Bringing To Jesus Your Doubts
Download MP3If you would turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 7. I apologize. I forgot to turn off my mic when I was singing. I was the, the baritone who thinks he's a tenor upfront. Luke chapter 7.
Joel Brooks:We begin reading in verse 18. The disciples of John reported all these things to him, and John calling 2 of his disciples to him, sent them to the lord saying, are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another? And when the men had come to him, they said, John the Baptist has sent us to you saying, are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? In that hour, he healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits. And on many who were blind, he bestowed sight.
Joel Brooks:And he answered them, go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind received their sight. The lame walk. Lepers are cleansed, and deaf hear. The dead are raised up.
Joel Brooks:The poor have good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me. When John's messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John. What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reeds shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see?
Joel Brooks:A a man dressed in soft clothing. Behold, those who were dressed in splendid clothing and live in luxury or in king's courts. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
Joel Brooks:This is he of whom it is written, behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. I tell you among those born of women, none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of god is greater than he. When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just having been baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.
Joel Brooks:To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They're like children, sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another. We played the flute for you, and you did not dance. We sang a dirge, and you did not weep. For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, he has a demon.
Joel Brooks:The son of man has come eating and drinking, and you say, look at him. A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Yet, wisdom is justified by all her children. Pray with me. Lord, there is so much in this text.
Joel Brooks:We're only gonna be able to touch a little of it. I pray that the little that we touch, Lord, though that the eternal truths that are there would be clear to us that the power of those truths would hit us. Lord, we we come expectant and we know you will not disappoint. We ask for changed hearts in this place, changed minds for your glory. I ask that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But, Lord, let your words remain, and may they change us. I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I debated, skipping over this passage actually in Luke because we've already taken a look for a couple of weeks at John the Baptist and his message and, but but ultimately, I decided there's just too many themes here that are, too important for us to skip over. It's a very relevant text that begins with a question that John the Baptist asked of Jesus, and it's a question that we hear all the time.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, are you the one? Or is there another way to God? Are you the one? Or or do we need to be looking elsewhere? I I have heard a form of the question John the Baptist asked many many times in my life.
Joel Brooks:Perhaps there's some people here asking that question. What's remarkable about this is, John the Baptist is the one asking it. And just just rewind and look at John the Baptist's life, this is a man who was I mean, he had a miraculous birth. He was filled with the spirit of God from the womb. All this time, he had been pointing to Jesus, to the Messiah who was to come, he lived a a life in absolute devotion to God.
Joel Brooks:He was so devoted and faithful to God, that meant for him living a homeless life, living out in the wilderness. It meant living a life where he ate bugs just to sustain himself. He was faithful. Just a few months earlier, Jesus had come to him and he cried out, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus came to be baptized, and he said, no no no.
Joel Brooks:I have need to be baptized by you, Jesus. But then he went ahead and he baptized him, and he saw the heavens opened up, the spirit of God to send like a dove. He heard the audible voice of God saying, this is this, my son whom I love. I'm very pleased with him. He heard that, and here he doubts.
Joel Brooks:Jesus calls John the Baptist the greatest man who has ever lived up to that point. There's no one greater than him, and yet he doubts. Now, if John the Baptist had doubts about the lordship of Jesus, don't you think that maybe, just maybe, we in here might have just a little doubt occasionally? If John the Baptist could doubt, I think it's just possible that although when I look around in this room, I see a lot of people raised in church, who grew up in Sunday school, grew up hearing all the stories, grew up with all of this. You've publicly professed Jesus as Lord, but yet there's still the possibility that just maybe a little bit of doubt might creep into your life.
Joel Brooks:This could happen to John the Baptist. What do we do with that doubt? One of the most remarkable verses in the Bible to me comes in Matthew 28 verse 17, and this is one verse before the great commission. When Jesus says, all authority on heaven on earth has been given to me, and he says, go make disciples, and what we all know that passage, but just one verse before, it's it's remarkable. And this is after Jesus has risen from the dead.
