Do You Have Doubts?

Mathew 11:1-6

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Section of God’s Word for us to think about today is from Matthew Chapter 11, the first six verses.

After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John, who was 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 expect someone else?” Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John 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 the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” (Mathew 11:1-6)

This is God’s Word. What’s going on with John the Baptist here? He’s in prison. He’s seen Jesus. He knows Jesus. He’s cousins with Jesus, but yet from prison, he sends his disciples out to ask Jesus, are you the one that is to come or should we expect someone else? And different theologians look at this and can come up with different possibilities. Why is John asking this? Does it have something to do with doubt? Could it be that John is in prison? He’s close to death and he just wants to be sure. Are you really the one? Is there something with John? Where he just he wants a solid answer?

Or perhaps does he just really want to give that solid answer to his disciples because he knows I must become less as Jesus becomes greater? So He sends his disciples to him, are you really the one? Are you the one we should follow even when John the Baptist is gone? And so they go to him and they ask.

And maybe you found yourself in a place like that before where there are just there’s doubts and there’s questions. Are you really the one? Is this Christian faith really right? Can I really trust it? I was at a presentation this last month and they were talking about doubt. The pastor there was talking about it a little bit. And he said that research has shown that young people have different kinds of doubts and one of them are just factual doubts. And if a person has factual doubts about maybe the facts of the Bible, they might go to another Christian. But if those questions aren’t answered or addressed in any way, kind of pushed to the side, they might not lose their faith over that, but when other doubts come into their life, things like emotional doubts, things like does God care about me suffering right now? That if they haven’t had those first doubts answered, they might not go back to the church or their Christian friends again for the next ones. And those tend to be more of the faith breakers.

Here we have John, for whatever reason, sending his disciples to Jesus to address these doubts. And that’s exactly where we need to go to, isn’t it? Because look what Jesus does with these questions. He doesn’t just come down hard on them or anything like that, but he points to himself and he points to what he’s done. Go back and report to John what you see and what you hear. The blind receive sight, the lame walk. Those who have leprosy or cleanse the deaf hear the dead are raised. The good news is proclaimed to the poor.

God designed his church as a place to go when you have doubts for discussion, to be able to talk about this and to go back to Jesus and to see what he’s done. So bring your doubts, bring your questions to your family, your pastor, your Christian friends, and talk about them. And then notice what Jesus does with this question. He points them to what he’s done. He shows them how it matches all these prophecies in the Bible, and you can check them out. Go to Isaiah 29 or 35 or 61 and you’ll see the promised Savior there.