John Doubts Jesus | Week 22

We’re going to be in Matthew chapter eleven today. So if you have a Bible you can go ahead and turn there. That’s where we’re going to start this morning. We have been teaching through the ministry of Jesus and we have been looking at it for the better part of six months. Last week we left off at Luke chapter six.

Josh Franco preached for us. Josh, yes, he did an amazing job. Josh, people have been saying that Josh looks like me. I don’t think he looks like me anyway. But yeah, we talked to the story about when he healed the centurion and today we’re actually going to skip a story in the order for some scheduling. There was a scheduling change but it actually works out kind of well because Matthew chapter eleven I think really fits well after the story you read last week. So we’re going to read Matthew chapter eleven. We’re going to dive right in, we’re going to read it right now. Verse one, we’re going to start. After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and to preach in the towns of Galilee. When John, that’s John the Baptist who was put in prison, heard the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask, are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else? Jesus replied, Go back and report to John what you have heard, what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk. Those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and good news is proclaimed to the poor.

Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John. What did you go out in the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothing? No, those who wear fine clothing are in king’s palaces. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you. And more than a prophet, this is the one about whom it is written I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare the way before you. Truly, I tell you, among those born of woman, there has never risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subject to violence and violent people have been raiding it. For all the prophets in the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. Whoever has ears, let him hear. I love the way Jesus, after a long message like this, just ends with that statement those who have ears, let them hear. In other words, hey, if you got it, good. If you didn’t, I’m not going to repeat myself. Jesus is pretty amazing.

Our society has changed. Philosopher Charles Taylor, whose thousand page writing on the secular age called the secular age, has become sort of the most influential researcher on the study of something called secularism. Essentially, his book and this concept of secularism is about this idea that how we in the west have moved away from faith as our default setting. See, in previous time, faith was just what everyone did. They held on to beliefs. Beliefs was the most important thing to individuals. And in a secular society, we are moving away from faith and towards something where skepticism and doubt are seen as a higher form of learning and understanding. In other words, secularism, broadly defined is the removal or the minimization of the role of faith in any public or personal sphere. See, in secularism, doubt is what is academic, intellectual even. It is to be skeptical or to not be sure, or to reject authority. And faith, certainly in a higher power or something outside of yourself, faith is seen in a secular age as something below what normal academia would accept.

And because of this kind of trend towards secularism, wouldn’t you agree that doubt is in the air that we breathe? In some ways, we are all Thomas now. We all have seen the glorious things of God, and yet there’s a part of us that goes, is any of this real? You ever pray that? I mean, have you ever been praying? You ever pray that you ever been praying? And then all of a sudden you thought to yourself, am I talking to the sky? Is there someone actually out there? Is any of this real? God, Jesus, the Scriptures? Am I just making this up in my head? Is there some sort of mass delusion that has been going on because religion is the opium of the masses. Is there a sense of, like, man, maybe none of this stuff is real? And even though God has done amazing things in your life, and you’ve heard the answer to prayers, and you have felt Him speak to you, and you have understood his word to be clear and concise, or rather clear and give you answers to the future, have you even just for a moment thought to yourself, is any of this true?

If you have, have you ever had that moment turn into days, and those days turn into weeks, and those weeks turn into months, and those months turn into a season of your life when your faith, your faith, you know that calm, settled assurance that God is good, has it ever been called into question? Well, if you ever had that feeling, you are not alone. You are shoulder to shoulder with more people than you probably think, possibly even the person sitting to your right or to your left, even with me here on stage. And maybe more importantly, you are shoulder to shoulder with John the Baptist, whom Jesus called the greatest man to ever live. Today’s lesson is for anyone who has ever doubted, who has because of, again, the doubt being in the air that we breathe has ever called into question the thing that they hold firm. Today is for the doubters. And if you’re not a doubt, then congratulations. You can take the week off. Also, I don’t believe you. So there’s that. Today we’re going to talk about doubts. That’s what we’re going to talk about. But first we’re going to walk through this text line by line, see if we can learn some things.

