John's question wasn't doubt—it was the sharpest theological question of the first century, and it's the one every disciple has to keep answering: is Jesus the whole thing, or are you still waiting for someone else?
Central Image
The contractor analogy: asking Jeff directly whether he's the best man for the job isn't skepticism—it's trust. John went straight to Jesus because he already believed him enough to take his answer.
The Turn
We've read John's question as a crisis of faith. It wasn't. It was a better question than most people who've come after him have thought to ask—and it's the question none of us can avoid.
Outline
Ask better questions
Toby's professor Tom Geer used to say that one year of Greek was dangerous because it made you think you knew more than you did. What good Greek instruction could do was teach you to ask better questions. Lousy questions produce lousy answers regardless. That framing set up the whole sermon: John the Baptist is usually read as a man in doubt, but that's the wrong question about the question.
The text: Luke 7:18–35
John sends two disciples to Jesus with a pointed question: "Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for another?" Jesus doesn't answer. He tells them to go back and report what they've seen—blind people seeing, lame people walking, good news reaching the poor—and John will know what to do with that. When the messengers leave, Jesus turns on the crowd and defends John while indicting a generation that rejected both John and Jesus no matter what they did, and then ends with a sharp line about wisdom being proved right by her children.
What Jesus actually meant about fine clothing
The Greek word Luke uses for "fine clothing" in Jesus's question about what people went out to see carried an explicitly effeminate connotation in the first century—closer to a Liberace figure than a well-dressed man. Jesus was making a pointed joke at the expense of John's critics: the people dismissing this wild prophet in the wilderness were, by implication, not exactly a picture of rugged credibility. It reads like a polite observation in English; in Greek it's a dig.
John wasn't doubting
Six months to eighteen months after the Jordan, after the heavens tore open and the voice came down—John was not having a crisis of faith. He'd called Jesus the Lamb of God. He knew Jesus was the suffering servant, the one who makes atonement, the one who heals the breach between people and God. What he didn't know was whether Jesus was also the kingly Messiah. First-century Israel had room in its theology for two messiahs—Messiah ben Joseph, the suffering atoning figure, and Messiah ben David, the conquering eternal king—and it wasn't obvious how one person could be both. John's question was whether one man was the whole thing. Jesus answered by pointing to the evidence and trusting John to read it. He did.
The question that lands on us
John's question is ours—not the first-century version, the daily version. Is Jesus the whole thing, or is he one thing among several? Is he Lord of all of it—how you run your relationships, your job, your sense of what's true, how you do your life—or is he savior for the eternal problem while you handle the rest? The distinction Toby named: some people have Jesus as the one who died for their sins and something else as the king of their actual life. He included himself—he's had his own notes and words with the Lord about how things should have run. The path of discipleship, he said, includes continually examining yourself and answering John's question honestly.
The Landing
The question isn't whether you believe Jesus is the Savior—it's whether you're still waiting for someone or something else to fill what only he's supposed to fill. Are you taking him for all of it, or are you running a supplement on the side?
Questions to Think About
- Toby's Greek professor said one year of Greek was dangerous—it made you think you knew more than you did. It didn't give you answers; done right, it helped you ask better questions. What's a question you've been asking about God or about your own life that might actually be the wrong question?
- Toby argued John the Baptist wasn't doubting Jesus when he sent those messengers. What was John actually asking—and what's the difference between that question and a faith crisis?
- Jesus didn't answer John's question directly. He told the messengers to go back and report what they'd seen. Why does that work as an answer, and what does it assume about John?
- The sermon put it plainly: some people have Jesus as the one who died for their sins and something else as the king of their actual life. Where in your life are you actually looking to something else to fill what Jesus is supposed to fill?
- Toby said there's a difference between Jesus being the Savior and Jesus being the King—and that the king question touches how you run your relationships, your job, your sense of what's right. Is there an area where you've quietly decided you'd rather call that one yourself?
- Toby mentioned he's had some "notes and words with the Lord" about how things should have gone, and that not everything in his life has gone to his liking. The sermon didn't press on what you do when you ask honestly whether Jesus is enough and the answer in that moment is genuinely uncertain. What do you do with that?
- The sermon called this a question for every disciple—not just a private one. What would it actually look like for this church, as a community, to be functionally waiting for another?
- Name one specific thing this week—a relationship, a habit, a decision, a place where you go for direction—where something other than Jesus is actually running things. Tell one person from this room what it is before Sunday.