Advent sermon on doubt, hope, and John the Baptist's imprisonment — Rev Harry Newton at Sumner Redcliffs Church
A Christmas season sermon exploring how to maintain hope in Jesus during dark times, using the story of John the Baptist's imprisonment and doubt.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton delivers an Advent sermon at Sumner Redcliffs Church on Matthew 11:2–11, focusing on John the Baptist's crisis of doubt while imprisoned. Drawing on his own experience of a cardiac episode and weeks of recovery, Newton argues that doubt in the midst of suffering is not a sign of weak faith — even the greatest biblical figures experienced it. The central claim of the sermon is that Jesus' response to John's doubt — "look up and see what God has done" — offers a practical anchor for maintaining hope when circumstances are at their darkest. Newton concludes that Christian faith does not rest on mood or circumstance, but on the person of Jesus Christ.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome and Introduction to Advent
Rev Harry Newton: Welcome to church. My name's Harry. We're in the middle of something called Advent. Advent is the time leading up to Christmas — the time that we prepare. It comes from the Latin word meaning "prepare for the coming of something." And so it's the time in the calendar of the church that we prepare for the arrival of Jesus, as we celebrate both Christmas, but also look to it in a future sense.
I don't know about you, but I'm assuming you've probably had this in your life at some point — where you've had something really, really crap happen, pardon the French, something really awful. And you've wondered in that moment, how on earth can this be something that could be used for good? Where is God in the midst of this moment?
A Personal Story: Cardiac Collapse
Years ago, my heart decided to go on a holiday. Now, gentlemen, this is a good example of why you should avoid household chores. I was feeling a bit off, and I thought I'd take the day off. I stayed home. My wife was working on her masters, and she said, "Look, while I'm busy, can you please hang out the washing?" Sure, I can do that. I went into the backyard and collapsed. Boom — sack of potatoes.
Somehow I managed to crawl into the car, put it in drive, and I don't really remember the rest of it. Apparently I crawled to the middle of our town — don't worry, our town is tiny — and we got to the doctor's surgery. The car crashed into the big toitoi out the front, and apparently I managed to crawl stubbornly to the doctor's surgery before passing out. My heart decided to go on holiday for a brief moment. I woke up in the ambulance with the things on my chest and the whole nine yards.
What followed was weeks and weeks of recovery. It was a horrific moment, and I couldn't help but feel, why is this happening? But also, where is God in the middle of this? I'm going to come back to that story later.
John the Baptist: The New Elijah
As I say, we are in Advent. In Advent each year, this church retells the story of a man named John the Baptist. If you haven't heard about John the Baptist, he was the most epic hippie you could ever imagine. We were introduced to him two weeks ago by our author Matthew, who said that John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea — a region of Israel — proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." Ah, repent — that favourite word of everyone, eh? Which essentially just means turn your eyes, your heart, back to God.
Matthew goes on to tell us that John wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt tied around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Now, you and I might read that and simply assume that he's a tad alternative — that maybe he lives in Newtown, in Wellington. Maybe he's from Wellington in general. Sorry, couldn't help it. I'm from Wellington. It's fine.
But actually, Matthew, our author, is Jewish, writing for a Jewish audience. He's assuming Jewish knowledge, so he doesn't bother to explain things. He's actually drawing here a direct link between an ancient prophet called Elijah, who was famous for dressing in the same way. Elijah is actually pretty famous for being a bit tough. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, you might recall how he pronounced judgment upon someone and the person was, as the text puts it, consumed. He sounds like fun at parties.
Now, the reason Matthew draws this direct correlation to Elijah is because there was an expectation in first-century Judaism that before God could send his Saviour — his Messiah, who was going to come and rescue them from oppressive rule — the great prophet Elijah would have to return. By this point, the people had been under oppressive rule for generations, going all the way back to a guy called Jeroboam, who was an absolute ratbag. They were waiting for this Messiah, but before the Messiah could come, there was this belief stemming from a prophecy given by a man called Malachi that God would send — either literally reincarnate or in essence — the great prophet Elijah. He would have to come back.