Joel Brooks:He has appeared numerous times to his disciples, to many people. He's talked to people. He's sat down, he's had meals, he's eating fish with people. He said, come up, touch my scars. Mary gave him a hug.
Joel Brooks:He he taught people, he opened up their minds to scripture that they might understand why he had to die and rise again. And so, many many people have seen him risen, and he is on his way back to the father. He is ascending to the father. In verse 17, it says this, and this is talking about the disciples. It says, and when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.
Joel Brooks:That's remarkable. I mean, that's remarkable and just real quick, that obviously speaks to the truthfulness of scripture. If you're inventing a religion, you don't have John the Baptist, the prophet who points to Jesus at the end of his life, doubt. You don't have the disciples who had seen Jesus risen over and over again, who had sat down had meals with him, you don't have them doubting as he's going back to heaven. You don't write that unless people remembered it and it happened.
Joel Brooks:Jesus's closest friends doubted him even after they saw him alive. They walked with him, they talked with him and they touched him. Don't you think that just maybe, just a little bit, doubt might creep into your life? Let's look at how this is possible, how the disciples, how we can doubt Jesus, especially given the evidence that the disciples were given. If you're not a Christian, you very well might be thinking that the one thing that's holding you back is evidence.
Joel Brooks:You need more evidence. You need to hear either the the perfect argument or you need to see some kind of indisputable proof about the deity of Jesus, you get that that one lacking piece of evidence and you're going to believe, and you've spent your life kinda waiting for that to happen. You know, maybe, you know, you think, if I got cancer and I'm about to die of cancer, and a Christian comes in and comes over me and says, in the name of Jesus, be healed, and instantly my cancer goes away, then I will believe. I mean, I've got no choice. Obviously, Jesus is God.
Joel Brooks:I have no choice. I will believe. I think this text tells us to not be so certain about that. Just before John had his doubts, it said he got a report back about what Jesus was doing, and we looked at the miracle that Jesus did last week. Jesus just rose somebody from the dead, a little boy from the dead.
Joel Brooks:And so John's disciples hear that, or they see that, and they report it back to John. John, we just saw Jesus raise up a kid from the dead, and John doubts. Is this really the Messiah? I mean, he doesn't doubt that what they said was true. He hears it, and he still doubts that this is the Messiah, Or do I need to wait for somebody else?
Joel Brooks:The disciples, they had all the empirical evidence you could ask for in Jesus in seeing the risen Jesus, and yet, they doubted. They they saw him stand up in a boat and tell a hurricane to be quiet and stay quiet and it obeyed. They saw Jesus walk across water. They saw him heal many lepers. They healed the lame.
Joel Brooks:The blind got sight. Dead people rose. They saw all that firsthand. Empirical evidence. They were friends with Jesus, they'd given their lives to Jesus, and they doubted.
Joel Brooks:So do not be so certain to think that all you're lacking is just a little bit more evidence. And I do think that a good, clear, rational presentation of the gospel is a good thing. It's one of the reasons we exist as a church is hopefully to present that in a consistent basis, and you could come up afterwards and get asked me questions about that. I think that's a good thing, but don't think, you know, when you're thinking of your lost friends or your lost family, that the one thing that's lacking is that one last little argument that you could give. If if I could just they could just see this one little thing.
Joel Brooks:If I could just give this one perfect argument, they would believe. It's not the case. You gotta understand what this passage teaches about belief and unbelief. You've gotta throw out the notion that your mind and your heart is just a blank slate weighing evidence. And when you receive all this evidence that you know about Jesus and his resurrection and about who he is, and then that could tilt the scales and you believe, and you're just a blank slate.
Joel Brooks:You've got to throw that out. You have to realize there is something working against your belief. You're not neutral, there is something working against your belief. There is something the Bible calls evil, sin. You are fallen.
