Father, we ask you Lord that you bless our time together.
Lord, may it be like we’re pulling up to the table and the table is set and Lord, we can smell the food coming.
We come with anticipation because Jesus, we ask that it’s your Holy Spirit that teach us Jesus.
You taught your disciples. And you said it is recorded in letters written and read that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth.
And your word says that thy word is truth.
So father, we pray that as we read and learn more about your son, we ask you father that it would make such a dramatic difference in our lives because having spent time with Jesus this morning in worship and in our time, Lord of learning, may we leave this place today?
Bringing glory and honor to you for it is in your name.
We pray and all God’s people said, amen, grab your bibles and turn if you would to Luke’s Gospel chapter seven this morning.
Luke chapter seven verses 18 to 35 verses 18 to 35 in our study.
And the study is entitled Why do we struggle with doubts? Why do we struggle with? Doubt?
You might say Jack, I doubt seriously you’ll make it from verses 18-35.
So did I, that’s why we put part one up on the screen.
We’ll be spending two weeks in this portion of scripture starting today. It is on a topic.
Jesus is showing us something here in the word of God.
Dr Luke is the one recording it by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
This is the inerrant word of God before us. And we’re looking at a serious issue about doubt.
One of the reasons why it’s serious.
And we’re asking the question, why do we struggle with doubt is because every one of us struggle with doubt.
Every one of us. You might say, well, I bet you Chuck Smith doesn’t struggle with doubt.
He struggles with doubt. I bet you, Billy Graham doesn’t struggle with doubt. He struggles with doubt.
I bet you the missionaries who have seen God do amazing works in the world somewhere. I bet they don’t.
They struggle with doubt. It is human to struggle with doubt no matter what in our lives.
We read the lives of the disciples, walking and living with Jesus, literally watching miracles before their very eyes.
And what do we see at the end of a 3.5 year period of time of being personal with Jesus.
They doubt it even in the Bible, we’ll read it in future studies and they doubted his words.
Why do we doubt? Thank God we struggle with it. But why do we doubt at all?
And so as we look to this message, there will be 10 things that we’ll see, we’ll look at five of them this morning, five next week.
But 10 things that we struggle regarding doubt.
And I got to warn you, write small, take these notes because they apply to our lives.
They’re very practical things. But in this study, keep this in mind from verses 18-35, we need to make sure that we continue our struggle with doubt regarding.
And when I say continue to struggle with it, I don’t mean to invite it in.
I mean, keep fighting it. Amen. We fight out with the word of God.
But there’s going to be a group of people in our study in our lesson, there’s a group that deals with it and continues to deal with it.
And throughout all their life, we know from history, we will be victorious over it.
And then there are those in our story that will not deal with it.
They’ll just take the teachings and the words of Jesus in a casual way.
It would be a quote Sunday thing and they won’t let it go any further and their doubt will never be addressed, their doubt will never be answered.
They have no questions regarding their doubt.
They have no struggle, they just let it happen and it it creeps in, it continues on.
And what doubt eventually does listen. Church carefully, doubt unchecked will become unbelief in our lives.
And unbelief is to call God a liar. Unbelief is to trust in yourself.
Unbelief is to say you don’t need the cross. Unbelief is to say you don’t need a savior.
Unbelief says you’re fine and God is good for those who need a God.
Unbelief is the absence of God and the dependence of God in your life. Unbelief.
But unbelief starts somewhere and unbelief starts with doubt.
All of us struggle with doubt but never church, never let doubt lead us to unbelief.
And you’ll see this lived out right before us beginning chapter 7 verse 18.
Then the disciples of John, that’s John, the Baptist reported to him concerning all these things.
And John calling two of his disciples sent him to say to Jesus, are you the coming one or do we look for another?
That’s a word of doubt coming from John the Baptist.
And when the men had come to him, they said, John, the Baptist has sent us to you saying, are you the coming one or do we look for another?
And that very hour, Jesus cured many infirmities, afflictions, evil spirits, many blind people. He gave back their sight.
Verse 22. And Jesus answered and said to them, that is the two disciples of John.
This is what he said. Go tell John the things that you have seen and heard.
Here it is that the blind see the lame walk.
The lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear the dead are raised.
The poor have the gospel preached to them and blessed as he was not offended because of me.
And when the messages of John departed, he Jesus began to speak to the multitudes concerning John.
What did you go out into the wilderness to see a reed, shaken in the wind?
But what did you go out to see a man clothed in soft garments?
Indeed those who are gorgeously appareled and live in luxury are in king’s courts.
But what did you go out to see a prophet?
Yes, I say to you and more than a prophet, this is he of whom it is written.
Behold, I will send my messenger before your face. Who will prepare your way before you for?
I say to you among these born of women, there is not a greater profit than John, the Baptist, but he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.
And when all the people heard him, even the tax collectors justified God. That’s cool.
Having been baptized with the baptism of John verse 30.
But the Pharisees and the lawyers, these are the scribes or the students of the word of God.
Not having been baptized by John said, not, not having been baptized by John and the Lord said, concerning them to what then shall I liken the men of this generation.
You can almost see Jesus pointing to this group of scholarly seminary students and teachers.
He says to what shall I like in this generation? And what are they like?
They are like Children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another.
We played the flute for you but you did not dance, we mourn to you and you did not weep close quote.
This is what he says for John, the Baptist came, neither eating bread nor drinking wine.
And you say he has a demon, the son of man comes eating and drinking and you say he’s a gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners Verse 35.
But wisdom is justified by all her Children.
These are very strong words and this morning, we will not get to the depth of all that’s being said here.
But we will look at five things this morning that are absolutely essential regarding this thing of doubt. Christians.
Just know this right now. Doubt is something that will wiggle its way ever so quietly, ever so gently into our lives.
It is relentless and it is part of who we are as redeemed people.
It’s just like sin has its presence in our lives.
We don’t want to doubt but we struggle with without, we don’t want to sin, but we struggle with sinning.
We don’t want to do wrong, but we wind up doing wrong. We would not vote for that thing.
But we wind up doing that very thing that we don’t want to get near.
We find in ourselves a law that is at work and there’s a war within us.
We have a heart now as Christians to do the right thing to live a right life.
But we struggle with the weakness of this flesh and of this world and how it imposes upon us.
And we often let’s be honest, allow the world to be imposed upon us.
We sometimes traffic into areas that wind up, we think we can handle and then we get hit by it and then doubt comes in.
How do we deal with that doubt makes all the difference in the world, by the way, defining doubt is an interesting thing.
If you go to the 18 28 dictionary, Noah Webster’s Dictionary of the American language.
Webster says that when we doubt, we waver, we fluctuate regarding our opinion, we hesitate, it means to be in suspense, to be or to become uncertain of something that we respect to be true.
It means to be in that place of being undetermined now, which also he says results in fear every time you and I experience doubt.
If we let it go, it will result in some sort of fear.
And that’s true in every aspect of life.
For example, you may get on a boat and you may be fine with that boat and everything is great and you’re enjoying the view and then you start thinking sick thoughts.
You know what those sick thoughts are? I hope this boat doesn’t sink. Yeah.
I hope the center doesn’t have a hole in it. Now.
I don’t know if you travel on boats much.
I travel on airplanes a lot and I understand how airplanes work. I understand all that.
But there’s a 65, I remember coming back from Russia a couple of weeks ago, coming over the top of the world looking out of the window.
And I was watching icebergs. And one of the weird thing about icebergs is when it’s really windy.
Apparently on the, up on the North Atlantic, you can tell from 35,000 ft because those things are moving, you can’t see them moving per se, but you can see the wake that icebergs leave behind when they’re moving through the sea.
And as I’m looking at that, I couldn’t really tell how big that iceberg was until there was a ship nearby a cargo ship.
And when I saw the size of the cargo ship next to the iceberg, everything came into perspective because I kind of have a rough idea about how big a cargo ship is.
And then I realized that we’re over seven miles up in the air.
And I’m being, I’m being, I’m being held up here by a couple of pairs of wings here and I fly a lot and these kind of sick thoughts, don’t enter my mind.
But this, this one did. What if the wings came off the plane? Kind of a weirdo.
Am I? Then I began to think, well, this thing was made at Boeing. It’s a Boeing 7 47.