And so here appears John the Baptist, dressed like Elijah, rebuking the leadership of Israel just like Elijah, calling people to reorientate their hearts back towards the one true God, just like Elijah. And I'm sure the astute among you have noted a pattern here. Matthew is trying to tell us that John is the new Elijah.
John's Life Purpose and the Baptism of Jesus
As the new Elijah — this precursor to the foretold Messiah — John's entire life purpose was to point people towards Jesus. How remarkable is that, to know your entire life purpose from the moment you're born: to prepare people for Jesus' arrival?
Matthew also tells us that John's purpose reached its crescendo when he met Jesus on the banks of the River Jordan and baptised him. Now, just a quick offhand comment about this. Some people say this is where Jesus was adopted as God's Son — that he was only fully human and was adopted at that point. No. Some people say that Jesus was somehow symbolically representing the whole of humanity. I'm not sure about that either.
There's a man called Rowan Williams — he was the Archbishop of Canterbury, he's got these amazing eyebrows that wiggle like caterpillars when you talk to him — and he's an incredible brain box, considered to be one of the most prolific theological minds and writers of our day. He reckons that this was a divine commissioning by John of Jesus. This was the crescendo of John's ministry, and everything John did after this was kind of like the closing chapters.
And so this happens, and Matthew has this big focus on John, and then Jesus happens — the crescendo of John's ministry — and then John gets left alone. Matthew focuses on Jesus with good reason, until much later when John reappears in a very different situation.
John in Prison: The Political Backstory
This brings us full circle to our reading this morning that Sally just read for us. Jesus has twelve disciples — twelve guys in his inner circle. He's just been commissioning them to go off and continue his ministry in pairs throughout the region, multiplying out what he's doing. And while he's finishing up his instructions, a group of young men walk up to him and ask this question: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
Now, they're John's disciples, and they're essentially saying, "Jesus, we have a question. Are you really you? Are you really the Messiah? Are you really God's long-awaited Saviour sent by God? Are you really the one we've been waiting for? John wants to know."
Now, that's a weird question, right? Given that John has just dedicated his entire life to declaring who this man is. He was there when Jesus was baptised. He was there telling people these incredible things about Jesus. He's seen Jesus do incredible things. And actually, when Jesus was baptised, he was baptised at the exact same spot where the Israelites first entered the promised land — it's full of symbolism. John is not dumb. He knows this. And yet here he is asking, "Are you the one we've been waiting for?"
But even stranger — why did John not ask this question himself? It's a free country, isn't it? Well, actually it wasn't, because he was in prison.
The reason he's in prison is that he started taking pot shots at political heavyweights. Just this past week, I picked a fight with the standing committee that oversees whether or not petitions to government should be passed on to parliament. I have picked a fight with them. I'm going to win, I think. I don't know. I probably won't. Let's be honest.
As an aside — volunteer firefighters don't get ACC coverage, and I've decided that's not cool. So I've written to them all and tried to nail them down to commit to supporting it. I'm halfway there, so well done me.
But the point is, I can do that. And if I don't like a politician's opinion, I can go on social media and lampoon, say, David Seymour or Christopher Luxon or Chris Hipkins — whoever I want — within reason, because it's a free country. But in John's time, you couldn't.
At the time, John worked predominantly up and down the edge of the Jordan River, and in that region was a puppet king called King Herod. Now, who remembers King Herod from the Christmas story? If you don't know the story: the baby Jesus is born, everyone comes, there are angels and shepherds, and quite a while later the wise men turn up. The king hears about this and wants to cut off any potential rival for the throne, so he orders the murder of all children under the age of two. His name was King Herod.
He was a ratbag. His son is also called King Herod — Herod Antipas — and Antipas is considered also to be a ratbag. He has a brother called Philip. Philip and Antipas together have a niece. Her name is Herodias. They both think she's rather attractive. Philip marries her — a bit gross. Then he goes away to Rome, and while he's in Rome, Antipas also takes a liking to her. So he has an affair with her. But the problem is he's married. So he decides to have his wife killed. The assassin doesn't pull off the job. She runs to the desert — her father is the king in Nabatea — and he invades Israel, burning crops and burning down villages. Scandal.
