Dealing_With_Doubt_(1_of_12)
Dealing With Doubt? (1 of 12)
Meet Jesus
Jerry Vines
John 1:45-51
2/10/2002
If you are dealing with doubt, then you need to meet
Jesus. In John 1 I have taken a scene from the life of
our Lord which I think will address this particular
problem.
Life is a series of problems. If you do not have a
problem this morning, just hang around, before it's
over you are going to have a problem. All people are
in one of three stages when it comes to problems. They
are either coming out of the problem, in a problem, or
heading to a problem. Life is a series of problems.
The good news about the Lord Jesus Christ is that to
know Jesus Christ as your Savior gives you access to
Someone who is the great problem-solver. I do not know
what problem you may be experiencing today, but
whatever that problem may be, ultimately and
fundamentally, when you get down to the root of the
matter, you will discover that Jesus Christ is able to
help you with that particular problem.
One of the problems I'm going to deal with this
morning (and I'll be dealing with a number of them in
the weeks ahead) is the problem of doubt or
skepticism. There are many people filled with
skepticism and doubt in the world in which we live.
In some ways it is a part of our training. We have
been trained in our schools to think skeptically—to
think from a scientific perspective and to be
skeptical so that we get to the facts and know what
the facts may be.
That aura or that atmosphere of skepticism has bled
over into religious life and there are many people
today who are dealing with the problem of doubt.
Somebody has said that doubt is a swinging bridge
between faith and unbelief. Faith says—I believe.
Doubt says—I'm not sure. Faith says—I trust. Doubt
says—I don't know.
Here is a man in the Bible who has a problem with
skepticism or doubt. His name is Nathanael. The
indications from the words of the Lord about this man
Nathanael are that he was indeed a doubter, but he was
also a sincere doubter. There are many people who are
not sincere in their doubts. Many times intellectual
doubts are merely a cover for an immoral lifestyle.
Some people throw out a few doubts because they are
trying to cover over the kind of life they are living.
That's not really the problem at all. But evidently
Nathaniel was one of those sincere doubters.
Somebody said that doubt is either the agony of some
earnest soul or it is the trifling superficial doubt
of a superficial fool.
The name, Nathanael, means "gift of God." I don't
know if his parents gave that to him out of hope that
he would indeed be a gift to the world. Or out of
hope that he would be a special gift to them from God.
When you get to Matthew, Mark, and Luke you don't find
the name Nathanael. You do find the name Bartholomew.
Most people believe that Nathanael and Bartholomew are
names for the same man. Nathanael does not appear much
in the Bible. He appears on the first page of the book
of John and the last page. In chapter 1, he makes his
cameo appearance and in chapter 21 he gives his final
curtain call. But he is a man that has a message for
you and for me this morning. He is a man who shows us
that if you have a problem—what you need is to meet
Jesus. Jesus can help you with your problem today—
whatever that problem may be.
I want to call you attention, first of all to—
I. The DOUBT He MANIFESTS.
In verse 45 it says, "Philip finds Nathanael." That
is a train in a series of events in chapter 1 about
people who are meeting the Lord Jesus. There were two
disciples who came to Jesus and said, "Where do you
live?" And Jesus said, "Come and see." One of those
men came and told Philip. Then the Lord came to Philip
and said, "Follow me." Philip followed Him. He had
become a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and he is a
friend of Nathanael's.
It is a good friend who will do for you what Philip
did for Nathanael. If you have a friend who is talking
to you about the claims of Christ, you have a good
friend indeed. Many of you in this building today came
to know the Lord as your Savior because you had a
friend who loved you enough and cared enough about you
to introduce you to Jesus. Philip is a good friend. I
want to be a friend like that to people, don't you? I
want to be the kind of friend to people who will tell
them about Christ and how Christ can meet the needs of
their life.
After Philip had found the Lord Jesus had a desire
that his friend, Nathanael, would come to know the
Lord Jesus Christ so he comes to Nathanael and lays
before him a prophetical announcement.
He says in verse 45, "We have found him." I can almost
sense the excitement in his voice. Then he says, "We
have found him of whom Moses in the law, and the
prophets, did write." That is -we have found the one
that the Old Testament predicted was going to come.
Now, the Jewish people were looking for the coming of
the Messiah. In fact at this particular point in their
history they were desperate for the coming of the
Messiah because of the problems that they as a nation
and they as individual Jews were facing. They were
under the heels of the Roman Empire. Life was tough.
Taxation was strong. The economy was shaky. They
desperately needed someone who could help them with
their problems. Philip says, We have found Him—the one
that the Old Testament predicted.
The Old Testament had predicted the coming of the
Messiah. Moses had talked about him like the serpent
on the pole, to whom people could look and be saved.