Joel Brooks:It's not a clean slate. Things are working against you. Forces that are there that are going to distort evidence, plant seeds of doubt, and these forces are strong. So strong that the greatest of men, people like John the Baptist, are on occasion going to have doubts. The disciples are going to have doubts.
Joel Brooks:We are gonna have doubts. So what do we do with these doubts? We go to Jesus. We go to Jesus. When Jesus gets a report from John's disciples, he doesn't say, what?
Joel Brooks:How dare you doubt me? Come on. He doesn't do that. He doesn't condemn John. He listens and he responds.
Joel Brooks:He understands John. He doesn't get angry with him. A matter of fact, he gives John even more evidences. Let me show you who I am. Now, John had come to doubt Jesus for the same reasons that a lot of people today doubt Jesus.
Joel Brooks:It's because Jesus is not behaving in the way that he thought Jesus should behave. He's not doing the things that I think Jesus should do. You know, John's in prison. John spoke out against the marriage of King Herod. Herod had married his niece and, and so John said, that's incest, and he spoke out against that.
Joel Brooks:And so it landed him in jail. And so he can see the fruit of all of his labor, living a homeless life, eating bugs, you know, proclaiming truth, all of this landed him in jail. And you you gotta remember John, he's, he's a wilderness man. He's used to sleeping under the stars at night. He's used to really open spaces.
Joel Brooks:So jail had to be really hard for him being very confined. He's a young man. He's about 30 years old. It's about the age of most of us here in this room. My mental picture of John the Baptist, I don't know if you had this growing up, was kind of like of Obi Wan Kenobi.
Joel Brooks:He was the, the old guy lived out in the desert, you know, just kind of yelling at people. People were scared and awed of him, you know. He's not old. This is a young guy living out in the wilderness. He's he's thinking, I've got all my life ahead of me, and no, now he's captive and he's in jail.
Joel Brooks:He said, there's so much I wanted to do. This is what living a faithful life got me. Now, remember John was preparing the way for the Messiah and he had said a number of things about the Messiah. He said that the Messiah was gonna come and cut down the trees that don't bear fruit and he's gonna burn them. The Messiah was going to, separate the wheat and the chaff and he's gonna throw the chaff into unquenchable fire.
Joel Brooks:When the Messiah comes, judgment will come. He had been preaching that. The evil powers will be overturned, and now he's in jail, and he's watching the evil powers celebrate while he is in prison. And so he's beginning to wonder, And I'm sure all these doubts are just flooding his heads, like, you know, did I did I get it right? I mean, I did have a miraculous birth, you know, fill the spirit from the womb.
Joel Brooks:I did have all those things. I I think I heard the voice of God from heaven, but it it could have been thunder. I mean, I I really thinking back, I I can't be too sure. And Jesus is my cousin. So, am I just wanting this to happen because he's my cousin, you know, and I'm sure there's like all of these doubts flooding him.
Joel Brooks:And so he sends his disciples to Jesus and he says, really shoot straight with me. Are you the Messiah? And in verse 21, Jesus explodes with all of these miracles. Here's John, and it says, in that hour, meaning immediately, a report comes in, and immediately, in that hour, he healed many people of their diseases, their plagues, evil spirits. He restored sight to people.
Joel Brooks:So he immediately answers John with this explosion of miraculous power and he says, now go back and report to John what you've just seen and what you've heard. And so, the disciples, they run back to John and they're reporting to him all these things, and I'm sure John's getting very excited as he hears this. And they're quoting to Jesus, you know, John, he quoted these prophecies from Isaiah. About, you know, he's going to heal the blind, he's going to heal the lame, he's going to do all this, and I'm sure John's listening. He's going, Yes, these are all messianic prophecies, and he's checking them off.
Joel Brooks:Check, check, check, and then, they stop. And John's saying, well, did he say anything else? Because Jesus skipped over one verse when he's quoting from these. And John would have certainly noticed it. The the verse in Isaiah that says, he will proclaim liberty to the captives.