I mean, it's bad enough that people are dying and the economy's getting hurt, but now in an ultra-conservative religious society — one that overtly forbids murder, incest, and adultery — you have all of this going on. And in the middle of this, it's not a democracy where you can say what you think. Nonetheless, John, who's busy talking about the need for repentance and turning away from bad behaviour, uses them as examples in his preaching. That's not a good way to make friends.
Herodias, in particular — the niece-slash-wife — takes umbrage at this. She pressures her husband to have John arrested and thrown into prison, which finally he does. He acquiesces to her request, as it says in Pirates of the Caribbean.
But not just any prison. Historians believe that she most likely had John sent to a dungeon in the easternmost part of the kingdom, in a place called Machaerus. Machaerus was a hilltop fort slash palace — a fortified palace, if you will. It was on top of a hill, and they drilled down into the hill and put dungeons in there with no windows. He was thrown in there, and he was in there for eighteen months.
Doubt in the Darkness
For eighteen months, John sits there. Time goes by, time goes by, time goes by, and nothing changes. There is no end in sight. And John begins to have what we all have when time goes by and nothing changes.
When I was lying in bed, unable to breathe properly, struggling to know if I was going to survive past the next few weeks — just like him, just like me — when we all sit there and nothing changes, we begin to have doubts, don't we? He started to have doubts. He began to have dark thoughts.
He's been there for about a year and a half. And so he finally has enough. He calls his disciples together and says, "Go ask Jesus." Because he's struggling to hold on to his sanity, but more than that, he's struggling to hold on to his hope in Jesus.
And you know, regardless of your spiritual orientation, if you have ever grappled with doubt in your spiritual life, I think this story might be helpful. Because here's John — the new Elijah, who has come to prepare the way for the Lord. Here's John, a man Jesus himself called a prophet and great. The man whom crowds in their thousands flocked to hear preach. A man who dedicated his entire life purpose to preparing people for the arrival of Jesus, and even got to baptise Jesus, God's long-awaited Saviour of the world. And yet here he is, sitting in a hole, full of doubt, struggling to hold on to a sense of hope in Jesus Christ.
How Do We Maintain Hope?
When things are going well, it's pretty easy to maintain a positive outlook on life, isn't it? There might be a few minor dramas, but it's all kind of in hand. And from a spiritual perspective, particularly for those of us who follow the way of Jesus, it's pretty easy to maintain hope in Jesus when things are going relatively well. You might say — if your biggest issue in life is finding a car park at Westfield Riccarton, your life is pretty good. I've got to be honest with you.
But when things are going badly — and I mean badly — and I think some of us know what that feels like right now — that is a different kettle of fish. When things are at their darkest and God feels distant, and we stumble through whatever it is we're facing — be it illness, financial pressure, mental health distress, the dark night of the soul, you name it — when God feels distant, it can be hard to maintain our hope in Jesus, can't it? That's what it was like for John in that prison.
I'm not in prison, but I can appreciate, nonetheless, where John was coming from — why he was struggling to hold on to his hope and the provision and goodness of God. Because I have experienced dark times in my life. And we all have, haven't we? We all know what it's like to go through dark times — be it communally, say, when this church lost All Saints, or when we had COVID as a society — but also individually.
And so the question this story raises — and it's a real, legitimate one — is: how do we maintain hope in hard times? How do we maintain our hope in Jesus when he feels distant? How do we have hope in the midst of darkness?
Jesus' Answer: Look Up
Luckily, Jesus gives us a clue. John's disciples finally find Jesus. They come and ask him, "Are you the one who is to come?" — in other words, are you the Messiah, God's Saviour for the world? And Jesus doesn't give a glib, quick answer. He doesn't dismiss them or ask why John is doubting him. Do you notice what Jesus does? He kind of just looks around. I imagine he gestures to the crowd around him.
"Go tell John what you hear and what you see. The blind receive their sight. The lame walk. The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised. The poor have good news."
In other words: look up. Look around you. Look at what's happening. God promised a Messiah. He promised a Saviour who would herald in God's kingdom — a kingdom of peace and joy where there is no injustice, no suffering, no evil, no death. And here it is. And here I, Jesus, am.
