Why the Believer Doubts, Part 1

He is asking Jesus, whom he believes in and doubts at the same time, to resolve his doubt. And he knows that Jesus is the only one who can resolve that doubt. So he's really struggling against a weakness in the flesh.

He's struggling against a temptation. Maybe in a classroom, you've felt doubts creep up when the teacher questioned the accuracy of the Bible. Perhaps you can't understand why God would allow your child to get sick, or a city to be destroyed by a flood, and you've started to wonder if God is really there. What causes that uncertainty, particularly in a Christian's life, and how should you respond to it?

Consider that today on Grace To You. John MacArthur is going to show you that even John the Baptist, perhaps the greatest preacher of all time, had doubts about Jesus. You'll see the Lord put John's doubts to rest in the study we call, When Believers Doubt.

And now here's John MacArthur with a lesson. Luke 7 verses 18 to 23, and the disciples of John reported to him about all these things. And summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord saying, Are you the expected one, or do we look for someone else?

Now remember, John has been in prison for months and months. He hasn't seen anything or heard anything, and he's beginning to doubt. Does he believe Jesus is the coming one? Sure, he believed. He believed, no question. But doubt was growing on the edges of his faith.

It just wasn't going the way he thought it should go. So some of his loyal disciples, who were up in Capernaum, sends them to the Lord saying, here's the question, Are you the expected one, or do we look for someone else? Just a little note, Luke is now starting to identify Jesus as Lord.

There's no question in his mind. Back in verse 13, he called Him Lord. Here again he calls Him Lord, and that is a settled issue now.

Jesus is Lord, and that's what Luke calls Him. So John sends them back 80 miles to where Jesus is ministering in Galilee and says, You ask, Are you the expected one, or do we look for someone else? Are you the ha-erkomenos? Are you the coming one?

Are you the expected one? That's a technical term for Messiah, and that's used in the New Testament in many places, Matthew 3, 11, Mark 1, 7, Mark 11, 9, Luke 3, 16, 13, 35, 19, 38, John 1, 27. That's a common New Testament expression based, as I said, on Psalm 40 and Psalm 118. And at that point, we are now coming face to face with John's doubts. What created those doubts? What caused him to doubt what he believed? Why is he saying, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief? Why would he ever say, Or do we look for someone else?

Why would he ever say that? I mean, with the Father speaking out of heaven, this is my beloved Son, with the Spirit descending, with Jesus affirming, why would he even ask that? Well, doubt had crept in. It hadn't destroyed his faith.

I think it's a tremendously interesting point. You need to understand this, that his faith is proven by the way he reacts to his doubt. If he had no trust in Jesus, he wouldn't go to Jesus to ask Jesus to dispel his doubt.

That, to me, is so interesting. He is asking Jesus, whom he believes in and doubts at the same time, to resolve his doubt. And he knows that Jesus is the only one who can resolve that doubt. So he's really struggling against a weakness in the flesh.

He's struggling against a temptation. And he did what you always need to do with doubt, you go directly to the Lord, not to somebody else or to nobody. The worst thing you can do with your doubt is keep it to yourself. He's saying, I've got some doubts and I need to get an answer, and the way to get the answer is to go directly to the Lord. And in that sense, he proves his faith. If he had no faith in Jesus, he would never ask Jesus to be the one to resolve his doubts.

It's still that way. If you want to get your doubt resolved, go to the Word of God, not to any other place. And remember, in John's case, the picture wasn't clear. Jesus hadn't died. He hadn't done his saving work. He hadn't risen from the dead. He hadn't established his kingdom. He hadn't assaulted the Jewish apostate leaders. He hadn't knocked off the Romans and established a welfare state, etc.

Kingdom. And John doesn't know there's a big gap between the first coming in which Jesus demonstrates compassion and mercy and kindness, and the second coming in which He demonstrates fury and wrath and judgment and fire. He's like the prophets that Peter wrote about in 1 Peter 1, 10, and 11. He said, the prophets of old speaking about Christ wrote, and after they wrote, they looked at what they wrote to try to figure out what it meant. Because until you see the fulfillment, something that is a prediction is not clear.