And then at the end, we’ll circle back to this question. How do we cultivate faith in the Corrosive soil and cynicism of the secular age? You guys with me? All right. Amen. All right, verse one. Ready? Chapter Matthew, chapter eleven, verse one. If you’re a doubter let me hear you say Amen. I’m just kidding. It’s okay. All right. After Jesus had finished instructing the twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John, who was put in prison, you have to keep reading till chapter 14 to figure out why John is put in prison. But here is the short version. John was arrested by a guy named Herod. Herod was the king of the Jews. Remember, Israel is under Roman occupation and Rome would set up some puppet governments and they would have a puppet king. The puppet king over Israel was a guy named Herod. Herod was the king, and John made an enemy of the king. He called him out on an affair he was having with his sister in law, which is disgusting. Herod would eventually divorce his wife and marry his former sister-in-law.

And that would actually cause a war because that woman’s dad was also a king. Anyway, John the Baptist was also preaching that there is a king to come and that’s a problem when there is already a king. So Herod hated John, so John calls him out on his affair. John’s message is that there’s a king or on the corner. Herod doesn’t like John, so Herod puts John in prison. And so when we get here to Matthew chapter eleven, we find out that Herod has already imprisoned John and there John is rotting. So John is in prison and what he does is he sends a delegation of his disciples. John has disciples just like Jesus has disciples to go to Jesus and ask him a question. He says this: when John who was put in prison heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, are you the one who is to come or should we be expecting someone else? The one who is to come was kind of a figure of speech for the Messiah. So I want you to notice the question. When he heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask, are you the Messiah?

That’s ironic, right? Well what’s happening here? Well, John is in prison and John doesn’t want to be in prison. And John’s expectation of the Messiah is that the Messiah wouldn’t have him be sitting in prison. So he says the question, hey, are you the one? Because if you are, then there’s a problem here. John is having doubts. It’s interesting that John was having doubts though, right? Because you were with us at the start of this journey when we saw John the Baptist in the water with Jesus and Jesus was being baptized and the heavens opened up and a dove descended on him and the Father spoke, this is my son and whom I am well pleased. And John the Baptist was the guy baptizing Jesus. We’re talking about John the Baptist and he’s doubting. He’s the one who said, behold, this is the spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We’re talking about the same guy who in John chapter three would say I must decrease and he must increase. If all my disciples go to him, I am happy because he is the true Messiah. That same John is having doubts.

Again, if you’ve ever doubted, if you live with some burning questions in your head or in your heart, you are in some good company. Well, why is John doubting? What has changed? Matthew doesn’t tell us exactly, but it’s implicit in the story right here, right? It’s what we said a little bit earlier. Jesus doesn’t line up with John’s expectations of him. I want to tell you what John was looking for because you’re going to understand quickly why John is so disappointed about the current state of his life and also the state of the kingdom of God. This is what John was preaching. This is from Matthew, chapter three. I baptize you with water. This is John the Baptist preaching on the banks of the Jordan River. I baptize you for water, for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. You think I’m intense? This guy, he’s going to light you all up. Listen to this. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Then he says this, his winnowing fork, a winnowing fork is what used to separate grain from chaff.

Chaff in the scriptures is like a euphemism for people going to hell. He’s like, he has this fork that’s going to send some of y’all to hell, and the other ones are going to go to heaven. And he will clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat into the barns and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. This is pre incarcerated John. And what’s his message? When the Messiah comes, all of you are in trouble. John the Baptist was like an old country preacher. He lived like, have you ever listened to those guys, man? I’m uncomfortable sometimes listening to these guys. I one time heard a quote from an old country preacher. He says, It’s a poor sermon if you leave with not being offended. I’m like, Okay, sorry. I apologize. You should either be displeased with yourself or you should be displeased with the preacher. That’s a good sermon. So that’s sort of the spirit of John the Baptist, right? He’s like, you’re going to come and you’re going to get tore up when the Messiah comes. That’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to leave scared. You’re never going to want to come back to that church. That’s the Messiah he always dreamed of.