The prophets had talked about him being virgin-born
and suffering for the sins of the whole world. So I
can imagine that Nathanael's heart jumped a beat when
he heard Philip say, "We have found him."
I have said to you and I'm going to say it again
today. If you can find someone today who can help you
with the problems you are going through right now. I'm
sure that probably your heart would leap just a
little. Maybe there's just a little glimmer of hope I
can kindle in your heart this morning.
He is ready now for a letdown. Philip continues on and
says, "We have the one the Old Testament talked about,
Jesus of Nazareth." When he heard that it just
punctured his balloon. Now, we have a skeptical answer
from Nathanael. When he heard that this Jesus who was
supposed to be the Messiah had come and that he was
from a place named Nazareth, it punctured his balloon
and he says in verse 46, "Can any good thing come out
of Nazareth?" The last place in the world he expected
the Messiah to come from was Nazareth. Certainly the
last place he expected anybody to come from who could
help him with his problems was Nazareth.
In John 21:2 where Nathanael is mentioned for the last
time, we are told that Nathanael was from Cana. Cana
was about five miles from Nazareth. They were
neighboring towns. What you may have here is a little
local prejudice and jealousy.
How many of you came from a small town? Raise your
hand. I came from a small town. We know all about that
local prejudice and jealousy, don't we? I remember
when I was playing football we had a number of other
little towns around us who were rivals. One of the
biggest rivals of all was Bowden. The week before we
were going to play Bowden one of the well-to-do men in
our town, Mr. Cole, came over to practice. I will
never forget it. He gathered the team together and
said, "Now, boys, we really want you'll to beat
Bowden this Friday night. If you'll beat Bowden, I'm
going to buy everyone of you a steak supper. I was a
seventeen-old boy and I had never had a steak in my
life. That was something almost unimaginable. He just
set us on fire. You would have thought he said he
would give us all a Mercedes. We played like we had
never played before. I have a picture in my high
school annual of me eating my first steak. I ate it
all and licked the plate. It was something. That's how
bad they wanted to beat that neighborhood rival.
It may be that there is a little local prejudice going
on. "Our town is better than your town." There is
some of that that still goes around in the faith
today. There are some people that have problems and
they are not getting any answers to the problems
because they are allowing some of their prejudices and
jealousies to take over.
There are some folks right here in this town and they
say, "I would go up to that church, but those folks
don't come from the same part of town I come from."
The fact of the matter is—our church people come from
every section of the city of Jacksonville. I kind of
like it where people come to a church from every part
of the town. As I understand the New Testament, the
church is to be a place where people can come wherever
they may live; whatever their social status may be.
Some folks say, "They are not my social status at that
church and they didn't go to the schools I did."
Friends, a hungry man can't be particular where he
gets his bread. A thirsty man cannot be particular
where he gets his water. Don't let prejudice in your
heart keep you from coming to the place where you can
get an answer to your problems.
There's another thing about it. The fact of the matter
is—Nazareth was a bad place. It was located up on a
hillside. I've been to Nazareth many times. Down below
was one of the main highways where merchants and
soldiers were constantly passing and very often they
would stay in Nazareth for the night. You can almost
imagine what a center of corruption Nazareth had
become. You can almost imagine what a cesspool of
pollution Nazareth was. It had a bad reputation.
Have you ever thought about it? Jesus Christ lived the
overwhelming majority of His life—33 years of life—in
a place called Nazareth, a despised town. There He was
unrecognized, unknown, unhonored. Don't anybody ever
worry about where you came from. It is not where you
came from that matters; it's where you are going that
matters. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"
Nathanael becomes a doubter. He becomes a skeptic. He
is raising a skeptical question. Some of you have a
problem of doubt this morning. There are all kinds of
doubters. There are all kinds of skeptics.
You may be the scientific skeptic. You have decided
that Jesus has to get into your test-tube and submit
Himself to your tests before you will ever believe.
Or you may be a philosophical skeptic. You may have
decided that Jesus Christ has to conform to your ideas
of what He should and shouldn't be before you are
going to believe.
You may be a religious skeptic. You have your mind all
made up. It's amazing to me how people who don't know
anything about it—announce themselves authority on
religious matters. If you don't believe that true you
just go into homes and witness to people. They'll tell
you immediately what the Bible is all about, though
they have never read it. You may be a religious
skeptic and you may have decided that Jesus has to fit
into your little system. I have news for you. Jesus
Christ is bigger than Nazareth. Jesus was from
Nazareth; but Jesus was also from heaven. God was His
father. Divinity was His nature. Heaven was His home.
He's bigger than any Nazareth.
