Why Doubt

Intro

Possible Illustration or hook grabber

Intro to Doubt

Doubt is a typical human response that we can have that often negates something from being true. It usually most of the time contains a negative meaning when the word is used.

“I doubt you can do this.”

“ I doubt the vikings will make the playoffs this year.”

The interesting thing about doubt is that it is not a fact, because we really don’t know the outcome of it. This is because it comes from our feelings, and our feelings are necessarily not the truth, they are our own personal convictions, our feelings are subjective in nature. Sometimes our doubts can lead to a misunderstanding or misjudgment of something.

Doubt is something we can bring into our spiritual lives, and because the word “doubt” carries such a negative meaning, we may think that doubting in our spiritual lives is a bad thing.

What if I told you that doubt in our spiritual lives may not always be a bad thing?

4 ways we can doubt

We will be looking at a passage in the New Testament in one of the Gospels. The Gospels are a story written about Jesus, they act as a biography about Jesus, and his life here on the earth. The Gospels present us with different characters in their writings: the disciples, religious leaders, crowds of people, sick people, demon-possessed people, and it seemed as if each of these different people had different perspectives or expectations of how Jesus was going to save the world from the sin and the corruption that was in the world.

Because of the different expectations people had, it led to different kinds of doubts. So before we get into the passage, I would love to just cover real quick 4 different kinds of doubts we see throughout the Gospels.

Give credit to my professor!

1.) Skeptical Doubt — “I can’t be certain, for there is no way to know.”

We see this doubt with a guy named Pilate who is accusing Jesus of because Jesus claimed he was teaching the truth, and Pilate asks the question, “What is truth?” Pilate was dismissing the person who was claiming truth, because he already had his mind made up. He was certain that there was nothing else out there. The person who has skeptical doubt says that no more knowledge is available to find the correct answer. The person who has skeptical doubt cannot learn.

2.) Denial Doubt — “I don’t care what the evidence says, this item is not true.”

This is the type of the doubt the Pharisees had. The Pharisees already were not fans of Jesus. So there was a story when Jesus had raised his best friend, Lazarus, from the dead, and the religious leaders wanted to kill Lazurus to destroy the evidence of what Jesus ad done. When we are set with our preconceived ideas and deny, this person will not learn.

3.) Ignorant Doubt — this is a form of denial, but this person says “I see enough evidence to believe, but I want to look for more evidence before actually deciding.”

This is not a healthy approach to doubt because it is a doubt, that makes us keep searching with being ignorant of the evidence that has been provided.

4.) Provisional doubt — this is the person who says, “I am unsure about this, but I want to find an answer based upon the evidence.”

This is the type of doubt, we cannot confuse with the other three, because this type of doubt that leads to a person who wants to learn.

It’s this type of doubt, that one of the best figures in the Bible dealt with, and his name was John the Baptist.

Who is John the Baptist?

If you were here Sunday, our guest speaker talked a little about John the Baptist, but he was a prophet, and in fact he was the cousin of Jesus. Before Jesus’ minsitry started, he prepared the way for Jesus to start his ministry, by proclaiming who Jesus was…

John 1:29

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

John 1:35-36

35 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

John had a pretty clear picture and expectation of who Jesus was, and this brings us to our passage, Luke 7:18-23.

Bring to Passage

*Read Passage*

I. Our Expectations can create Doubt

18 John’s disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them, 19 he sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

We see that John’s disciples (because he was a prophet), come to John with evidence of all these great things that Jesus is doing. And then John raises a question about if Jesus is the one who was supposed to come. This question had contradicted everything that John had just stated.

In order to really understand this, we must know what exactly is happening in this passage. If we back up, after John had prepared the way for Jesus, he was thrown in prison, for accusing a government leader during this time.

John gets put into this unexpected and unwanted circumstance, where he gets thrown into prison. So because of this he wasn’t able to experience everything that Jesus was doing, and everything that he proclaimed Jesus would do. Not only that, John had an expectation for Jesus that he would take the instant road to glory, that he would overthrow the government and defeat all the evil all at once with his power, but instead Jesus took the long and hard way to what he was called to do. John was placed in an unwanted circumstance with unmet expectation.

Just like John, we have our own expectations we would like Jesus to meet.

A prayer, relationship, no clarity on big decision.

These expectation don’t get met and we doubt God.

We expect something big to happen, but then the opposite happens.

This is what was happening to John. The Messiah is here, but then he goes to Jail.

What do we do when this happens?

II. Bring your doubts to Jesus

Notice what John does here…

19 he sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” 20 When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’”

John doesn’t turn away, become ignorant, or start to deny, instead he shows a willingness to learn, and an eagerness to get an answer from Jesus.

Our unmet expectations and unwanted circumstance can fog our view of Jesus, therefore shutting him out and finding answers elsewhere. This is when we start to look at other things to meet our needs and wants. This is when we start to turn away from our faith in Jesus, because our trust is no longer there.

When we have circumstances and expectations that are not met by God, we still must show a willingness to learn, and seek more of who Jesus is. When things come up short or our preconceived ideas of how things should work, we should aim to bring that to Jesus.

Maybe you find yourself in an hostile environment against your beliefs and your values in school, maybe things in your family, your relationships, your mental health are not going the way you want it to be. These are things we can share with Jesus. We can certainly do it through prayer and by asking God our questions, but we see John using those he trust to wrestle with doubts as well. John shows us the importance of using the resource of people that we know will support us during difficult times, when we are confused and have questions. The important thing is that, you must have a confidence that these people will be willing to go to Jesus as well.

Why is it we should bring our doubts to Jesus?

III. Jesus Responds Compassionately

21 At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. 22 So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy[a] are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 23 Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

At this point in the text we are confronted with Jesus’ response.

It is not a direct answer to John’s question, which may be frustrating, but it is something Jesus often does, and something that may happen to us.

Jesus doesn’t take John’s question and humiliate or shame him because of his question, and this is because John brought his confusion to him.

Instead Jesus answered his question by stating what he has already done, and what he is doing. It is the fact that people with diseases, sicknesses, and blind are being healed.

Jesus did this to point to the evidence of what there was already was about him. Jesus quoted Isaiah 29:18. This was prophecy about Jesus, and he is pointing to John to what has already been said, and what Jesus has already done. He doesn’t have to prove anything more to us.

“In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see.”

This story is communicating how we can deal with our doubt today.

Our faith isn’t about blind belief, but it is instead stepping forward about what we already know.

It is about having having an assurance of what God has already done through his son Jesus. John the Baptist lived during the time when Jesus was healing and doing miracles, and he could look back at that. Us today, we have a clear picture of scripture and we have the evidence right here of what Jesus has done, and that was he died a death that we deserved, and rose again three days later, so that we could have a belief and assurance that we can be restored back into a relationship with God. Jesus’ death and resurrection transforms us, it gives us a peace, and assurance because his Spirit comes to live inside of us and have a work within us.

Based on what Jesus has done, we can look and ask ourselves the questions:

How does Jesus’ past actions in your life help you trust in your current situations?

We can learn from John the Baptist’s story, and take our moments of unmet expectations, and bring them to Jesus because of what He has proven to already have done for our lives.

The encouragement today is that the provisional doubt that John the Baptist had is not a bad kind of doubt, because it gives us a heart posture to learn more about what Jesus has done for us, so this is the doubt that we should aim to have when we are faced with the unmet circumstances that we may face. Remembering how God has been faithful and good in our lives can help us overcome doubts that we may face about Him.