When the plan stops making sense
You said yes to God. You did the thing He asked you to do. And instead of doors opening, everything got harder. If that is where you are sitting right now, you are in better company than you think. The first thing Mark tells us about Jesus preaching the gospel is that it happened right after John the Baptist was arrested. Mark 1:14. Most of us read past that line like it is a transition sentence. It is not. It is context. John obeyed. John announced the kingdom. John baptized people, pointed straight at Jesus, and did exactly what he was called to do. And it put him in a jail cell.
John obeyed God and ended up in a jail cell
Picture the scene. The disciples are standing there, and over the hill they can see the wagon hauling John away in chains. That is the moment Jesus stands up and says the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news. Read it in context and it almost lands like a warning. Follow me, and you might end up right where John is. The gospel was never sold as a guarantee that life would go your way. Jesus said His burden was light. He said it out loud while one of His most faithful servants was being carted off to prison. Those two things have been sitting side by side since the very first sentence.
Even John the Baptist had to ask the question
Here is the part that should bring you relief. John had more reason for certainty than anybody. He leaped in his mother’s womb when Mary walked into the room. He grew up around Jesus. He looked right at Him and called Him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And in Matthew 11, sitting in prison, John sent his own disciples to ask Jesus whether He was really the one, or whether they should keep waiting for someone else. The most certain man in the story had a day when he was not certain. Jesus did not scold him for it. He sent back a report of blind eyes opening and dead men rising, and He never once gave John a release date. Your doubt does not disqualify you. It puts you in line with the man Jesus called the greatest born of women. You are allowed to say out loud that the story is not going how you expected and still believe the King is exactly who He says He is.
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Episode Summary:
John the Baptist baptized Jesus. He was Jesus’ cousin. He was called the greatest man born of a woman. And he still ended up in prison asking, “Are you really the one, or should we wait for someone else?”
In this clip from Episode 207 of The Daron Earlewine Podcast, Daron walks through the emotional weight of John’s prison crisis and what Jesus’ surprising response reveals about faith when your circumstances don’t match your expectations.
Key Takeaways
⚡️ Even the strongest believers wrestle with doubt when God doesn’t show up the way they expected
⚡️ Jesus didn’t rescue John from prison, He sent a message that essentially said trust me anyway
⚡️ The moments you feel most abandoned by God are often the exact invitations to deeper faith
Watch the full episode for the complete conversation on the messy middle, biblical repentance, and what to do when God feels distant.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
So whether it was cereal or honey, John’s eating either way. It’s funny, not funny, it’s very intriguing, because when Jesus in Mark chapter one gives the announcement, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel,” what I think is really, really interesting is verse four, that’s verse 15. Verse 14 is this:
“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel.”
Time out. If you’re reading you’re like, that’s just a sentence. No. After John was arrested. Let’s really get into context here.
John has been appointed, called by God to announce the coming of the kingdom, to be the forerunner of Jesus. He’s been baptizing people. He’s been telling people, “Repent and believe. Man, this is amazing.” He’s one of the main characters in this whole deal. And for doing what he’s been called to do successfully, he’s going to jail. Yeah. And ultimately to be beheaded. We don’t know that yet. But that’s the setup.
One of the main dudes that you would think it’s going to really work out for, because the kingdom is coming. Well, he got arrested. And then Jesus stands up and says, “Hey.” I’m just thinking about, if you’re standing there with your disciples and you know, let’s just say the horse and wagon, whatever, taking John to jail, is just cresting the hill. They’re like, “What? John just got arrested. John’s going to jail. What have we gotten ourselves into?”
And Jesus is like, “Hey, calm down everybody. In light of what we’ve just seen, I want you to know this. The time is fulfilled now. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. The good news that if you believe in this and buy into this, you may get to go to jail like John did.”
That’s the opening scene. And by the way, my burden is light. Just as John on his way to jail. Who’s in? Guys. Everybody. This is the gospel. This is the good news. You follow Jesus and you get sent to jail. And you guys don’t know this yet, but like you said, John he doesn’t, well, he does, when he comes out, he won’t have his head. But repent, believe. Good news. Kingdom’s here.
