"How can the present reality fit with what God promised?" Advent 3 2025

14. December 2025
Advent 3
Matthew 11:2-10

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

John sits in a dungeon. The prophet who leapt in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s greeting now sits chained by Herod, waiting for a death he can see coming. This is the same man who pointed at Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Now he sends disciples with the question most of us are too proud to say out loud: “Are You the One who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

There are different kinds of doubt. Some doubt is nothing but rebellion dressed up as honesty. Jesus compares that kind of unbelief to the citizens in the parable who sent word after their king: “We do not want this man to reign over us.” They will always find reasons to say no. He pictures them like spoiled children in the marketplace. “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” John comes in camel’s hair and leather, eating locusts and wild honey, and they say he has a demon. Jesus comes eating and drinking, receiving tax collectors and sinners, and they sneer, “Look at Him, a glutton and a drunkard.” Whatever God does, they reject it.

Behind that kind of doubt is not an honest question, but a refusal to repent. It is the heart that does not want to be exposed or changed. “Men loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.” It’s the same thing John ran into when he preached by the Jordan: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” They wanted religious comfort without the fruits of repentance. That’s not just the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herod. That is, anyone who wants Jesus to bless their plans while they cling to whatever sin they will not give up. That is you when you decide that Christ can have your Sunday but not your bedroom, not your wallet, not your grudges, not your tongue.

But there is also the doubt of the disciple—the doubt of one who actually has heard the Word, believed it, and yet cannot see how the present reality fits with what God promised. That’s the doubt of John in prison. He had preached that the axe is already laid to the root of the trees, that the winnowing fork is in the Messiah’s hand, that the chaff will burn with unquenchable fire. Yet where is the fire? Where is the clearing of the threshing floor? The wicked king parties on, and the preacher of repentance sits in chains.

The disciples have this kind of doubt, too. When the women come back from the empty tomb, the apostles treat the report as idle talk. Thomas refuses to believe unless he can put his fingers into the wounds. When Jesus calms the storm, they say, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey Him?” When He warns them about the leaven of the Pharisees, their hearts are so dull that they think He’s scolding them for forgetting bread. Peter confesses, “You are the Christ,” and then in the very next breath rebukes Jesus for talking about the cross. After Jesus has told them a second time that He will be delivered, killed, and rise, they get into an argument on the road about which of them is the greatest. These are not spiritual super-heroes. They are ordinary sinners, with ordinary foolishness and fears and questions, whom Jesus refuses to give up on.

So what does Jesus do with John’s doubt? He doesn’t send back a scolding. He doesn’t shame him for asking. He sends the Word. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.” He points John back to what God promised through the prophets and what is now happening in front of their eyes. The signs Isaiah spoke of are being fulfilled. The King has come, not first with visible fire, but with mercy for the ruined and the helpless, and with preaching for the poor.

And then He adds this beatitude: “Blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.” Blessed are those who let Jesus be the Christ on His own terms—the Christ who bears sin, who walks the way of the cross, who saves by suffering, who gives forgiveness as sheer gift and not as a wage. Blessed are those who don’t throw Him away because He doesn’t match their plans or their timing.

That is exactly where your doubts are answered—not by you thinking your way out of them, but by you being dragged back to “what you hear and see.” That’s what the apostles say later: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and our hands have handled…this we proclaim also to you.” Faith isn’t built on feelings or theories but on the concrete works and words of Christ handed over in preaching and sacrament. “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.”

And the Scriptures are honest about how believing people talk in the dark. The Psalms are full of doubts. “Why, O LORD, do You stand far away? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?” “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from saving Me, from the words of My groaning?” “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?” “You have put Me in the depths of the pit…darkness is my closest friend.” “I pour out my complaint before Him; I tell my trouble before Him. When my spirit faints within me, You know my way.”

Those aren’t the words of atheists. Those are the prayers of believers who are hanging on to God with white knuckles. The Bible does not tell you to clean up your thoughts and pretend you don’t struggle. It teaches you to bring your complaint to the God who has pledged Himself to you, to speak to Him out of the very confusion that frightens you. The sin is not in admitting your weakness; the sin is in deciding that because you are weak, God must be a liar and you are done with Him.

And listen to what Jesus says about John, this doubting prophet in Herod’s prison: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? A man dressed in soft clothing?” No. John is not a reed that bends with every opinion. He is not a court preacher dressed to impress. He is the voice in the wilderness, the promised Elijah, the one who calls a spade a spade and points to the Lamb of God. “Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John.” That’s what Jesus says about a man who is at that very moment sending Him a question from the dark. And then He adds, “Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

Which means this: your standing with God does not rest on how impressive your faith looks today. It rests entirely on whether you belong to this kingdom where Christ is King. The smallest baptized child, barely able to fold her hands and say “Amen,” is greater than John, because she stands after the cross and resurrection, washed into the death and life of Jesus, fed with His body and blood.

So where are your doubts answered? Not by staring harder into yourself, but by going where John is sent: to what you hear and see from Jesus. You hear the Law that exposes your excuses and your rebellion: the ways you have said with your words or your life, “I do not want this Man to reign over me.” You hear the call to repent, like the crowds by the Jordan. You hear the warning that the axe lies at the root of the trees and that every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. You hear that those who will not have Christ will have the outer darkness, the wailing and gnashing of teeth; they chose it when they clung to their own way.

But then you hear the Gospel: this same Judge is the Lamb who has taken away the sin of the world. All that wrath you deserve was aimed at Him. All that fire fell on Him. On the cross, He prays Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” so that you can know that no matter how forsaken you feel, you are not. He went into that darkness so that you would never be abandoned there.

At your Baptism, He joined you to that death and that resurrection. You were buried with Him and raised with Him. When the devil points at your sins and says, “Look at what you are; how can you be a child of God?” you do not answer with your feelings or your performance. You point to your Lord and say, “My sins are on Him. He has answered for them. If He is enough for the Father, He is enough for me.”

You hear His Absolution, spoken through the mouth of a man as through John’s mouth long ago: “I forgive you all your sins.” That isn’t religious noise. That is the risen Lord using a human voice to do what He did in Galilee and Judea: to open blind eyes, to raise the dead, to preach good news to the poor.

And you see and taste His goodness at the altar. John once pointed and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Now that Lamb points at you and says, “This is My body, given for you. This is My blood, shed for you.” Here again, He gives you something to “hear and see,” to hold onto that is outside of you and stronger than your doubts.

Doubts will still come. Until the Lord returns, you will still be tempted to ask John’s question in a hundred different forms: “Are You really the One? Are You really good? Are You really for me?” When that happens, learn from John. Don’t sit alone in the dark trying to crush your questions or nurture them. Send them to Jesus. Bring them where He has promised to be—in His Word, in His Church, in the gifts that bear His name.

And hear His answer again: the Scriptures that were written so that you may believe; the Psalms that give you words to pray when you have none; the Gospel that proclaims a crucified and risen Lord who does not despise weak, trembling hearts. Hear Him praise John, even as John struggles. Hear Him call you blessed when you are not offended by His cross but cling to it as your only hope.

“Blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.” Blessed are you who bring your doubts to Jesus instead of running from Him. Blessed are you whose sins are laid on the Lamb. Blessed are you, the least in His kingdom, greater than you feel, because you are His.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin