Believing the Miracle-Making Messiah - Part B

Let God be the one seated on the throne, and you and I be the ones who bow before it.

Period. He's the one. He's in charge. And if you're struggling with matters of faith, as they call it, wrestle with it, reason through it, and remain in it. If you've ever had any doubts about your Christian faith, you're in good company. And today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip gives you insight from the life of John the Baptist on where you need to take your doubts when they come. But first, here's a resource that will help you answer tough questions and even resolve doubts about your Christian faith. Josh McDowell has written books that rank among the best-selling Christian works of all time. Now with his son, Sean, Josh has released Evidence for Jesus. God gave us our mind and our heart to work in unity.

To what? To glorify Him. The Bible, I call it fact, fiction, or fallacy. I want to answer two questions about the Bible. This is what I struggle with as a non-believer. One, is what we have written down the same as what was written down 2,000 years ago, or has it been changed?

Second, was what was written down true? In Evidence for Jesus, Josh and Sean McDowell have adapted and updated the Evidence for Jesus section from their classic apologetics book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, into a concise, readable, and accessible resource for those seeking answers about Jesus. This powerful new resource is our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to support the broadcast ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig.

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Give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer, or call 800-922-1888. Great. Now turn to Matthew 11 and let's get started with today's teaching. How many of you would say, my cousin is the one who takes away the sins of the world? You'd say, my cousin adds a lot of sins to this world.

But John was absolutely convinced that his cousin Jesus was the Messiah predicted by the prophets. But something happened to John. He gets arrested and he gets put in prison. Why is he arrested?

Because I said he calls it like it is. So when Herod Antipas, the ruler, dumped his wife and married his brother Philip's wife, her name was Herodias, and brought her home, he let it loose. He said, basically, you're a vile, wicked sinner against God. Well, that didn't go over very well with Herod. So Herod has him put in prison where he stays until his death. And while he is in prison, there he starts to doubt. He hears about Jesus, he hears what he's doing and saying, but he thinks, well, I'm rotting in jail while the Messiah that I'm convinced is the Messiah and pointed the way to is out there doing his thing. So John's doubt is based upon an unfulfilled expectation. Remember I said John was an uncommon man with a common misunderstanding?

The common misunderstanding was simply this. When the Messiah comes, he's going to first immediately set up his kingdom, because it says so in the Old Testament. Didn't say he'll do it first, but he says he will set up a kingdom. Now he knew the prophets. He knew what Daniel chapter 2 said and what Daniel chapter 7 said, that the Son of Man will establish an everlasting kingdom. So he's in jail going, where's the kingdom?

He starts to doubt. And he's probably thinking thoughts like, well, didn't Jesus announce up in Nazareth, I've come to set the captives free? Didn't Jesus say in that speech in the synagogue in Nazareth, I've come to set at liberty those who are bound? So John's thinking, I'm bound, but there ain't no liberty.

And what's up with that? If he came to set free the captives, why am I still here? John doubts. I remember my first struggles with the Christian faith after I became a believer. I remember struggling and I struggled with it because I had been saved that summer and then I went to college. And I had wonderful professors who made it their aim to undermine my Christian faith. One of them told me those words exactly, I will undermine everything you believe. I thought, well, I thought you were paid to teach me zoology.

I didn't know that was your stated goal, but it was. And there were many others after him, my anatomy professor, my physics professor, et cetera, et cetera. And I remember getting really down and doubting and wondering if this was even true. And I wrestled and I struggled, but my doubts became my stepping stones eventually to an unshakable faith. Something else, and I'll talk a little more about that in a moment, but it is not unusual for even spiritual leaders like John the Baptist to have times of uncertainty. Moses second-guessed his calling. Jeremiah the prophet wanted to quit and never say another word for God. Elijah the prophet wanted to die. So as I go through the Bible, I find these great giants of the faith from time to time struggling.

In fact, maybe this will encourage you. If you were to chase down the word doubt in the New Testament, you'll discover that in every single occasion, except for one instance, it refers to believers, not unbelievers. Believers. For instance, Jesus said to his disciples, O ye of little faith. On another occasion, he said, how long will you doubt? And then after the resurrection, it's a very interesting passage. It says, when they saw him, they worshiped, but some of them doubted. It's wild, right?