Now, Matthew is a Jew writing for Jews, and we potentially miss what Jesus is getting at here because he doesn't bother to extrapolate — he assumes that we know. That phrase about the blind, the lame, the cleansed, the deaf, the dead, and the poor is actually an amalgamation of two different parts of the prophet Isaiah — chapter 35 and chapter 61 — brought together. And what Jesus is doing by referencing these, in a very Jewish kind of way, is saying that the kingdom of God — God's reign, God's shalom, God's presence — is here in me, and I am the Messiah that you have been waiting for.
The Practical Anchor: Remembering God's Faithfulness
I think Jesus' point here to John — and by extension to you and to me, regardless of how things are going for us at the moment — was to encourage us to look beyond ourselves, to look beyond our circumstances, and recall to our minds the faithfulness of God.
When things are hard and life seems its darkest and we're struggling to look beyond our immediate personal challenges, Jesus says: look up. Look up and remember, and see what God has done. Look up and remember the times that God has delivered, when God has provided. Because when we're struggling to maintain hope in Jesus due to the darkness of life, one of the best things we can always do is remember where God has come through — either for us or for others.
Personally, I've had so many times where God has turned up. Sometimes I've been unable to see it in the moment — I only see it in hindsight. Other times, in the moment, it's been really clear. But I find that by reminding myself consistently of God's provision in the past, it helps me in the moment. It also helps strengthen my faith and my relationship with God.
When I got sick, it was horrible. I actually wasn't scared. I've always wondered what it would be like to face my own mortality, and I wasn't scared. But I did find myself worried about my wife and my children. I tell you what, Amy was amazing. She looked after our kids. I missed my son's fifth birthday — I couldn't get out of bed. She worked. She looked after everything. She was just an amazing star. But more than that, our relationship deepened and strengthened immensely through that time.
And likewise, when we remember where God has been for us in the past and how he has provided for us and cared for us, it doesn't just help us in the moment of our faith — it also strengthens our relationship with him.
And yet we still know that it can be hard to bring to mind where God has been active in our lives in the past when we're struggling in the moment. That's why testimonies are so important. Like two weeks ago, we had Machu share with us about how he came to faith in the prisons and how he's gone on to live a life now where he tells others about the good news of Jesus. That's why over the last two years we've had quite a few people share their testimonies — stories that testify to the goodness of God despite the muck and the darkness of our world. Because testimonies remind us of the faithfulness of God, and that in turn helps us to have faith in the good news of Jesus despite our circumstances.
Faith Is Trust, Not Blind Optimism
Because here's the thing. Faith is not blind optimism in something you can't see. If you lampoon people who have faith because you think it's mindless, that's not what it is. Faith is trust extended into the future. It's trust. And we can have trust because when we look up, we're reminded of God's provision and goodness in the past.
The Christian faith does not rise and fall on your mood or your circumstances. The Christian faith rests solely on the person of Jesus — God incarnate, that means God become human — who lived, died, and rose again from the dead, who we celebrate this Christmas, who arrived in the baby manger not in a show of power, but in humility and weakness.
A Word for Those in the Dark
So if you find yourself at the moment struggling to maintain your hope in Jesus — if he feels distant, or you're just not sure if he really cares — if you're in your own spiritual desert place, battling against darkness, struggling to maintain your hope in the future, if your soul is downcast and you're going through that dark night of the soul and you're struggling to function and to push through — not just spiritually, but mentally, emotionally, and physically — if that's you, hear Jesus' words today.
Look up. Look up and see what God has done, both in your life and in the lives of others. Look up and remember the goodness and the provision of God even amidst the muck and the darkness of the world. Look up and trust that even when things seem to be at their darkest, God is with you, and that you can trust in the goodness of God because of what has gone before. You can trust that no matter what you face, God will be with you in the same way that he has always been with you in the past.
He doesn't promise you won't have hardship. He never promised John he was going to save him — probably what John was hoping for. A short time later, John heard some feet coming down the stone hallway. He was dragged unceremoniously to a wooden block and his head lopped off. He was put on a platter and served up as a joke at a party.
He doesn't promise you that things will always go easily and nicely for you. But he does promise you that he'll be with you no matter what happens. And in the life to come, you can rest eternal with him.
That's the hope of Christmas. That's the good news.