That's why we struggle with prophetic passages that deal with the end of the age, book of Revelation, book of Daniel, the Olivet Discourse, because we can't understand all of the realities of a future time that hasn't happened. And so here, John is a prophet who predicted the Messiah, who said He's here, but he hasn't seen all the unfolding of everything the prophets said about Messiah, so he has questions. Now at this point, I want to stop and I want to talk about doubt. John doubted. And the reason he doubted was because some things weren't clear to him. Some things didn't seem complete to him. And as I think about that, I think it's important to understand that we have doubts as well, and there are reasons why we have doubts. Number one reason, personal tragedy...personal tragedy.

Doubt can sort of be broken out into these factors. I mean, think about John. He is in a stinking dungeon, been there months, probably going on a year. Humanly speaking now, this is his reward for a life of faithfulness. He is a thread width from death and that's what he gets for being the forerunner of the Messiah, the most exalted prophet of all prophets. He had been bold, bold before the most powerful sinner in his world, Herod Antipas. And as a result of his faithfulness and his courage and his boldness, he's sitting in his dungeon in the desert. His personal tragedy didn't seem consistent with his faithfulness.

Where was the blessing that's supposed to come to faithfulness? And his personal tragedy didn't seem consistent with the Messiah's power. Couldn't the Messiah do something about it? In fact, Jesus had never even been to visit him. And it didn't seem consistent with the purpose of God. Messiah's going to come and this is going to happen to the bad people, not the prophet.

The bad people are going to receive the fire, not saints. I mean, it was bad enough that John was a...he was a man of the desert who was clothed in camel's hair and ate locusts and wild honey and lived outside. He had a life that was completely open. I mean, he breathed the clean air, felt the wind in his face, the vault of heaven was the roof over his head, maybe never lived in a house. Now he's confined in four narrow walls. I mean, just that part of it. But to determine this horrible physical situation is somehow the result of my faithfulness just didn't seem to make sense.

Couldn't connect the dots. And after up to 18 months of public ministry, freedom to preach, tremendous response, massive crowds, people repenting, being baptized, now all of a sudden he's slammed in this deep, dark, wretched dungeon. So this is what loyalty to Christ gets you? He was, after all, the truest of saints. He was the great, holy, faithful, selfless, loyal, bold prophet of God who did exactly what God called him to do...told him to do. I mean, there's nothing in the record of John the Baptist that indicates he ever did anything but exactly what he was told to do.

There's no moment of faithlessness or disobedience. This is a virtuous man. This...this is a model man, a model preacher. He'd been filled with the Holy Spirit since his mother's womb. He had taken a Nazarite vow and that is the vow of abstinence that is the supreme vow of dedication that a Jew could ever take to show his singular devotion to God. He had committed himself at the highest level of spiritual commitment.

Is this his reward? You see, doubt comes from our inability to deal with negative circumstances when we perceive ourselves as being faithful people. Now that doesn't happen to people who are not faithful. If you're a Christian and you're...you're living in the shallows and you're playing around with sin and you're dishonoring God and you're disobedient, when things go bad, you know why they go bad, right?

You say, oh, that's exactly what I should be getting. You know, there's one believer in the New Testament that illustrates that profoundly. He had only been a believer for a few seconds, a few minutes maybe. He was hanging on the cross, remember? He says to Jesus, remember me when you go to your kingdom. Jesus said today you'll be with me in paradise. You remember what that thief said when the other thief was taunting Jesus?

He said this, we are getting exactly what we deserve. You see, he wasn't saying Lord, I'm a believer, why is this happening? Hey, he had no expectations. He had no life of faithfulness to parade before God. People who are very much aware of their sin and weakness and life goes bad, that doesn't usually create doubt.

They see that as pretty consistent. The people who may struggle with this are the people who live these very sacrificial and devout lives and all of a sudden they can't see how the circumstances connect with what they've been doing in terms of their faithfulness. That was John the Baptist.

He didn't get it. Why am I here? Why hasn't the Messiah come and set me free? I mean, doesn't it say in Isaiah 61 that when He comes He will set the prisoners free? Isn't it the saints who come out of prison and the ungodly who go in?