He's up from the dead and they're worshiping him, but some of them, I don't know. They struggled with it. So it's almost as if you have to believe before you can doubt. You have to invest, you have to buy in before you can even challenge what you believe in.

So it's not uncommon, and here's how it works. You find a believer who has faithfully served the Lord year after year after year, and then suddenly something happens. The loss of a child. The loss of freedom because of a debilitating disease.

And that person at some point is going to stop and look up and go, why would you allow this to happen? Where were you? Where are you when I'm really hurting? John the Baptist for 18 months has been preaching the gospel, pointing to Jesus. Thousands of people are around him, listening to it, being changed by it.

Now suddenly he is in a pit in the middle of the desert of a palace known as Machaerus, and he is in the lower part of the pit, total of about a year's time before he finally dies, is killed there. And so he doubts, he wonders. And I bet even right now I'm speaking to some people who have had or are having doubts.

You're at church, you've been drugged to church, you've been convinced by a loved one you should come to church, so you pacify them perhaps. You're here, you're listening, but you wonder, all the Christians say about Jesus, could it really be true? I have my doubts. Let me encourage you to do with your doubts what John the Baptist did with his. You know what he did? He went to Jesus. Now he couldn't get out of prison, so he sends emissaries in proxy to ask him the question, are you the one? Are you really the guy?

Or should we be looking for somebody else? But I love the fact that with his doubt about Jesus, he goes and talks to Jesus. I just want to know, who are you?

Are you really that one? And let me just encourage you, if you are doubting, there's a lot of study you can do, there's a lot of books you can read, but first, why not take it to Jesus? And let me give you a challenge. It's what my friend does, even to atheists. He says, I love talking to atheists, and I don't get into all the philosophical arguments, but first, I just say, let me give you a challenge. Are you willing to accept my 21-day challenge?

He says, for 21 days, it'll take you 10 minutes a day. I want you to read one chapter of the Gospel of John every day. Read one chapter, and as you go through, ask one simple question, who is Jesus Christ? Or at least, who does he claim he is? Or in the very least, who does John, in writing the book, John the author, claim Jesus to be?

Just start there, and see what will happen with that first. So devout believers wrestle with their faith. There's something else about faith, and that is, developing believers will reason through their faith. In verse 4, Jesus has an answer to give John, and he gives it to the disciples who come to ask him the question. After asking it, he says to them, go and tell John the things which you hear and see. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them.

Notice the answer is not a simple yes or no answer. Are you the one? That's the question.

Jesus didn't go, yep, I'm the guy. He answers it by appealing to two things. Number one, personal experience. Go tell him what you see.

Go tell him what you hear. And second, biblical prophecy. Personal discovery and biblical prophecy.

And he gives a list of things that are mentioned in the Old Testament prophets. Now, those two lines of evidence, I believe, are vital for your faith. There is the subjective element, which is what you which is what you experience. There is the objective element, which is outside of your realm of experience. Those are the evidences that corroborate what you have experienced.

So the first one is personal discovery, or as I said, human experience. Go tell John what you hear and what you see. Listen, your personal testimony is one of the most powerful tools you have in your spiritual arsenal. When people ask you questions, you just start, you know, before we get into those questions, let me just tell you what happened to me. This is what I used to be like. This is what happened the day I met Christ. And this is how my life was different afterwards. You have that story. Tell that story. Now, you're going to need more after that.

But begin with that. Tell people what Jesus did for you. I remember the first time I heard a personal testimony. I'll never forget it. It was David McCakran. You don't know who he is, but he was in high school. He was a rabble rouser, man. He was a party animal. And suddenly he comes to school with a Bible.

And I see it and I go, what up? He goes, well, let me tell you what happened to me. And he told me a story. And first of all, I thought he was insane.

Tell me about how he met Jesus or whatever. I mean, but at the same time, it made an impact on me. It was his. It's what he heard and what he saw.

It was subjective. But notice what else. Jesus now appeals to biblical prophecy. Verse 5, he gives the list, the blind see, the lame walk, luppers are cleansed, deaf hear, dead are raised up.

How's that for a resume? And the poor have the gospel preached to them. Now, why does Jesus tell those things? Because he knew it would make an impact with John. He knew that John knew his Bible. He knew that John loved the prophet Isaiah especially, because he quoted from him more than any other prophet. He knew that John knew these prophecies, like Isaiah 35, which predicted the eyes of the blind will be open, the ears of the deaf will be unstopped, the lame will walk. And Isaiah chapter 61, there's a reference to that. Isaiah 61 is something Jesus quoted in the synagogue in Nazareth, when he said, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. So, go back to John and tell him, I'm the man with the message, and my message is proven by my miracles. I'm the man with the message and the miracles to prove it.

Go tell John that. When it comes to miracles, I have discovered my belief is that people do two things with them, make two mistakes concerning miracles. Number one, they naturalize them. What I mean by naturalize is they make the term miracle a loose term, an empty term, a common term. Well, every baby born is a miracle. Well, no, it's not. 353,000 of them will be born today, and 353,000 more of them will be born tomorrow, and it happens every single day.

So, it's not uncommon, that's common. Well, every sunset is a miracle. Well, sure, you and I can't do that, but it happens every day. Miracle by definition is an extraordinary uncommon event. Well, it's a miracle I got a parking space at the Apple store.

That actually may be a miracle, because I've never gotten one. But you get my drift. All that does is cheapen the term. It sort of degrades the definition.

And so, people will naturalize them. Another mistake people make is they trivialize them. They explain them away. Somebody says, well, it says right here, Jesus performed a miracle. And they smile politely, you know, with a little erudite smile, like I know better, as if to say, well, that's simply a primitive interpretation of a very normal occurrence. These were primitive people. This is a long time.

They're uneducated. And so, they had to figure out a way to explain something that happened around them, and so they said it was a miracle. But I've always loved what the once unbeliever who became a very strong believer, C.S. Lewis, said about miracles. In fact, he wrote a book on it called Miracles.

And in that book, he has something very profound to say. Here's a lot of profound things, but here's something very short, very simple, but very profound. If God, then miracles. If God, then miracles. If there is a God who can act, then acts of God can exist. If a supernatural being exists, then supernatural acts can happen. If Genesis 1, 1 is possible, then everything else is also possible.

I've always thought that. If you can believe the first verse of the Bible, the rest is a cakewalk. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's a good trick. If you can pull that off, everything else is pretty easy. If the big miracle, then smaller miracles can happen. If God, then miracles. And if you do not believe miracles are possible, if you believe they never really happened, and if you believe that life simply spontaneously sprung from non-life, like all evolutionists and naturalists do, then you already believe in miracles. If you believe that life spontaneously sprung from non-life, you already believe in miracles. And actually, when you think about it, there's no problem to turn water into wine if you can be the one to make water out of nothing.

It's not a big deal to multiply loaves of bread when you can make grain out of nothing. And by the way, God is never a prisoner to His own laws. He establishes natural law, but that doesn't mean God can't come along and go, yeah, I'm going to do something different right now. I'm going to, in fact, take this law and supersede it with another law. And before you say, well, that can't happen, it happens all the time.

In fact, we do it all the time. Example, gravity. Things are earthbound.

Anything with weight falls to the center of mass. Gravity. Did you know the space shuttle, remember that thing?

It closed off, I think, in 2011. From the 80s to a few years ago, that thing flew. Amazing that it did. Space shuttle weighed four and a half million pounds. I don't know, law of gravity says that thing ain't going nowhere. But if you apply a couple of other laws that will supersede the earthbound law of gravity, like aerodynamics and thrust, seven million pounds of thrust were in those engines.

To take it past our atmosphere and into space. Well, if we can do it, and if God, then miracles. God can do something anytime He wants. So I'm just saying, at least think this through and let your faith be reasonable faith rather than ransacked faith.

