Encountering Jesus will challenge us to take our doubts to the truth of Jesus life and message...

This week we are looking at an encounter with Jesus that is recorded for us in an account of Jesus life in the Bible called the gospel of Luke. Wednesday we looked on as Jesus, after revealing the prominent role that John the Baptizer played in the story of God made an amazing statement: "I say to you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."

In this statement we see Jesus reveal two timeless realities to us. First, Jesus reveals for us the reality that John the Baptizer was the greatest human being who ever lived. Of those who came into being as a result of the activity of two human beings, there was no one greater than John the Baptizer. However, Jesus follows up that reality with a second reality in that he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptizer.

Jesus point here is that while John the Baptist pointed people to the coming of the kingdom of heaven in the future, those who are least in the kingdom are greater than John the Baptizer because they point to the reality that the kingdom of heaven is here now as a result of the arrival of Jesus as the Messiah. Today we will see Luke reveal for us how the crowds responded to Jesus statement in Luke 7:29:

  When all the people and the tax collectors heard this, they acknowledged God's justice, having been baptized with the baptism of John.

In other words, the people and tax collectors responded to Jesus statements by recognizing the reality that God was right and they were wrong. Luke explains that how they recognized that God was right and they were wrong was because they had been baptized by John the Baptizer. You see, as people heard the message of John the baptizer about the coming of the Messiah, they responded by being baptized in the Jordan River as they confessed their selfishness and rebellion.

Now a natural question that arises here is “why did the people respond that way to John the Baptizer’s message?”  To understand why they were responding this way, we first need to understand what baptism is. Baptism is a public proclamation and a public identification with an inward reality that has occurred in our lives.

You see, the people and the tax collectors were being baptized as a public proclamation that they were identifying and aligning themselves with his message.  The people recognized their need to repent from their selfishness, sin and rebellion, and change the trajectory of their lives back toward God. These people recognized their need to be right with God before the Messiah, the promised one of God appeared to usher in the kingdom of God that they were waiting for. However, there were others who responded quite differently to John the Baptizer and his message, as Luke reveals for us in verse 30:

 But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves, not having been baptized by John.

Luke explains that the Pharisees and the lawyers, who were the self righteous religious people of the day rejected God’s purposes for themselves. In other words, these self righteous religious leaders rejected the opportunity to experience the forgiveness and the relationship with God that they were created for. These self righteous religious leaders viewed John the Baptizer’s message of repentance and preparation for the arrival of the Messiah as being invalid. And it is to these self righteous religious leaders that Jesus turned His attention to as this event from history concluded in verse 31:

 "To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? "They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.'  "For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, 'He has a demon!' "The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' "Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children."

Jesus paints a powerful word picture to the crowds listening when it came to how the self righteous religious leaders were responding to John the Baptizer and Himself by telling a parable: They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.'” Now a parable is an earthly story that has a deeper spiritual meaning.

However, to fully understand this word picture, we first need to understand the significance of playing a flute and singing a dirge. You see, in the culture of the day, it was customary for people to respond to the playing of a flute by dancing with joy. By contrast, a dirge was sung during a funeral procession, where it was customary to respond to the playing of a dirge with weeping.

In telling this parable, Jesus is revealing the reality that He and John the Baptizer were not following their rules about how people were supposed to act.  The self righteous religious leaders were like children who were complaining about Jesus and John not playing by the rules of a game. Jesus point to the religious leaders, and the crowds listening, is that this generation will play only if they can make the rules. Jesus was exposing the selfish and rebellious desires of the religious leaders to dictate to instead of listen to God’s messengers.

Jesus however, explains that “wisdom is vindicated by all her children." But what does that mean? As we have talked about earlier, in the Bible, wisdom is a developed skill for living life that produces positive results. Jesus point here is that wisdom is considered and proved correct by the results it produces. And the message and teachings of both John the Baptizer and Jesus were producing positive results. The message of John the Baptizer and Jesus were producing transformed lives.

Jesus point here is that those who were following Jesus proved the truth of His teaching, as the message of John the Baptizer and Jesus were producing followers of God in right relationship with God. And it is here, in this encounter of a man wrestling with doubt with Jesus that we see revealed for us a timeless truth that we can experience when we encounter Jesus. And that timeless truth is this: Encountering Jesus will challenge us to take our doubts to the truth of Jesus life and message. Just as it was for John the Baptizer, just as it has been for followers of Jesus throughout history, encountering Jesus will challenge us to take our doubts to the truth of Jesus life and message.

You see, if John the baptizer, the man who leapt in the womb at the arrival of Jesus, the man who heard the voice of God and saw the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus at His baptism can question and doubt, it is understandable that there will be times when we experience times of questions and doubt. The question is not whether or not there will be times when we have questions or doubts: the question is where do we go with those questions and doubts?

And just as it was for John the Baptizer, when we find ourselves at a place where we have questions and doubts, we are to take our questions and our doubts to the truth of the message and teachings of Jesus. Just as it was for John the Baptizer, when we find ourselves at a place where we have questions and doubt, we are to take our questions and our doubts to the truth that marked the life of Jesus.

So here is a question for us to consider: Where are you taking you questions and doubts? Who are you turning to with your questions and doubts?