What's wrong with this picture? Our doubts come when we've convinced ourselves that we belong to the Lord, we're loyal, we're faithful, we've lived and served Him and He ought to take special care of us and this is not special care. And if everything doesn't go the way it should, we begin to wonder if He cares or if He's really our Savior.

We fail in our selfishness and our ignorance to see the whole picture, the whole plan. And we have to understand that all of our circumstances, no matter how negative they might be, are subject to the ultimate divine purpose of God and His kingdom. So difficult circumstances, personal tragedy causes people to doubt the death of a child, to faithful Christian parents, the loss of a life partner through death, through desertion, immorality, loss of a job, loss of a treasured friend, cancer, heart attack, you name it, car accident.

But I've been faithful, I've been faithful. And the flesh then takes those kinds of things and uses it as a wedge to drive doubt between us and Christ. John was struggling with that, but he did the right thing. He went directly to the Lord.

He had begun to stumble and he's saying to the Lord what the man in Mark said, help me, Lord. I believe, but help my unbelief. I don't want this. Help me.

Help me. There's a second thing that causes doubt, not only personal tragedy, but popular influences, popular influences. John was in part a victim of the current misconceptions about the Messiah. That was a clear picture of the Messiah in the Old Testament, very clear. But the suffering of Messiah such as in Isaiah 53, the sin-bearing work of Messiah, those things were sort of pushed aside and the Jewish community had created an image of Messiah, what He would be, what He would do.

And John had been, just as the disciples were, influenced by that. In fact, it's true that one of the reasons why the centurion had such great faith is because his understanding of Jesus Christ was not the Jewish understanding. He was not in that society.

He was not in that culture. So he wasn't victimized by this popular image of what the Messiah should be. And so he had a faith that was superior to the faith of those who were Jews, even the apostles who struggled with doubt and the doubt was not related to the Scriptures, but it was related to the popular tradition. Messiah wasn't doing what everybody thought He would do, which was knock off the Romans, right? First there would be a military movement on Messiah's part in which He would massacre the Romans. He would set Israel free from Roman occupation. Then there would be the great society would come in. Abrahamic blessing would flood the land. There would be a welfare state, free food for everybody, health, wealth, prosperity, the whole business. All the wicked people would be thrown out. All of the apostate people would be judged by God in a day of the Lord kind of holocaust and the glory of the kingdom would fill the earth and everybody would come to Israel and the desert would blossom like a rose and there would be a river open from Jerusalem flowing east and the lion would lie down with the lamb and everything the prophet said about the glories of the kingdom would come to pass and David's greater son would sit on the throne and he would reign and rule and all nations would be subject to them and Israel would be the glory of God on earth.

They had it all figured out. But it was because of these popular conceptions that they had so much doubt when Jesus didn't do that. They couldn't figure out, why doesn't He knock off the Romans?

Why is He being constantly victimized by these Jewish leaders? But there was another interesting theory going on that time. There had developed an idea that before Messiah there would be a string of prophets who would come. First would come Elijah and that is the way the Old Testament ends. Remember that Elijah is going to come. And then would come Jeremiah and he would be vindicated. So there would be Elijah, Jeremiah. And then prophet A and prophet B and prophet C and prophet D and prophet E and then the Messiah would come. That was kind of the idea. And that's why in Matthew 16, Jesus said to the disciples, who do men say that I am?

Remember that? And they said, some say you are Elijah, some say you are Jeremiah, or one of the prophets A, B, C, D, E. In other words, they didn't believe He was the Messiah, but they believed He was somewhere along the line of those preliminary to Messiah and then Jesus said, but who do you say I am? And Peter says, you are the Messiah. Now that is reflective of that popular concept. So John is saying, look at his question.

Are you the expected one or do we look for someone else? Obviously you're from God. Obviously you have the power of God. Obviously you teach the Word of God. But are you just one in the line prior to the Messiah? Now where did that come from? That didn't come from the Old Testament. That was a traditional popular idea that had developed.

Where are you in this line, this sequence here? And what about knocking off the Romans and what about the health, wealth and happiness? Instantly for everybody, solve all problems, right the world, establish the throne and rule. What about them? I mean even in Acts 1, just before Jesus ascended into heaven after His resurrection, the disciples were saying, are you at this time going to bring the kingdom? They still couldn't figure out why there wasn't a kingdom. Even after the resurrection, when Jesus appeared to them in Galilee, some of them doubted. And the reason they doubted is because they had this popular idea of what Jesus would do. And it was even more confusing to them when Jesus said, I'm going to die and go away.