Joel Brooks:He will set free the oppressed. Jesus skipped right over that when He said, Go report this to John. The very words John would have wanted to hear, Liberty to the oppressed, but not for John. It was shortly after this actually, Johnny's in his dungeon cell, and here's a wild party going on above him in the banqueting hall. There's music, there's loud cheering, could tell people are dancing, and then the music stops.
Joel Brooks:He hears guards coming down to him, and they open it up, his prison door, and he's singing, Finally, now's the time, I'm going to be freed, and and the guards say something about, no, there's a drunken party, Herod's drunk, you know, a girl wants you dead. And before he even knows it, his head's being pushed down on a block, and it's cut off. In order to keep the party going, in order that, you know, Herod wouldn't put a damper on the party. And so, John the Baptist, with all of his faithful devotion to Jesus, ends his life in prison, and those who are having a drunken stupor upstairs are celebrating. At his death.
Joel Brooks:It's kinda hard to swallow. As I was studying this, I kept thinking of all these other stories in the Bible. You know, the stories you'd like to tell your kids, every night we lay down and we always tell them a true story from the Bible, And I always want to hear a true story from the Bible. So you, you love telling the tales of like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You know, yeah.
Joel Brooks:They stood up for the Lord. They were faithful, thrown into the furnace, but they weren't killed. Peter was in prison, but the the angel rescued him from prison. He loved those stories, and our kids love those stories. I haven't told them this story yet.
Joel Brooks:I need to. In Hebrews 1134, it says that by faith, some of the saints were spared the sword. We love that. 3 verses later, it says those some saints by faith were sawn in half and were killed by the sword. By faith, some were delivered.
Joel Brooks:By faith, some were killed. If you think prosperity is always a result of following Jesus, you're mistaken. Sometimes there's persecution, and the reality is for the disciples of Jesus, all of them but 1 died horrible deaths, and the one who didn't, he just lived his life in exile on an island. This can lead a person to doubt, but Jesus never promises that easy life. If your belief in Jesus is dependent upon things working out really well for you, that's a very shallow belief that's going to be rocked at some point.
Joel Brooks:You're You're gonna have some tragedy, you're gonna have something hit, and it's gonna be rocked. Now, you've heard me preach against the prosperity gospel here. You know, I'm not concerned about y'all going and and thinking I'm gonna pray to God, you know. I'm gonna put my seed money in, that offering plate right there, and God's gonna multiply it a 100 fold, and I'm gonna drive out of here with a new Cadillac or something like that. I'm not worried about you believing that.
Joel Brooks:I I hope I shouldn't be worried about you believing that. But the prosperity gospel, it sinks into us in other little ways. We we think, okay, if I follow God, I'm not going to get a mansion, but if I follow God, certainly he's going to give me a husband or a wife. Certainly, I'm going to have a happy marriage. Certainly, I'm going to have good kids if I'm a faithful dad, if I'm a faithful husband.
Joel Brooks:Certainly I'll have good, compliant, obedient children. Certainly, God will take care of me financially. Certainly, you know, my friends will at least respect me or at least I'll have friends. And it creeps in that way. God, I've prayed.
Joel Brooks:God, I've had my quiet time. God, I've done all of these things. Why does my life stink? That's prosperity. Following Jesus might at times mean you're spared the sword.
Joel Brooks:It might at times mean you go under the sword. Jesus gets to the heart of what really causes the doubt in verse 31. Let's just read that section again, verse 31. Says to what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another.
Joel Brooks:We played the flute for you, and you did not dance. We sing a dirge, and you did not weep. For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say he has a demon. The son of man has come eating and drinking, and you say, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.
Joel Brooks:He he says this generation is they're acting like a child. You know, next week, we're gonna look at how Jesus, he he praises childlike faith, but he despises childishness, which is what this is. There's a huge difference. He says this generation is like a child having a fit. I know that this might seem a little odd for us today, but these kids here are playing wedding or funeral.
