Matthew 11:3

Matthew 11:3

Doubting.

I. There is no sin in doubting. Some doubts are sinful. They are so when born of irrational prejudices or bred of an ill-regulated life. But doubt, of its own nature, cannot be sinful. For what is it? It is a certain fluctuation of the mind, this way and that way, while as yet, in the matter in question, it has no convincing evidence. The miracles of Jesus, in one aspect of them, were the Divine answers to men's sinless doubts, and also the Divine method of preventing them from arising.

II. Faith is better than doubt. We are never encouraged in the Scriptures, nor are we justified in any of the dictates of natural wisdom, in cultivating, as an inner habit, an intellectual or moral scepticism. We are encouraged to ask questions of God and man, to read books, weigh evidence, reject fallacy; in one word, to prove all things. But all this with a view to the ending of hesitancy, to the settling of faith, and the holding fast of that which is good. So that to say we are encouraged to doubt is only another way of saying we are encouraged to believe.

III. In any attempts to subdue scepticism, either in ourselves or in others, regard should be had to the proximate cause of it or, since proximate and remote are often inseparably blended, say to the real cause as far as that can be ascertained. (1) For instance, there can be no doubt that a large amount of mental perturbation is due to physical causes. The suffering body sometimes makes the troubled mind. In such cases physical medicaments are needed, and should be sought and used as the very balm of Gilead for the occasion. (2) Then if the doubt be purely intellectual, if it arises in the course of a natural development of thought and knowledge, then there must be applied to it an expressly intellectual solvent. (3) Let those who have moral doubts obey the Lord's injunction and come unto Him for rest. Nearly all doubts concerning Christ or Christian truth ought to be brought in some way before Christ Himself, and given, as it were, into His own hands for solution.

A. Raleigh, The Little Sanctuary,p. 110; see also Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 16.

References: Matthew 11:3. R. W. Dale, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 355; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,vol. ii., p. 13.Matthew 11:4. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 111.Matthew 11:4; Matthew 11:5. E.M. Goulburn, Occasional Sermons,p. 191.Matthew 11:4. R. Duckworth, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 49.