And so I began to reason and justify how the wings. There’s no way. Right. Lord. There’s no way. Right.
I began doubting. Now you may say, yeah, Jack, I, I battle with that. I struggle with that.
Get all anxious anxiety or maybe on the other side and you think I love Jesus.
But I, I doubt my salvation from one end of the spectrum.
It could be as, as deep as that kind of struggle to, as light as could the wings fall off this plane.
It is natural. But before we talk about that, listen to what Charles Spurgeon says, Charles Spurgeon says, doubt in the life of a believer is having faith in the devil.
Isn’t it a funny way of putting it?
Because the devil loves to sneak around and say uh uh regarding your relationship with God, the Bible would define out this way that it is a lack or lessening of our faith in seasons of life.
Paul experienced a lack or a lesson in the faith. He became discouraged.
You know, when you and I become discouraged, we, we have a lack of faith. We all struggle with that.
We all battle that. So we’ve got Webster’s dictionary. Definition.
Charles Spurgeon, the way he views it, the Bible would tell us that doubt is a lack of faith.
Jesus says, concerning the believers, doubting. He says, where is your faith?
So we know that faith combats, doubting Pastor Jack’s definition of doubt is it’s a pain in my faith.
That’s what it is for me. I have no problem getting up and going. Let’s do it. Let’s go.
But once I’m underway and I know we’re all different, but we all struggle with the same things.
Once I get up and go, I have no problem venturing out on uncharted turf.
I have no problem with that. But once I’m going, it’s the question, Lord, are you gonna bless this?
Did I hear from you? Right. I have no reasons to ask. Oh, yeah, it could be bumpy.
The trail could be difficult. I understand that.
But what do we do with those moments when we begin to thank God, what’s going on out here?
And for me in my personal life, doubt is a real pain in my faith.
I’m excited to follow God. Let’s do it. Let’s see what God wants to do. Church.
You’ve often heard me say, I’d rather get an a for trying and failing than get an f for sitting around and doing nothing.
Nothing, nothing good in this world has ever happened from somebody sitting around and we are so bold to venture out into anything and everything.
But when it comes to God, aren’t we so cautious? Hey, look, that guy’s drowning over there.
I’m exaggerating right now. But think of this, some Christians would say, well, let’s pray.
Let’s pray about that. That’s one of the biggest cop outs that Christians use.
Well, let’s pray about that. No, you don’t pray about it.
You get up and you rescue the, the man, the guy that’s drowning.
Sometimes we hide our lack of faith and we drape our doubt and cover it up with some spiritual response.
And I want you to know in our lives. God can see right through that five things.
Why do we struggle with? Doubt?
Number one is this and I don’t like it, but it’s true because doubt comes natural to us.
It’s in our blood. Doubt. The Bible teaches us that we are all alienated from God.
We Jesus said need to be born again. The Bible tells us we need to exercise faith.
The Bible tells us that we need to use the faith that God has given us to exercise it unto Godliness.
Yes. But we are all born into this world alienated from God and we are not possessing at birth and in this life, some automatic faith in God.
We have an automatic doubt system in us, don’t we?
You say, well, Jack, my little grandson doesn’t doubt a word.
I say you, you hit the nail on the head. He’s your little grandson to that little grandson.
He thinks you’re God, you’re in the place of God.
Grandpa cannot make a mistake in front of little grandson’s face. You are it. He trust you completely.
He’s going to grow up some day.
He’s going to find out and God will see to it that grandpa is just a man.
Grandma is just a woman. We are all in need of God. God is faithful.
God is the one who’s true and we may try as we want to have a great, great reputation or witness and that’s wonderful and, and we are diligent about that.
But the truth of the matter is there will be some point in time in our lives when we will fail.
Because number one, we are born alienated from God.
We need what Jesus said and that is to be born from above or born again.
If we’ve never, never hear the word of God and never come to a personal faith in God as time goes on.
It is because and only because we’ve let doubt begin early on in our lives and we nurture doubt and the doubt listen turns into unbelief.
John, the Baptist was doubting the very ministry and person of Jesus. Did it start out that way for John?
No. Why is John doughty now? I don’t want to get too much into this just quick background.