Israel is under the Roman oppression. When the Messiah comes, man, he is going to destroy Rome and all you religious leaders who are phony, he’s going to tear you up. He’s going to make sure none of you survive. He’s going to go totally leviticus on all of you guys. So what’s happening here, right, for John the Baptist, he is not my type of savior. Not my type of Messiah, I should say. I thought this is the message. I thought your kingdom was coming. I thought restoration was coming. I thought you were going to change the world. I thought your winning fork was going to come. I thought you were going to burn up the chaff. But here I am, burning or wasting away in prison. And what are you doing? I heard the deeds of the Messiah, and what is he doing? He’s eating and drinking with sinners? What is he doing? He’s making a tax collector into one of his disciples. He’s healing a soldier who is oppressing us. He’s healing a servant of the soldier. He’s working with the enemy. What is this guy doing? John wasn’t expecting Jesus to do any of these things.

He was hoping that he would rally an army and fight off Rome and topple the government. And Jesus is out there healing the poor. He’s preaching a sermon that everyone needs to be non violent and that you need to love your enemies. What is going on here? Jesus does not line up with the expectations of John, and that is causing John to doubt. Here’s something that I’ve learned, and this is a very scientific chart that I made earlier today. The more you go on with unmet expectations, the more doubt you have. Isn’t this true for your life? God didn’t give me what I needed or what I thought I needed. And so maybe there’s not even a God out there because if he clothed me the way he clothed the lilies, and if he cares me the way he cares about the birds, he’s not really caring about me the way he cares about those things, because I need a lot more and he hasn’t given me anything I need. And so what’s happening is that the longer and the longer John sits with this Messiah that’s not like the Messiah he hoped for, the more and more he’s doubting.

Jesus hears about his doubts and so gives a message to the disciples. He says this. Jesus replied, these disciples have come out 100 miles to receive this message. Jesus turns to them, they say, are you the one who is to come or should we expect somebody else? And Jesus replies, go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind received sight, the lame walk. Those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and good news is proclaimed to the poor. We have been reading all these stories the last couple of weeks, haven’t we? And last week we read a story about the healing that Jesus was doing. And the funny thing about all this is that John already knows all of this, right? The first verse said that John had heard of the deeds of the Messiah, so none of this would have been news. In fact, Jesus actions are what prompted the crisis of faith in John. This message isn’t going to assuage John, it’s going to amplify his doubt. John already knows all of this. John’s issue is that Jesus is doing these things. That’s John’s issue.

And there he is stuck on death row. And let me just stop here for a second because again, we can relate to this. Have you ever had one of those moments where you were just expecting God to be a different God than what he is? Expecting Jesus to be a different Jesus than what he is? Expecting him to do something for you that he never promised he would do for you? Like some of us last week I was so appreciative of the story that the senior Saunders shared with us last week. That was awesome. They shared about their marriage that was a disaster. And then God restored it and he brought repentance and we listened to the story, right, of repentance. And we were hooting and hollering and clapping and standing and going, amen. But if you were sitting in the back and your marriage is still a wreck and your husband has left you or your wife has left you and they haven’t come back, and you feel the weight of betrayal and the weight of abandonment and you’ve prayed and you’ve prayed and you’ve prayed and you’ve gone to counseling and you’ve done all the things they told you to do, how does that feel?

How does it feel? Does it feel like, wow, I’m really thankful for their story. No, It’s like, where are you with me, God? I got up here, I was praying for healing. We had people come up, anybody want healing, come up and pray. Because I know a lot of people are sick. And one person gets up and we’re like, we’re very happy to announce that blah, blah, blah, cancer is in remission. And everyone’s like, Yay. Amazing.

