Matthew 11:1-19

We do the same thing with God, don't we? We take what we know he has said and fill in what he hasn't said with our assumptions.

Have you ever done that before? This is when it should happen.

Have you ever told God that? This is how he should do it.

Or this is what it should look like.

But when that happens, when God doesn't fit our expectations or explain why, what happens? What happens? Think of something that you were sure God was going to do, something that you've expected to God.

I'm not talking about a wish.

I'm talking about something you were sure he would do because, hey, he promised it.

So you're convinced, but he still hasn't done it.

Or at least he hasn't done it the way you thought he should do it.

And to be fair, you've hung in there, you haven't given up on him, but you've also had some troubling, unspoken questions bubble up to the surface.

And those questions often begin with a statement.

I thought.

I thought you would have answered by now.

I've been waiting.

I thought if I obeyed you, this would have worked out differently.

I thought you would have protected me from this.

I thought following Jesus would have made this easier, not harder.

I thought you would have done something.

Those I thought moments do more than just leave us disappointed with God.

They can make us unsure about him.

because behind them is the question that nobody wants to ask him.

God, when you don't fit my expectations, are you really who I thought you were? Or have I been wrong about you this whole time? Well, you're not the first person to ask that question.

In Matthew 11, a man named John the Baptizer asked Jesus that exact question from a prison cell.

And to understand why he was asking it, we need to go back to the first time Matthew introduced him.

In chapter 3, John is out in the Judean wilderness calling people to repent.