his doubts fester. He did something about them. He asked around. He took his doubts to God and looked for an answer. Granted, Jesus didn’t tell John that things would be OK. With human eyes, they wouldn’t get better. John was about to be executed. Jesus didn’t say that things always going the way we want is proof of Jesus’ identity. Jesus described His ministry as proof of His identity: v22. Jesus said that when times get hard and dark and scary, we need to remember what God has already done. When challenges come up against us and cause us to doubt what we believe, we need to remember all that God has done.
Jesus mentioned His earthly ministry. One interesting thing in the list: the poor hearing the good news is apparently as miraculous as the blind getting sight back. Anyway, Jesus said that to help ease doubts, you need to remember what He has done in the world and for you.
So to John Jesus said, “You do not need to worry about my Father not seeing your situation, because He is very much alive and well and working hard on this planet. Just look at what I have done to help ease your doubts about who I am. Because I really am the Savior who loves all people, then you can know your situation is not a reflection of anything. You are in jail because evil is in the world. And even though you won’t get out of jail alive, you can know that the Father will one day deal with everything. Then your faith will be sight and you will never be in doubt again. Only hang on until the end.”
Let me tell you about C.S.Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia. In 1952 he had been writing to one of his fans an American woman named Joy Gresham, a recent convert to Christianity, and who had been a Communist Jew. She was also going through a hard divorce. He autographed her copy of his book, The Great Divorce. He wrote, "There are three images in my mind which I must continually forsake and replace by better ones: the false image of God, the false image of my neighbours, and the false image of myself.”
What he meant by that quote was that we form an image of God, or of another person, or ourselves after reading a book, hearing a lecture or sermon, or having a conversation with a friend, and we may temporarily get clearer thoughts. We may understand God better. But if we hold onto this new picture too tightly, it becomes an idol that must be broken in order to allow a better image to take its place.
Well, It turns out, he eventually married Joy Gresham. Even though she once brought such joy to his life, that joy ended too soon, because she died of cancer in 1960, after only 4 years of marriage. Lewis fell into grief, even asking whether God was a good God or a "Cosmic Sadist."
In time Lewis wrestled with all the previous ideas he had had of God. They came face to face with the reality of God. Who Lewis thought God was vs. who God really is. He said, “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself.”
And he wrote words that sounded vaguely familiar to those he had written in Joy’s copy of The Great Divorce years before, he reaffirmed his desire to reach beyond his changing perceptions and feelings in order to find what was eternally real: "Not my idea of God, but God.”
John needed to see Jesus for who he really was, not who he thought Jesus should be. And so do you. Your doubts, if left unattended, will stifle your faith. You need to go to Jesus, ask Him to show yourself to you again, in a new way, and see what he’s already done. And trust Him because of it. Faith always has room to grow bigger and stronger.