It doesn't have to be ransacked. It can be rigorous and reasonable. Which leads me to a third, and we'll close with this. Determined believers remain in their faith. Look at the sixth verse, the last statement Jesus has for John the Baptist. It's like a P.S. Tell them what you hear and see.

Tell them what you saw in terms of miracles of this, this, and that. But then verse six, and blessed is He. And blessed is He who is not offended because of me. The word offended, skandalizo, means to stumble or bait a trap, to entrap somebody. It's a gentle rebuke to John the Baptist. He's saying, Jay the bee, don't let this stumble you, dude. Don't get hung up on this.

Don't doubt. Because what I've just told these guys who are going to give you this message is enough evidence of who I am even if you don't understand a lot of stuff. There's a lot you don't understand, John.

I know you're suffering in prison, but I've given them enough evidence subjectively and objectively that could keep you tethered to believing in me. So Jesus is saying, John, don't be offended if God doesn't do everything you want Him to do. John, don't be offended if miracles happen around you, but not to you. John, don't be offended if people are set free while you stay in jail.

John, don't be offended if dead people get raised up, but you stay there to die. And what I'm saying to you is this. There's a lot of stuff I don't know, we don't know, but there's a lot of stuff we do know. And I will never give up what I know for what I don't know. I will go always to the place of the evidence and lay my head on that. And so let me just give you sort of a parting exhortation and saying, let God be God and you be you. Even though there's things in your life you can't figure out, right, I have enough evidence to believe that God's big enough to handle it. So let God be the one seated on the throne and you and I be the ones who bow before it, period. He's the one, He's in charge.

And if you're struggling with matters of faith, as they call it, wrestle with it, reason through it, and remain in it. I had a friend named Dennis. I remember meeting him.

I met him because he was one of the emergency room doctors at the hospital that I worked at. Dennis was a very confident unbeliever. He told me a story. He was raised in a Christian home. He grew up believing in God, believing in Jesus, but as he grew up and came of age, he had his doubts and his doubts grew to not only doubts, but unbelief. By the time he got to high school and college, he disregarded the Christian faith altogether and became a scientist.

He was a biology professor in a college and then later got an advanced degree, became a medical doctor. So he was pretty confident and we had great conversations together. And over time, I watched through these conversations, something happened with Dennis. He began to doubt his doubts, which I always love seeing because he was so confident in his own belief.

And so we had this conversation. He started doubting what he didn't believe in. He started doubting his doubts.

And I was there. I remember when he gave his life to Christ. And so I saw a man who grew up with a belief system. So we went from faith to doubt and from doubt to unbelief and from unbelief back to doubt and from doubt to real, vibrant faith. And I discovered that Dennis is not alone, but some of the best believers in history were those who struggled with their faith, were struggling believers before they became strong ones.

Men like C.S. Lewis, people like Josh McDowell, Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, Lee Strobel, Antony Flew, and others. In fact, Charles Spurgeon even said, I suppose no man is a firm believer who has not once been a doubter. So all of the prophecies we've been studying, yep, they're against all odds, but they're not against our God. Jesus said, with God, all things are possible. If God, then miracles. With God, all things are possible. So I'm hoping that through this series, you are building and bolstering your faith.

And if you are struggling with it, you're wrestling with it, wrestling with it, that you reason through it and come to a place of rest and remaining in it. You know, if you want to do God's will, it's vital that you study God's Word, the Scripture, to understand what God has already revealed about Himself and His will. And that's why we share these Bible-based messages online and on the air to connect you and many others around the world with God's Word and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. When you give a gift to support this radio ministry, you not only help reach more listeners, but you also help keep these messages that you love coming to you. With your support, we can expand the ministry this year into more major U.S. cities, reaching people who desperately need the gospel.

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800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity. Come back tomorrow as Pastor Skip begins a message about Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Always Jesus avoided the fanfare until now. Now He deliberately provokes a demonstration, an unmistakable entry into the city as their King, and they recognize it because they call Him their King. Of the cross, cast all burdens on His Word. Make a connection, a connection. Connect with Skip Hyton is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.