sinonjs/sinon

Hi - I have a question about stubbing / doubling complex objects. I'm trying to mock an adonis model object - so here's the code I'm looking to test :

  async index ({ request, session, view, response, params }) {
    const messages = await Messages.query().has('messagedeliveryrecordsMessageId').with('messagedeliveryrecordsMessageId').fetch()
    const messagesJson = messages.toJSON()
    return view.render('messages/index', { title: 'Message Processing', messages: messagesJson })
  }

at the moment I'm trying to create a mock of the message.query line :

const messages = await Messages.query().has('messagedeliveryrecordsMessageId').with('messagedeliveryrecordsMessageId').fetch()

I have a basic test like this - which works (as far as this line is concerned)

it.only('MessageController calls Messages.Query - returns null', async () => {

     const messagesStub = sinon.stub()
    messagesStub.toJSON = sinon.stub().returns('validJson')
    const fetchstub = sinon.stub().returns(messagesStub)
    const withstub = sinon.stub().returns({fetch: fetchstub})
    const hasstub = sinon.stub().returns({with: withstub})
    const mockMessages = sinon.createStubInstance(Messages)
    mockMessages.query = sinon.stub().returns({has: hasstub})
    mockMessages.toJSON = sinon.stub().returns('valid json here')



    const SUT = new MessageController(mockMessages)
    // Act
    let result = await SUT.index({request:null})
    // Assert

  })

I plan on adding some asserts - like for instance asserting that the has stub was called with 'messagedeliveryrecordsMessageId' parameter.

My question is : All of the stub set up i'm doing in the test seems messy and not great. Is there a nicer way I can format this?