And you’re sitting there going, my body is slowly decaying. My body is slowly decaying and nothing. I’ve gone up for prayer 5000 times. You’re waiting on a promise, you’re waiting on a dream, you’re waiting on a relationship, you’re waiting on a marriage or you’re waiting on a career, you’re waiting on a kingdom thing and you’re just stuck listening to other people’s answer to their prayers and you can’t hear yours? Unmet expectation that blossoms into a sense of doubt. Is any of this real? Maybe none of this is real. Maybe I’m out of my mind. Maybe I was just like trying to hope for something. And really I’m just a bunch of atoms that accidentally came together and I’m not made in anybody’s image. I don’t know. My body is going to rot and decay and fall apart. Man, look at all these great things that have happened. But here I am sitting in prison. Another really interesting thing about this text is that if John the Baptist is a prophet, that means he probably has, and this is hard to even say for us to really capture, but he probably has the entire Old Testament put to memory.

All of us, we’re like, I’ve memorized my last three verses. John 316. Got it. I feel the same way. I’m like, what the heck? But we have Google I have it memorized on my computer. So they probably knew everything. And so it would not have slipped John the Baptist’s mind when Jesus decided this verse. Because this is a verse, this is either like an allusion to or direct quote from Isaiah 61. And John the Baptist sitting there would have known exactly what Jesus was saying. This is Isaiah 61 the spirit of the Lord is on me. By the way, that’s also a euphemism for the Messiah because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. And look what it says here. To proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Again, the word Messiah in Hebrew literally means anointed one. This is a prophesy from the 7th century BC about the coming Messiah, and he’s going to usher in a kingdom. He’s going to bring good news to the poor, and he’s going to bind up the brokenhearted, and he’s going to set the captives free.

And if you’re thinking about this and you’re going who’s in prison in the story oh, yeah, John the Baptist. So Jesus is going to do all these great things for the poor, but what is he not going to do? Free the prisoner. That’s another way of Jesus telling John, hey, I am the Messiah. I am the one from Isaiah. But, hey, just so you know, I’m not coming for you. Hey, John, I’m not coming for you, buddy. I am the Messiah. My kingdom does really exist, but it’s not going to meet all your expectations. It’s not going to be the thing that you wanted. It’s not going to fulfill all your wildest dreams. What you hoped and what you dreamed for in the coming of my Messiahship is not going to be what you thought it was. There’s going to be no assault on the palace. There’s no army hiding in the garden of Gethsemane. In fact, I actually teach my disciples to love their enemies. I’m not coming to break you out of jail, John. I’m not coming for you. Can you feel the weight of that? I’ve been serving God my whole life.

I gave you everything, Jesus, and you’re not coming for me. I am the Messiah, but I’m not here to help you. And then this is the key verse, verse six. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. We’re going to come back to this verse. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. Blessed is the same word from the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed means to be happy or to be satisfied. Hey. Blessed is anybody who does not stumble. That word there in the Greek is where we get our word scandalize. One lexicon put it this way. This word stumble is to cause someone to experience anger or shock because of what was said or done, to cause, to offend or to offend another. It could be translated as the ESV says, blessed is anyone who’s not offended by what I say. I read one other scholar who translated it this way. God bless you, John, if you do not throw away your faith, because I’m a different kind of Messiah than you were expecting. Hey, this is who I came to be. This is what I came like.

And I’m just letting you know I’m not going to do the things you dreamed about. So just God bless you, John, God bless you if you don’t throw away your faith because I’m not what you expected. Now, verse six is the end of the story for John because in verse seven what does it say? As John’s disciples were leaving, that’s the last message that John gets. Hey, I’m a different type of Messiah. Don’t stumble on account of that. And then Jesus turns to the crowd and says all the great stuff that we read earlier. But it’s important to know that from two to six is all John gets. The rest is just for you and me. Rest is just for you and me. John does not get the encouragement of he’s the greatest person who ever lived. He doesn’t get any of that. All he gets is I’m not the Messiah you are looking for. I’m not him. Sorry buddy. The rest of the chapter is packed full of all this wonderful Bible nerd stuff. Read it on your own. It’s awesome. Jesus compares John the Baptist to Herod. He’s a little fun fact. Herod stamped a coin and on the back of the coin he had reeds swaying in the wind.