And they just were absolutely blown apart. What do you mean you're going to go away? Where are you going to go?

John 14. I'm going to my Father's house and prepare a place for you. Well, we don't know where you're going to be. How are we going to ever find you? How are we going to find you? Oh, you'll find me. I am the way, the truth and the life.

You'll find me. Thomas doubted. Philip doubted. They doubted. They all doubted.

Scattered and fled. They're walking down the road to Emmaus after the death of Jesus Christ, mumbling and muttering that all is lost, all is lost, all is... You see, their expectation for what the Messiah would do was just not right. If you believe the lies that are being told today about the health, wealth, prosperity and success level, you're in trouble.

People who preach that literally sentence the hearers to a life of doubt, crippling doubt that dishonors God. There is no promise that you're going to be healthy. There is no promise that you're going to get well, that you're going to be healed. There's no promise that you're going to be rich. There's no promise that your career is going to be successful. There is no such promise in the gospel until you get translated into the next life. Then all your diseases will be over. And when you tell people that over and over and over and over, you are programming them to reject the God of the Bible and the gospel of the Bible and to live in a life of confusion, perplexity and doubt.

It is a terrible thing to do to people. Jesus tells the disciples about His death. Peter says, no, no, no, you're not going to die. You know, the plan is you're going to live. The plan is you're going to conquer. The plan is you're going to be the leader and the ruler and the King of the world. And Jesus said, get you behind Me, Satan. That's Satan's plan, not mine. Satan tempted Jesus in His temptation, Matthew 4, Luke 4, to do what the people wanted, do a spectacular swan dive off the temple tower and be the big great one, let them make you king. Make...create food, turn the stones to bread and show them you can bring a permanent welfare state.

I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. Why? That's what they wanted. They wanted a great one, someone who could fly, literally. Theudas, a false messiah, tried it, short career, great flight, bad landing. But Satan was tempting Jesus to do what the people expected the Messiah to do, and He wouldn't do it. If you make all those ridiculous promises, you're going to program people for doubt.

They buy it into that expectation it doesn't happen. Let me tell you, evangelical churches are strewn with the wreckage of people who believe that and it shattered whatever faith they may have found. When you have illegitimate expectations, when you have bought into a false system and God doesn't deliver on those promises, you have a problem with faith. You better not sit under that kind of teaching.

It will sentence you to a life of serious debilitating, discouraging doubt that will rob you of your joy and your usefulness. You know, we face this all the time today. Well, if there's really a Christ and He cares, why is the world so messed up? Well, if the Lord really loves people, why do children die and people starve and disease happen and war and death and why do planes crash into buildings? And why doesn't Jesus stop all of this? And why doesn't He stop the people who are teaching error if He doesn't like it? Why doesn't He stop all the false religions, shut them down? Well, Scripture doesn't tell us He's going to do that.

That might be your idea of what He ought to do, but that's what Scripture says. It says evil men are going to get worse and worse. Lies and deceptions are going to fill the earth. People are going to say, here's Christ, there's Christ. False religion is going to be rampant all over the world until the end of time.

God has a purpose. Lord Habakkuk, you know, saw Israel in such terrible spiritual disarray and he said, how long, O Lord, how long? You've got to bring revival. You've got to bring revival. Lord, how long are you going to wait?

How long are you going to wait? I've been praying this prayer for so long. And the Lord answered his prayer by saying, I'm not going to bring revival, I'm going to bring destruction. And I'm going to send the Chaldeans, who are a bitter and hasty nation, a wicked, evil, pagan nation, to destroy Israel.

They had a bigger problem. Not only why doesn't God, you know, bless His people, that's one big problem. The second problem, which is even worse, is how can God use a wretched, pagan, Gentile nation to punish His people? And he's struggling, Habakkuk, until he backs up and gets on a firm foundation, not on circumstances, but on the character of his God. And finally, in the last chapter of his prophecy, he said, if everything in the world goes haywire, if everything you can count on is in reverse, if all the things that are normal collapse, I'll still trust my God. But doubts arise because people have wrong expectations. They have a view of a plan that isn't God's plan at all.