You take a look at how the story actually was when they were happening, the contextual understanding of what was happening in their lives. For us to ever get to the point where we’re like, I don’t know why this is difficult, it’s like from the drop, this doesn’t make sense. There is a massive need of faith and something happened that we can’t see. And people are not getting what they would regularly want to order off the menu of life. And Jesus is going, “Yeah, I know. Totally get it. But listen, time’s out. We’ve got to repent and believe.”
So what I want us to get to is, there is a massive need for us to really understand what Jesus is saying we need to do. Repent and believe. We’ve talked about that a little bit on the podcast before, but we’re going to keep talking about it because I think it’s such a central thing you see with Jesus and with understanding this. So I’ll wait, we’ll give the repent later. Because it gets even worse for John.
He goes to jail. Jesus thinks this is the great time. “I need to announce that, guess what? The king’s here.” Then we go into Matthew 11. So John’s been in prison for a while and he sends a message, verse two:
“Now when John in prison heard about the activities of Christ,” so he’s in jail thinking, “Man, this is not how I was expecting this would work out. Here’s a bunch of all this cool stuff Jesus is doing.” He sends a message by his disciples and asks Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we keep on expecting a different one?”
Full time out. We’re going to go full, full time out. John, wait a second. When we first find out about you, while you’re being created inside your mother’s womb, Jesus shows up inside of Mary’s womb and somehow your spirit or something in you knows He’s the Messiah, because you leap inside your mother’s womb. So before you were born, you knew. You’re Jesus’ cousin. I mean, you guys probably played with football in the backyard together. If they had football. Eating honeycomb. Probably.
He’s been there the whole time. I don’t know what He completely understood. We’re not going to dig into the whole thing, even exactly what Jesus understood and had the fullness. Anyway, they grow up together. He’s been there the whole time and knew that God had called him to go out and be crazy John, in camel’s hair and eating locusts and being the guy to announce the kingdom of God is here. The Messiah is here. He even sees Jesus. “Look. Behold. Look guys, it’s the Lamb of God that’s going to take away the sins of the world.”
He has been locked in his entire existence, even in the womb existence. And here he is in jail, hearing Him do all the stuff that he’s been telling people, “This is what the Messiah is going to do.” But he’s like, “Hey, just double check. Are you really the Messiah, or are we supposed to wait for someone else?”
But don’t we do that every single day? Correct. I’m sorry if I’m jumping ahead in your notes, but isn’t that exactly what we do every single day? “I’m stuck in traffic. God, why are you doing this to me?” I mean, obviously that’s a trite thing. Yeah. From stuck in traffic to dad got cancer. Right. My friend died. There’s another war. I’m still single. I lost my job. We can’t have kids still. Fill in the blank of whatever it is.
What I take comfort from is, if I were to make a biblical character of this guy who for sure would be locked in the whole time, it’s John the Baptist. And even he, seeing it, we’re trying to believe it thousands of years later with no evidence. He hung out with the Messiah his whole life because it was his cousin, saw the whole thing. Even in the midst of that, he’s like, “Wait a second. Are you sure you’re it? Maybe I’ve made this whole thing up my whole life. Maybe this is just because my mom would tell me these stories, and Aunt Mary would say all these things. And it was her thing. And maybe because I just grew up in the church, all of these things.”
But John’s going, “Listen, here’s the deal. I had some expectations and they are not being met.”
So Jesus sends back a response, and His response makes it even worse. Jesus says, “Hey, go tell John this. Tell him what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news, the gospel, being preached to them.”
Which kind of feels like, yeah, but that would make it even worse, because you’re going, “Wait a minute. So all this awesome stuff is happening, but how I’m being written into the story, I’m the guy who takes the risk. I’m the first in line telling everybody this is the deal, and people are getting healed. The deaf are hearing. Well, John the Baptist is rotting in prison.” I don’t like the plan I’ve got. This is not the way I expected it to work. Dead in fight the kingdom to me. That’s heavy.k I’ve felt this myself — my life is so bright that my little light doesn’t make any difference. I don’t really have a testimony. I heard about this guy who was a crazy meth addict robbing banks and then found Jesus and it was amazing. And we forget that your neighbor probably has the same fears, the same shame, the same pain you do. And if you walk with hope — because Jesus is with you, not far away, for you not against you, created you on purpose and for purpose — that is hope. That is light.