So what is Jesus saying? John is not like Herod. He’s not a weed swayed in the wind or reed swayed in the wind. He calls him the greatest man who ever lived. He also says he is becoming Elijah. All that stuff is really great, but we’re not going to work on that. Instead, we’re going to take a deep breath and we’re going to talk a little bit more about doubt. Everyone here? Good. All right, we’re going to translate and transpose all of this from the first century to the 21st century, from John the Baptist to you and to me. And the key line again is verse six. Blessed as anyone who does not stumble on account of me. And we’re going to zero in on that. But before we do that, I want to read verse twelve again because I think it gives us a little insight into the danger that we face in the current secular age that we’re living in. Jesus says this: the kingdom of heaven has been subject to violence and violent people have been raiding it. From ancient times until now God and his gospel have been under attack. There have been even violent oppositions to the rule and the reign of God as king. And evil, violent, malevolent people have always been trying to raid it, to destroy it, to rip away the precious truth that God has placed in our hearts. That’s John’s story. As I mentioned before, John is in prison. He will later be beheaded. That’s Jesus story. Jesus brought the kingdom, but he will later be crucified. That’s the apostle’s story. All but one of the apostles will die by the empire. And that’s millions of Christians story from the early on, from the beginning to the fourth century. And even today there are some hostile places where christians worship, where Christians now worship with an acute sense that they could be jailed or even killed for their faith. There has been and there will always be violence and violent people trying to destroy our faith. Now, you say, that’s not really my experience, because I live in America and I have freedom of religion. And I would say to you, certainly you’re not under physical attack, but you are under a spiritual threat, a spiritual threat that’s for your soul. There is still a violent war going on. And I would say the violence is from the age that we live in. This urban, progressive, secular, busy, noisy, consumeristic world.

As somebody who has served in this church in all different capacities, I can say that I’ve seen many friends who have been taken out by the age. Have you seen it? We have seen this, right? We have lost friends to the culture, haven’t we? We’ve lost friends to this culture who have been violently attacked by YouTube pundits who have called into question their faith, violently attacked by political partisanship, violently attacked by our country’s obsession with the American dream and economic freedom, and again, I guess I should call it supposed economic freedom. Attacked so many disciples I used to lead our teens, I would send them off to college and they would be attacked by higher education, trained and encouraged towards skepticism, towards hey, we need to question any external authority. My truth is good, but anything outside should be under attack. I’ve seen people lost to higher thinking, people who have been sucked into the rabbit hole of our whole secular society, where we worship comfort and pleasure and praise, not realizing that we have been raided by violent men, violent men and women, people who have okayed lots of things in their morals that they would have never okayed, because society has said it’s okay to do that, to watch that, to participate in that, to buy that, to engage with that.

People have decided that their morals are only morals if the society says they’re good morals. And anything that God’s word says is old, is regressive, is ancient, is something that’s oppressive and terrible. Let me just tell you, this is what’s happening. We keep losing friends to this culture. It happens. It happens either through a moment, a crisis of faith, or through a bunch of little compromises where their passion for the things of God grow strangely dim. As Jesus masterfully described it in the story of the Parable of the Sower. He says, there are seeds that fall on the thorns, and those are choked by life’s worries, by life’s troubles, and by the deceptive nature of wealth. So they do not grow and produce anything. We’re in a war of attrition, I would say. We’re in a war. The question is, can you last it? Do you even know you’re in a war? Every time you put on CNN or Fox News, you’re in a war. You turn on your YouTube thing and you see Ben Shapiro pop up. You’re like, I’m in a war. Why am I doing this? Anytime you pop up and you’re like you see some random other political pundit pop up, you are in the middle of a war.