John was preaching his message of righteousness and repentance.
You all know that John the Baptist, he was ministering down in the Galilean area and the Jordan River Valley, he was baptizing people and the scriptures say that Jerusalem and Judea and surrounding regions they all came out to see and to hear this man of God preach John the Baptist.
What was his message? Have you read it lately?
Um Listen, after listening to John, the Baptist’s message, you want Jesus to come quick.
In fact, remember John’s baptizing people are coming, they’re confessing their sins. He’s baptizing them.
And uh for example, a Roman Centurion comes out there and he says, he says, prophet teacher, what would you have me to do?
And he says, don’t extract or don’t use your authority unwisely be kind to people.
You can almost see that Centurion say I I captain I I agree people were agreeing with John from religious leaders to rulers to common people.
If they were listening, they understood something when John said this, by the way, bring forth fruit worthy of your repentance for the kingdom of God is coming and he’s going to bring fire and judgment.
I mean, it was a fiery message and people went yikes and they came and they confessed their sins and they were baptized in water.
They weren’t converted to Christianity, they weren’t saved.
There was nothing that was done for them in the sense of recording their place in heaven.
What happened was they admitted publicly that they needed a savior.
That’s why John’s ministry was the baptism of repentance.
It was the people agreed that they needed God but describes in the Pharisees when they came, what did they do?
They stood back in the shadows and they didn’t get into the water.
They didn’t even know how to deal with John.
So John’s preaching, John’s teaching John’s doing what John’s doing and he speaks out about Herod because Herod was sleeping with his brother’s wife.
Herod the Tetra and John, the Baptist said it’s not right for you to sleep with your brother’s wife.
He probably said it more insane than that, you know, because he had camels fur on.
Can you imagine they didn’t even wear that? Then it’s not something they did 2000 years ago.
They hadn’t done that for about 3000 years and then only prophets of God. John shows up.
Can you imagine somebody showing up like in a, in a revolutionary costume right now this morning?
You say what’s with that guy? Is he like reenacting something?
John shows up with this, you know, kind of like Fred and Barney Flintstone outfit on and he’s a NASA.
So he’s, he’s never had his haircut and he’s Jewish. So there’s wave to his hair. It’s not straight.
Can you imagine what he looked like?
I mean, he looked like, you know, somebody from the seventies or sixties from, from Frisco and he says it’s not right for you to be sleeping with your brother’s wife.
And for that, the Bible says had him arrested and they cut off John’s head to silence him.
Before that happened. John was down in, he’s in prison now.
He said, come on, Jesus, let’s go. I’m announcing the kingdom.
You’re the one I know you’re the one. Let’s go. Let’s get the show on the road.
You were to come preach and heal and to raise the dead and do all these things and remember set liberty to those who are what bound.
Come on Jesus. John’s in prison. You and I can be imprisoned by fear, by doubt, pain, suffering.
Jesus. Come on, where are you? He’s there. He’s with you.
It’s not happening in our way. It’s not happening in the way I want it to happen.
Doubt will say God must have abandoned you.
Doubt begins to insert into your life and mind why we can’t do this and so why it cannot be this way for us?
Doubt begins ever so softly and quietly to breed within us and insecurity that what God says is great and true.
We’ll all attest to that but not for me. See, doubt comes natural to us.
The Bible says in Romans chapter 10 verse 17.
So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. How do we combat? Doubt?
More and more Bible pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on real life radio with his message called, why do we struggle with doubt?
Part one. Thanks for being with us. Today.
You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack’s new series called The Gospel of Luke.
It’s a series on the book of Luke and the unveiling of Jesus Christ to this world.
And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.
Well, everybody, you know that we are excited about always presenting and encouraging you to get a good book in your hand.
Nothing beats the Bible, obviously. But outside of that, this one I believe is one worthy of every pulpit.
Pastor Congregant. Everybody needs to read the book written by Eric Metaxas.
Eric Metaxas has written a letter to the American church and I want you to definitely get your copy.
It is fascinating. It’s prophetic, it’s historic.
It’s current Eric Metaxas has done an amazing job in speaking, I believe by the Holy Spirit to the current church in America.