This old world is constantly wanting to confine Jesus
to Nazareth. They want to keep him back in the first
century, riding a donkey. I have news for you. The
Jesus of Nazareth is the Jesus of Jacksonville. He's
riding the streets of the city of Jacksonville. He can
solve modern problems whatever they may be.
The fact of the matter is—nothing good can come from
anywhere BUT Nazareth. Because Jesus came from
Nazareth and the only One who was ever good was the
Lord Jesus Christ.
We find the doubt he manifests. And Nathanael says to
Philip in verse 46, "Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth?" Philip says to him, "Come and see." I like
that. He didn't argue with him.
There is a place, of course, for academic debate.
There is a place for apologetics in the Christian
faith. But on this occasion, Philip does not try to
deal with his doubts with philosophical or religious
arguments. He just basically says to him, "Come and
see."
The real evidence is to have a meeting with Jesus.
Some of you really need to meet Jesus. You don't need
me to give you some argument.
I heard about an intellectual preacher who was
preaching a sermon to prove the existence of God. It
was a rather complicated sermon as you can imagine.
One sister in the church was having a hard following
his confusing arguments. When it was all over she
said, "Well, I just can't help but believing after all
he said that there's a God somehow."
Ladies and Gentlemen, what you need to do is have a
meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ and all your doubts
can be solved and all your doubts can be settled. Give
Jesus a chance. You've tried everything else. Give
Jesus a chance. You've got yourself in a big mess. You
have problems that you cannot solve. Give Jesus a
chance. "Come and see." That's what Philip says.
II. The DEITY HE MEETS.
Nathanael goes with Philip to meet Jesus and in verse
47 Jesus sees Nathanael coming to Him. Here they come.
Here is Nathanael and in front of him he see Jesus of
Nazareth, but more than that he sees deity in human
flesh. Jesus says to him, "Behold an Israelite indeed
in whom is no guile."
The Lord Jesus, in saying that, just reveals His
deity. You could translate the word, guile, as Jacob.
It may be that Nathanael had recently been studying
the life of Jacob. I said that his name in the first
three gospels is Bartholomew. When you see, bar, that
means son of. Son of Tholomew. Tholomos. There was a
group called the Tholomans who had dedicated
themselves to the study of the Scriptures. He may
have been one of those. Perhaps, undoubtedly, he had
been reading about the life of Jacob. In Genesis 27,
when you read about the life of Jacob, you will find
that Jacob was a schemer. He was a rascal. You've
heard of the singing group Rascal Flat; he was Rascal
Jacob. He was a rascal. He was a heel-snatcher. He was
a schemer. Jesus looked at Nathanael and said, "An
Israelite in whom there is no Jacob." It is a great
compliment to Nathanael because Jesus is basically
affirming the sincerity of this man Nathanael.
An Israelite means, "Ruled by God." Here's a man who
is under the authority of God. Here is a man, when he
gets the evidence, will believe the evidence. What you
have here is a revelation of the Lord's omniscience.
He calls him by name. He knows all about him. Here the
man comes up. First time Jesus, in the flesh, had ever
seen this man. He just says to him, "This man is an
Israelite. He's ruled by God. He's no Jacob. There's
not a false bone in his body." That's a tremendous
compliment.
What about you? Do you have your doubts about it all?
What you need to do is meet Jesus who knows all about
you. Jesus knows just exactly where you are right now.
He knows just exactly where you are in your life. H e
knows what's going on in your life. He knows all about
you right now. He knows all about your past. "I don't
want anybody to know about my past." Jesus knows all
about your past. He knows not only what's going on on
the outside of you, he knows what's going on on the
inside of you. He knows your doubts. He knows your
fears. He knows your failures. He knows your desires.
Jesus Christ has omniscience. He knows all about you.
In verse 48 Nathanael says, "how do you know me?"
Watch it. It just shocks Nathanael. Jesus said to him
in verse 48, "Before Philip called you." Isn't that
interesting? He had already gone ahead of Philip.
You are witnessing to somebody. Before you ever got
there, Jesus was there. You are talking to somebody
about the Lord and you think is brand new stuff—Jesus
has already been ahead of you. He's already been
working in that person's heart. He's already been
working in that person's life circumstances.
Many stories came out of our Pastors' Conference. A
group of pastors went to a restaurant here in town and
they were witnessing to the waiter, talking to him
about his relationship to the Lord. He said, "You
know, I've accepted the Lord." They said, "Tell us
about it." He said, "You know that First Baptist
Church downtown? I was watching it on television. My
life was all messed up. I was dating the wrong kind of
girl. I had an old beat up car. One Sunday, that
preacher prayed a prayer and he said, I got down on my
knees and I prayed that prayer with the preacher. Now,
I have me a good girl. I have me a better car. My life
has completely turned around."