Don’t do it to yourself. That’s not my notes. Moving on. How do we win, then? So here’s the question. How does faith win? Are you ready? I’m going to give you some steps. Here are some steps. You can jot them all down. You could think about them more. Here’s step number one. Ready? Step number one. Doubt the culture. Today we’re taught to doubt our beliefs and to doubt external authorities. Even like Moana and Encanto and all those I said that like a gringo Encanto and all that other stuff. The child is the best. Like Frozen. I just need no strings attached. We’re taught today to doubt anything that has authority. Why not instead doubt our culture and doubt our doubts? We’re asked to believe our doubts. And certainly I do think there’s a mature way to wrestle with our faith. We should wrestle with our faith. But to win this war, it’s also going to require us to doubt our culture and to doubt our doubts. Because this is the way the situations work, right? If you’re in a situation and part of you says, I don’t know if I believe this, and the other part of you says, I know, I believe this, why should you doubt your beliefs instead of your doubts?

And maybe it’s because we’re taught that doubt is more sophisticated. Oh, I broke free from that religious organization. Skepticism is like that’s educated, being open minded and being tolerant, that’s skepticism. All those things are together. Faith is for simpletons. Faith is for the uneducated. Faith is for the lower class. It’s for unindustrial nations. Faith is for Africa and for other places in Asia. Faith is not for people in Miami, but maybe in Alabama. Faith is good for Alabama, but faith is not good for Miami. I’m just saying that’s our prejudice, right? Why is that true? Why is it true that if you’re smart, you’re a doubting skeptic, but if you’re simple, you’re foolish? Like, rather, if you’re faithful, you’re foolish uneducated? Why is that the case? Have you ever wondered that maybe that message just comes from our culture? It comes from violent forces trying to destroy us. We should be doubting our doubts. We should be doubting our culture. Why am I even doubting that? Why do I believe that this is a better pursuit than some other pursuit? We should be living with a doubt of the culture. Pretty much if the world says it, it’s probably wrong.

Just a good thing to think about that’s number one. Number two, realign your expectations. There are things that God never promised that we start believing that God promises. And I get it. I feel that too. If I just do this, then God is required to give me something back. We should learn to realign our expectations and learn to realign them with the Scriptures, right? Like, faith comes, the Bible says, from hearing the Word. And I believe that’s because when we hear the Word, we realign our expectations with the reality of who God is, not with who we think God should be. The problem with John the Baptist was that John the Baptist had a vision of the Messiah that was not the biblical vision of the Messiah. Look, all of us deal with that, right? We’re like, God is here to make me happy. That’s not in the Bible anywhere. Realign your expectations of who God should be with the Scriptures and not with what you think. I was studying with somebody several years ago, and they left God because they thought that God would remove all of their thoughts of depression. And they were like, I was so convinced.

And I said, who told you that? They were like, I don’t know. I just thought that if God loved me, there would be no more thoughts of depression. I’m like, And I don’t want a God that lets me think thoughts of depression. I’m like, Okay, yeah, because God let Elijah deal with thoughts of depression. That person had a thought about who God was based upon what they thought, not based upon the Scriptures. Realign your expectations of God by listening to His Word, by being a part of a community. Maybe you need to get a mentor, someone who’s going to go, no, bro, your thinking is way off. You need to start thinking back what the scripture said. One of the things I do is I like to read really smart people because they help me. These people are way. So I have some book recommendations. You can take a picture of this. The Allure of Gentleness by Dallas Willard is probably like one of my all time favorites. There’s a book called Slave by John MacArthur. He explains that basically Jesus called us to be servants at first, which is essentially the word slaves. So this book is challenging, super challenging.

Mere Christianity. Again, just C. S. Lewis thinks higher than I could possibly think. Helps me realign my thoughts of God to His Word. Simply Christian by NT Wright? Anything with NT Wright, is great. The Only Wise God. This talks about God’s role in Society and Free Will by William Lane Craig. These guys come from all over the spectrum of Christian thought, right? John McCarthy is a Calvinist. William Lane Craig is a Moliness. NT Wright is an Arminianist. These guys are all over the place. But they do help you focus your thoughts about who God made you to be and the fact that you’re not God. So they kind of realign your thinking. All of us need a little bit of that. Here’s my third point. First point. First point, doubt the culture. Second point, realign your expectations. Third, stay emotionally healthy. There’s not much to say here except that you’re a whole person. You’re a whole person, and I need you to hear that, like, as many times a day. But doubt is as much emotional as it is intellectual. It’s no coincidence that John the Baptist begins to doubt when he’s in prison, hungry and tired.

