Doubting Jesus

Have have you ever doubted Jesus before? I sure have! Today, I want to consider how we should approach doubt in the kingdom of God. As followers of Jesus, living in a broken world and sinful bodies that sense and feel real human emotions, it is natural to doubt. But our response to doubt is the biggest question for us, not if we will doubt or not. Based out of Matthew 11:1-19, I want to talk today about doubting Jesus.

John’s story becomes very understandable

First I want to say this: doubting Jesus is simply a part of the journey. Now I know what you are thinking, how silly for John the Baptist to doubt his cousin Jesus. What is wrong with him?! Didn’t he baptize Jesus? Wasn’t he there when the heavens opened up and God affirmed the son by saying. “This is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.” Shouldn’t that be enough?

Well let me tell you something, what happened to John is what happens to all of us: time. Time from his initial following of Jesus in which his faith and his journey was exposed to the harsh realities of life. After doing the right thing and speaking out against the sin of Herod for his marrying of his brother Philip’s wife and refusing to bend on God’s word, John is in prison.

Can we be honest for a second and say, I’ve been there? “God, I followed you, I did everything you said to the best of my ability and now I am in a hole here. Why aren’t you helping? Why are my prayers bouncing off the ceiling, why isn’t anything changing? Why have you given up on me?” Are you truly God or should I seek someone or something else.

John’s story becomes very understandable. I mean goodness, if I am John, Jesus’s COUSIN, I am a little offended that I baptized him and then Jesus goes out and picks up 12 other guys to be his disciples. Things are not going according to plan. He should be on the team. He should be instituting the church, he should be doing the miracles and seeing Jesus move in powerful and wonderful ways. And yet, John is in prison. 

Doubt is a natural part of life and the journey. But John’s doubt doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t who he said he is, and your doubt doesn’t mean Jesus isn’t who he says he is either. God’s value and reality doesn’t rise and fall on your emotions for the day. God is God, no matter what. Doubt falls completely on us and not him. 

Doubt is natural, in fact, if you didn’t doubt I would say that maybe your faith isn’t genuine. If you really believe something and have thought it through and it is so real and so powerful and alive, you have to have moments of doubt. So if you are doubting today, you are in good company, John the Baptist did too and Jesus says in this very passage that he is better than anyone else that has been born.

Christ is there to pick us up

Second, when we doubt, Christ is there to pick us up. I don’t know about you, but if I am Jesus, I am a little upset by John’s doubt. Um… hello, cousin. You lept in your mothers womb when we first met! You were prophesied about by Isaiah as the one who was supposed to “prepare the way of the Lord” remember? You baptized me in water, you heard my fathers voice… audibly! What more do you want than to lay your physical eyes on the son of God himself?! 

What does Jesus do? He affirms who John is. Verse 9: “What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is he of whom it is written, “ ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’”

Jesus calls John up to who he is. And he will do the same for you. Who are you? You are a son or daughter of the king of the universe. Jesus says in John 15 that he calls you friends! Write this one down: when you doubt Jesus, you have forgotten who you are in him.

You see we have this religious attitude sometimes don’t we? “Jesus is mad at me, I have had a bad week, he doesn’t want to talk to me. I doubt his love for me!” See, you have forgotten who you are! You have forgotten that while you were yet a sinner Christ died for you (Rom. 5:8)! You have forgotten that you are his masterpiece, made in Christ Jesus to do good works (Eph. 2:10). You have forgotten that your performance doesn’t earn the love of Jesus, you have already won it simply by being made in his image and being called and set apart for his purposes and for his glory. You are His new creation in Christ Jesus, the old has gone, the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17)!

Christ speaks life and love over you, there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1) so when that voice of accusation arises over you, don’t forget who you are! Doubt is the first sign of forgetting. John allowed his circumstances and his emotions to supersede his true identity in Christ. You and I are prone to do the same. So what do we do?

We need to doubt our doubts

Instead of doubting Jesus, we need to doubt our doubts. I get this idea from an incredible book by Tim Keller called “Making Sense of God” that I highly recommend to you if you want to look further into this idea of doubting God.

The religious leaders would eventually go as far as calling Jesus “demonic” and a glutton who loves to hang out with sinners. Doubt is a very powerful thing. It can even get us to say outlandish things like Jesus, the Son of God and long awaited Messiah, is demonic! 

But it can also be powerful in drawing us back to our savior. Doubt is one of the most effective soils in which we can grow faith from. Doubt is an incredible opportunity for us if we can maintain a perspective that sees it that way. And I know the tension, “but Pastor you don’t understand, God is not there! I can’t see him, I can’t feel him, everything around me is crumbling.”

Your doubts can spur you on towards Christ, and even confirms how serious you are taking the claims of following Jesus. Without doubt, your following of Jesus might just be something you subscribe to without serious thought at all. How genuine is that?

Doubts are natural on this journey with Jesus, and I want to encourage you that if you have them, you aren’t doing anything wrong. I also want to encourage you that Christ is right there in your doubts waiting to affirm you and who you are in him: IF, you are willing to hear his voice and not the voice of another.

Doubt your doubts. Christ isn’t doubting you, he believes in you. He proved it by dying on the cross in your place. He believes in your calling and is calling out to you to step into the man or woman that God has called you to be, despite your doubts. Walk in what God says and silence the world and your emotions with his word and his ways.