That's what Jesus can do. He's already running ahead
of us. Isn't that marvelous? "Before Philip called
you, I saw you under the fig tree." Evidently that
fig tree was in a garden Nathanael had. It was
evidently a quiet place of meditation and rest and
refreshment and relaxation. Now, Jesus is revealing
not only His omniscience—he knew all about Nathanael.
He's revealing His omnipresence. He was saying,
Nathanael, when you were under that fig you didn't
know it, son, but I was right there with you.
Is God at work over yonder somewhere? God is at work
everywhere. There ain't nowhere where God ain't.
That's not good grammar, but it's real good theology.
God is everywhere. God is omnipresent. Listen to what
the psalmist said in Psalm 139. "Whither shall I go
from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy
presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there.
If I make my bed in hell, thou art there. If I take
the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me
and thy right hand shall uphold me." God is
everywhere. You can't hide from God. It's useless to
try.
Jonah found out you can't run from God. Adam and Eve
found out you can't run from God. They were hiding
behind a tree. The Lord said, "Where art thou?" He
knew exactly where they were. God knows where you are.
You can't run from God anymore.
The deity he meets. The reason I want you to meet
Jesus Christ is because when you meet Jesus Christ you
meet deity. You meet God.
III. The DECISION HE MAKES.
"Nathanael answered and said unto him, Rabbi, thou art
the king of Israel."
I want you to see something. In two minutes time, here
is a man whose doubts are settled and solved. He makes
a quantum leap in two minutes that completely changes
his life.
You've come here tonight. You don't plan to do
anything. Make any kind of decision. You are going to
get in and out and go on your way. What you need to do
is do what Nathanael did and make the greatest
decision of your life.
Notice what he says about Jesus. He's convinced. His
doubts are settled. "Thou art the son of God." That
is, he crowns Him as the king of the universe. "Thou
art the king of Israel." He crowns Him as the king of
the future. He acknowledges His deity. He acknowledges
His destiny. He is basically saying, "You are
everything they say you are. You are everything you
claim to be. In that confession, this doubter who has
now become a believer, this man seals his own destiny
for all eternity.
"Jesus said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw
thee under the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt
see greater things than these." Then he goes back to
the life of Jacob. In verse 51 he makes a reference to
an experience Jacob had when he was a teenage boy.
If there was ever a time decisions need to be made,
it's when you are a teenager. Some of the most
important decisions of your life are made when you are
a young person. I daresay the most important decision
of your life. The decision to receive Christ as your
Savior. The decision about what kind of friends you
are going to associate with. The decision about what
you are going to do in life. The decisions about where
you are going to school and get your education. I
presume that the greatest decisions, for the most part
of a person's life, are made while they are young.
Jacob was just a teenage boy running. That night he
went to sleep with a stone for a pillar. That night he
had a vision and there was a ladder that was set down.
On that ladder he saw the angels of God ascending and
descending. Ascending, as if the angels were going
back to glory and telling heaven all of the sad, heart
rending things taking place on this earth. Descending
from heaven with God's solutions and God's answers and
God's power to meet the situation. Jacob saw that
ladder and said, "Behold, this is the gate of heaven."
He understood that this ladder connected heaven and
earth. Jesus is saying to Nathanael, "Nathanael, I'm
the ladder. I saw you under that fig tree. That fig
tree told me about you and sin. But I am the ladder
because the ladder tells about another tree. It tells
about the cross where I died on that cross for your
sins. I'm the ladder." And he said to him, "You'll
see greater things than this." And he did. He became
a disciple of Jesus—a follower of the Lord.
I hope many of you will become a follower of the lord
this morning. He saw the time when Jesus Christ died
on the cross. He saw the time when Christ ascended
back to heaven. Like you and I, he will see the time
when Christ will come again with the holy angels. Oh,
he lights a lamp of hope for the future. When you come
to Christ, not only can He help you with your problems
right now, but He can help you with the problems of
your future.
I don't know what your problems are. I don't know what
dimension they may take. I don't know what shape they
may take. But if you will meet Jesus, if you will
open up your heart and your life and receive Jesus,
whatever the problems of the future may bring, Christ
has greater things than these to give to you.
I want to close with this statement of Philip in verse
46. "Philip saith unto him, Come and see." That's one
of the great words in the Bible—COME. All through the
Bible God issues that invitation. How simple it is to
know Christ as your Savior. You come. How simple it is
to have someone in your life who can help you with
life's problems. God says, Come. How simple it is to
be forgiven of your sin and to know Christ as Savior
and to know that heaven is your home. God's word to
you, this morning, is Come.
I'm going to ask that we bow our heads.
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