And John had been victimized by popular viewpoint. Let's pray. We can honestly pray, Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief. Help us where our faith is frayed on the edges. Help us where we struggle to believe because of personal tragedy or because of popular misconceptions. Help us, Lord, to trust You. Help us to be honest enough to go to You, and that means not sending some servants to where You are on earth, but going to Your Word and finding a clearer understanding of Your nature and Your plan. Deliver us from doubt.

It so debilitates us. It so steals our joy and our happiness and it robs us of the passion of service to You, and it cripples our worship. Deliver us from doubt. May we not be double-minded, unstable, wavering, tossed like the sea, as James says, doubting people are, who then receive no good thing from You. And we pray that we might learn from this marvelous account of the greatest of men who struggled with the most human of problems. And help us, Lord, to see doubt as a temptation, as an illegitimate invasion into our lives, and to deal with it by going directly to You and asking You to give us the truth that dispels the doubt. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. Today, John helped you prepare for doubts that sooner or later you will probably have. It's part of his current study here on Grace to You, titled When Believers Doubt. Now, this issue of a believer's doubt, I know you've said before, John, is not uncommon. In fact, it's normal for a Christian to have momentary doubts, especially about doubting my own salvation or sometimes questioning whether the promises of Scripture are going to come true. But how do you know whether those doubts are basically benign, or maybe they indicate a grave problem that maybe you're not really saved? Well, there are several possibilities when you have doubts. One, it's just part of being human and fallible and sinful and you're still fighting the flesh, and so that's the mind of the flesh raising its ugly head.

That's one possibility. Two, that you're doubting because there's a pattern of sin in your life, and assurance is a gift of the Holy Spirit to an obedient believer. So in that sense, it could indicate a grave problem. It could indicate that there's sin in your life, and this continual sin is causing the Spirit of God to withhold that assurance. And then, obviously, the third possibility is you're not a Christian, and that's why you're doubting, because you're not really saved.

And I would say you could mark those three by the duration of them. The first one is a fleeting moment's thought that maybe I'm not saved and it doesn't last. The second will last as long as you remain in that pattern of sin, but if you're a true believer, the time is going to come when the conviction of the Holy Spirit moves on your heart, and you confess and repent, and you move in the right direction, and that goes away. But if it never changes, if this is the pattern of your life to doubt your salvation, there's a real possibility that you're not truly saved. I have to add one other possibility, that you've been taught so wrongly about salvation that you can't overcome your mental picture of what salvation is. If you were taught that you could lose your salvation, and when you sin, you lose it and you have to get it back, perpetual doubt comes at that point.

So bad theology would be the fourth thing that could sustain doubt. So you've got to understand salvation correctly. You've got to let those fleeting moments where a doubt comes into your mind pass and thank the Lord for your salvation and offer praise and worship to Him. You've got to confess sin in your life so that you end a prolonged time of doubt, and if it's constant and unending, you need to cry out to the Lord to genuinely save you. We want to help you with that.

That's important to us. So we have a booklet called A Believer's Assurance, A Practical Guide to Victory Over Doubt, free to anyone who asks. So just ask. If you struggle with fear or doubt, if you wonder where you'll spend eternity, this booklet will help you. To get your copy of A Believer's Assurance, just ask for it. We'll send it to you free of charge.

Contact us today. You can email your request to letters at gty.org, or call us at 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org. Again, this booklet is a great resource if you've ever wondered, am I really saved? The booklet will help you answer that question, and it will give you confidence in Christ's saving work. To get a copy at no cost to you, call 800-55-GRACE, or stop by our website, gty.org. And while you're at the website, don't forget about the Study Bible app. It's preloaded with the English Standard, New American Standard, and King James versions of the Scripture. And for a reasonable price, you can unlock the footnotes from the MacArthur Study Bible. These 25,000 footnotes, plus charts and introductions to every book, can help you study Scripture more effectively than ever before. Just go to gty.org and download the app. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm your host, Phil Johnson, encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John continues his look at how to fight doubt and trust God's Word in any circumstance. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.