Joel Brooks:That's what he's alluding to, they're playing wedding or funeral. If you're in a small town, not much happens, they don't have TV or anything like that. So they're going to play games and their games are the biggest celebrations they have are weddings and funerals, the biggest events. And so that's what they would act out. Actually, we kind of got to see this in the Brooks household a few weeks ago.
Joel Brooks:We had a, a great aunt died, and I was a minister at the funeral. And so we went to the funeral, the whole Brooks family, and, the night before the funeral, there was the viewing that we went to. And as we were coming home from the viewing, Natalie, which is our 4 year old, was really, really upset, Really upset. And she kept saying, why did we have to leave so early? I wanted to stay.
Joel Brooks:And we're just thinking, really? You wanted to stay at the viewing. And, and she said she had been looking forward to it all week. And then the more she started talking, we started realizing that she was mistaken. She thought that she was on a field trip with Caroline, which she was supposed to go on that day, but we couldn't because there was a viewing.
Joel Brooks:And, we had told Natalie's yes, we'll get to go on a field trip with Caroline. It's gonna be a lot of fun. There's gonna be some older people there. You're gonna see some things you haven't seen. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
Joel Brooks:And so she goes, and she thinks the viewing is a is is school. It's a field trip, which explains her behavior as we're thinking back on it, because she kept going up to people and saying, swing me around. She kept running around. She'd run up to the casket and look in and run back. We kept thinking, oh my gosh, this is so embarrassing.
Joel Brooks:But for a kid, it doesn't they could play anywhere. They could play funeral. They could play wedding. Doesn't really matter. And that's what's going on here, is they're they're just playing these games.
Joel Brooks:And the scenario that Jesus paints here is of some kids, they want to play wedding. They want to play a celebration. And so they play the flute and they say, come on. They're calling out to the kids on the other side of the street and say, come on, why don't you play with us wedding? And the kids are like, no, we don't want to play that.
Joel Brooks:You don't know what the reasons are, but you know, if you've seen children play, they're probably like, I'm not in a happy mood. I don't like that song. Your flute playing is terrible, you know, something like that, and they're just, I don't want to play. And so the, the kids, they come up with another game. Okay.
Joel Brooks:Alright. We won't play wedding, We'll play funeral. And so they play this dirge, and they put on sad faces and they said, you don't want to be happy. Come here. We'll we'll play this sad thing.
Joel Brooks:Because like, no, we don't want to do that either. We don't want to be sad. We don't want to play that game. And so, they just can't decide on what to play for, and they just don't play anything. Now, anyone who has kids knows what is going on here.
Joel Brooks:I mean, this, you know what's going on here. You you can't reason with a child. You you can't explain to them, you know, exactly how they should be doing things. Our kids, for the last two birthdays, for our 6 year old and our 4 year old, they have looked so forward to their birthday parties. They have planned all the events themselves.
Joel Brooks:They, they, they help pick out the cards. They, they plan the cake, the games, the theme, which you have to have themes now. And so they plan all of this. And then for both of our children at the last two birthday parties, they both had fits. They both broke down crying, went into another room.
Joel Brooks:I don't want to play that game. These people really aren't my friends. I wanted a different cake. Whose idea was it to have a wedding theme anyway? It's too cold outside.
Joel Brooks:You know, just whatever it is, they have a fit. I can't reason with them. It's gone. They're being childish. There's no possible way to please them.
Joel Brooks:And Jesus says, you want to understand what this generation is like? You're like a child having a fit. That's what you're like. God sends you John, who's like the funeral. He's the dirt.
Joel Brooks:He's the one who preaches sin, repentance. He's the one who has an aesthetic lifestyle out there in the wilderness. And you look at him and say, no, we don't want that. No, we don't want that. And so, God the Father sends his son, Jesus, and and he's almost, in many ways, kind of the opposite of that.
Joel Brooks:And he comes laughing, and and and and he comes, you know, changing water into wine. Keeping a party going. He preaches love and acceptance and a forgiveness, and they they look at Jesus and they say, no. We don't want that either. Jesus says, you're acting like a child.