D. A. Carson, a well known scholar, has a book where he talks about why people doubt. He has ten reasons why people doubt, and number seven on the list is sleep deprivation. That’s a true story. If you’re burning the candle at both ends, sooner or later you will indulge your more cynical nature, and eventually that will lead to abandonment of God’s authority. Anyway, that’s a very thin line. If you’re among those who are nasty and cynical and grumpy when you don’t get enough sleep, here’s something for you. You are morally obligated to try to get a good night’s sleep. I want to encourage you, go to sleep. My wife and I have been struggling in our faith because we have three little kids in our house, and then they are up all night long. And honestly, it’s been hard for me. I’m like struggling. God, but my wife takes the brunt of it. But still, if you talk to a mom who just had a baby about six months in, they’re really dealing with it. And you go, Why are you struggling so much with your faith? Well, because you haven’t slept in six months.

We need to support each other. Part of your discipleship talk should be, hey, how’s your sleep going? Are you eating your vegetables? You’re a whole person. Our physical experience is tied to our spiritual well being, is tied to our mental outlook. You are a whole person. And sometimes the godliest thing you can do is get a good night’s sleep or take a Sabbath and turn off your phone or delete your Instagram account. Like I said earlier, eat your vegetables. You need to care for your whole your whole self. Okay, last one. This is the probably the most important one. Define success as trust, not certainty. A number of scholars have pointed out, and I agree with this, that faith is just the word trust, that they’re the exact same word. To trust someone is to go, you know what? I’m not 100% certain, but I’m going to yield to the way that you have to lead me. My point is that the end goal of your apprenticeship with Jesus isn’t a doubt free life. It’s a life full of trust. It’s not that you never doubt again, but that you go, you know what? I fully and totally trust you.

That’s the tricky part, right? Because you’re making 100% commitment without 100% certainty. But that’s where amen you’re committing. It’s kind of like marriage, right? Like when you were getting married, those of you who are married, you were not 100% certain. Maybe you told yourself that, but you were 23. You had no idea. The best of you guys were like, maybe 50% certain. But you made a 100% commitment. Made 100% commitment. Does that make sense? So Jesus doesn’t call us to be 100% certain. He does call us to be 100% committed to Him. Now we close with where we began. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. This line, I believe, is an invitation from Jesus, not only to John, but also to us. Notice the language. It’s to anyone. To me, it’s an invitation for you when you’re going through difficult times of unmet expectation to decide to trust, to decide to go, you know what? You may not be what exactly what I always hoped that would happen in my life. But I believe you know better than I know. I believe that even though my marriage is messed up and my relationships are jacked up and my business venture hasn’t worked out and I’m confused and I’m in a time of waiting and I’m stuck, I’m okay with living in the tension of unanswered prayers because I’m 100% certain that you are a good God.

You’re a good God. And in those moments, we listen to God’s voice when maybe we’re not going to get the answers we wanted, and he goes, I love you, I love you, but hey, that thing you wanted, I’m not coming for you. I’m not coming for you. Hey. And in that moment, we stop and we go, you know what? I trust you still. I trust you still. Happy, right? Fortunate, blessed, at peace is any person, any follower of Jesus who, when life is really hard and when their dreams are crushed and when the diagnosis is lousy, and when they have more questions than they have answers and they live in a fog and they can’t chart their own way, blessed are they if they don’t give up, if they hold firm to trusting in Jesus. Instead of doubting, they trust and they sit and they wait whatever comes, blessed are they, right? Blessed are they if the settled condition of their heart is not full certainty, but full trust. And then Jesus would say to us, let anybody who have ears hear. At this time, we’re going to watch someone make a 100% commitment even though they’re not 100% certain.

We’re going to watch a baptism today. We’re so excited to see Judy Maxi get baptized.