Joel Brooks:What is it that you want? I can't reason with you. If you doubt any of this, after this, go go outside and invite my girls to play a game of freeze tag with you. Okay? Just say, let's play freeze tag.
Joel Brooks:And I guarantee the moment you catch them, they're gonna tell you where they're standing as base. You you've already outlined the rules beforehand. You know, base is there, and they're running all around, but you tag them like, uh-uh, base. But we established the rules. I I know, but this is base now.
Joel Brooks:And if you try to explain the rules, you'll start crying, you're not gonna wanna play with them. And what Jesus is saying is, you wanna establish your own rules. The problem isn't the tune that it's a dirge or it's a wedding, the problem is you want to be the one playing it. You want to be the one who sets up the rules. You want to be the one in control.
Joel Brooks:That's the problem. You're like a child, Just like a child. And this is why people today still refuse to believe the gospel. Because in the gospel, you see both dirge and dance, you see them both. You see the dirge, and that the Bible, it tells us you're a sinner.
Joel Brooks:You think you're bad, you don't know the half of it. You are far worse than you could possibly imagine, and the Bible tells us that. And if we're far worse than we could ever imagine, we realize we can't do a thing to save ourselves. We lose control. We can never be good enough to earn God's favor.
Joel Brooks:And in the gospel, you also find on the other extreme, you find the dance, you find the wedding song. The Bible says, you're saved completely by grace. You are absolutely loved and accepted in a way you cannot imagine. But it's the same thing. If that's true, you lose control.
Joel Brooks:You had nothing to do with your salvation. You could never earn your salvation. God simply saved you despite yourself. And what people want is this middle ground, they want control. And that middle ground for Christianity or for for those who aren't Christians are, well, I want to be able to, to just live a good life, do the best I can, and then God owes me something.
Joel Brooks:It's it's neither the dirge, and it's not the dance, it's this in between in which you're in control. I could just be better than others. I could just do the best I can, and then god owes me either a good life or he owes me heaven or he owes me something, but now you're in control. You're the one playing the song. We all want to play our own tune.
Joel Brooks:We all want to be the authority in our lives. This is why evidence does no good when you hear all the evidences, when Jesus appears. Because to accept outside evidence is to accept that there is an authority outside yourself, and control of our lives. If you believe the gospel, really believe that you are worse than you ever imagined, and at the same time you're more loved and accepted by God than you can ever, ever, ever believe. If you believe that you lose control of your life, You realize you cannot ever make a demand of God, but because of God's grace and how he has saved you despite yourself, He can make any demand of you.
Joel Brooks:You lose control. You don't earn your salvation. You do nothing. And so, the only response is to lay down your lives in absolute total devotion for God. I think probably for many of us in this room looking at this passage, probably a number of doubts have popped into our head.
Joel Brooks:We're gonna take just a few moments in a little bit to take those doubts of Jesus. He's not angry when you doubt. Says, come to me with your doubts. I'm sure for some of you, things in your life aren't going according to your plan. Plan being, you're the one in authority, and I've got a plan, and so I'm going to do these things, and god's going to make sure that my plan works, and when things of your plan begin falling apart, you have a problem with it.
Joel Brooks:Maybe it's a problem with your singleness, a problem with your dead end job, a problem with depression, how can I believe the Lord and still be depressed? Maybe you're angry at God or you doubt him. Take time to go to God now with those things, and say, God, you play. You play. I'm no longer in control.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Lord, we all doubt. All of us. I doubt. I'm a pastor.
Joel Brooks:I've spent so much of my life reading your word.
Jeffrey Heine:I doubt.
Joel Brooks:I doubt because I want to be the one in control. So God changed my heart. I pray for us and hear that we would come to you with our doubts, that we come and listen to the real Jesus, that you would show us how you have come with both a dirge and a dance. Now the gospel is both of those. Pound that in our hearts, Jesus.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in your name. Amen.
