Two Sundays ago, we celebrated what the world calls “Easter Sunday” or as I like to call it, “Resurrection Day.” It is a certain Sunday set aside each year to commemorate the risen Christ. Many pastors and Bible teachers end the story with the empty tomb. Afterwards, they dismiss us to eat with our families and hunt eggs, but what else happened following that miracle of miracles? Last Sunday, we talked about what is commonly known as the Road to Emmaus and how two disciples unknowingly walked seven miles with Jesus without even recognizing him! It was not until they sat down at supper with him that they figured out it was the Lord. He then vanishes and they take off running back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples about this amazing occurrence. I feel the need to insert a fun fact here. Nearly every time we find the resurrected Jesus in Scripture, there’s food involved.
Today, let’s
pick up where we left off. The disciples are locked in the upper room for fear
of the Jews -namely the chief priests and others who had a hand in the
execution of Jesus. This is the same upper room where Jesus had eaten the Passover
meal with his disciples just four days earlier. The disciples naturally assumed
their deaths would be imminent since it was no secret that they were his closest
friends and followers.
John 20:19-23, “On
the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked
where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them
and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ When he said this, he showed them his hands and his
side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them
again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I
am sending you.’ And when he had said
this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld’”
(English Standard Version).
Now
let’s get to the focus of today’s message in verse 24:
24) “Now Thomas, one
of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
25) So the other
disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see
in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into his side, I will
never believe.’
26) Eight days later,
his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors
were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’
27) Then he said to
Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out
your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.’
28) Thomas answered
him, ‘My Lord and my God!’
29) Jesus said to
him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are
those who have not seen and yet have believed.’” (ESV).
This passage features an exchange
between Jesus and one of the disciples named Thomas, also called “the Twin.”
Thanks to his fellow disciples fine writing skills, Thomas would have a new
alias, “Doubting Thomas.” John felt the need to include this little event while
the other gospel writers did not, and it will haunt Thomas up to this day and
beyond. But was Thomas really a doubter? Was he really one who tossed his faith
to the wind and believed it all to be a farce or a lie? Not hardly. You see,
Thomas had an unmatched love for his friend Jesus and the courage of a lion. To
see that side of Thomas, we must look deeper into Scripture, because even his
buddy, John, shows us the other side of the one known as the Doubter.
In the eleventh chapter of John’s
gospel, Jesus receives word that one of his best friends is on his deathbed. Jesus
often stayed at the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary when he passed through Bethany.
Now, Lazarus was gravely ill and Jesus knew he was going to die. When it was
time for Jesus to go to Bethany, he said, “Let
us go to Judea again” (John 11:7b, ESV). With Jesus’ words, the disciples
go crazy. “Rabbi, the Jews
were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” (John
11:8b, ESV). You
must understand that Bethany was only about two miles from Jerusalem, home of
the chief priests and Pharisees that wanted to hurt Jesus. The disciples knew
that if they got that close to the Holy City, harm would certainly befall their
leader. All of them expressed serious concern -except one. In John 11:16 it
says, “So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples,
‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’” (ESV). Do you see it? That’s not the
voice of a doubter. That’s the voice of a soldier who is willing to die for his
commander. What Thomas is saying is, “If Jesus is going to die in Bethany, I’m
going to die right beside him. Load up.”
In the fourteenth chapter of the same
gospel, Jesus is teaching his disciples that he will be leaving soon and would
be back to get them later. He was trying to tell them he would be dying soon,
rising from the dead and ascending to the Father then someday returning in glory.
In verse four, Jesus tells them, “And
you know the way to where I am going” (ESV).
A stunned Thomas speaks on behalf
of the group, “Lord, we do not
know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (ESV). Do you hear the desperation in
his voice? He wants to follow Jesus. He must follow Jesus. How can they follow
him if they don’t know the way? Why doesn’t Jesus just let them tag along? Do
not leave me Jesus, I love you! I need you! To me, that does not sound at all like
wishy-washy doubting faith. That sounds like a sold-out, committed follower of
Jesus.
So what happened? Obviously, Thomas wasn’t
in the upper room locked away like the other disciples when Jesus came. When he
got there, the others were elated to tell him that they had seen the Lord, but
Thomas was downtrodden, “Unless I see in his
hands the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never
believe” (John 20:25b, ESV). Thomas was emotionally devastated. He had lost his best friend.
His heart was broken at the death of Jesus. He was going through the motions, denying
or depressed that his rabbi was dead. The next verse picks up eight days later
the following Monday when the disciples were still locked inside the Upper Room.
Suddenly, Jesus appears again and does an encore of “Peace be with you” (John
20:26c, ESV). Then
he tells Thomas to put his finger in his nail-scarred hands and place his hand
in the hole on his side left by the Roman soldier’s spear. Thomas realizes
Jesus is alive! He says to him, “My
Lord and my God!” (John 20:28b, ESV). Can you see Thomas jumping up and down, running around
the room like an excited kid at Christmastime? His friend was alive! Jesus was
alive!
Poor Thomas, a devout follower of Jesus,
his reputation wrecked by a few verses written by his pal, John. Or was it? Did
John really say that Thomas was a doubter? That was not the case, but centuries
of misunderstanding and diatribes by well-meaning yet uneducated preachers, has
tarnished Thomas’ good name. In John 20:27, Jesus said to Thomas, “Do not disbelieve, but believe” (ESV). The King James Version puts it this way, “Be not faithless, but believing.” You will not find the word “doubt”
anywhere in this passage. Only one of the major translations or versions of Scripture
uses “doubt” or “doubting” in this verse. While I enjoy reading that version at
times, I strongly believe it uses the wrong English word in this verse. Thomas
wasn’t the doubter that James talked about in his epistle where he writes, “But let him ask in faith, for the one who doubts is
like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind (James 1:6, ESV). The word “doubt” in James is a
totally different word than the word John uses in the original language by the
way. Someone else summed it up best: Thomas’ hope was in Jesus and when Jesus
died, Thomas’ hope died too. Thomas might have been the pessimist of the group,
but his loyalty to Jesus was unmatched.
What
does this mean for us today? Well, let me ask you this, since you have been a
believer, have you ever wondered where Jesus was? A loved one died too soon.
You were terminated from your job for doing the right thing. Your spouse betrayed
you and had an affair. You wonder where Jesus is… When you are at a low point
in life questioning the presence of God, good Christian friends will be there
telling you, “He is here! We have seen him!” You had hope at one time, but it
died. And these well-meaning friends saying “Open your eyes and look around,
Jesus is everywhere!” are really getting on your nerves. You need to touch him.
You need to feel him for yourself. And then, out of nowhere (whether it’s eight
days or eighty years later), Jesus gets down on your level, looks you in the
eye, and makes himself known to you all over again. We tend to forget that it does
not take much faith to move a mountain -only faith the size of a mustard seed.
If you can drum up that much faith, you can move mountains. Honestly, Jesus did
not have to come back to that room eight days later for Thomas, but he did because
he loved Thomas. Jesus did not have to die on the cross for me, but he so did
because he loves me. Each day, Jesus reveals himself to us through his Word, all
I must do is open my Bible and read the Jesus story. When my hope starts to
die, I do not doubt there is a God. I trust God more. I lean on him, even when I
cannot see him. I open his Word and read the life stories of these ordinary,
broken men and women who followed Him. They were not super disciples. They did
not have something I do not. They had fears. They had frustrations. At times, they
were hopeless, but just like me, they had Jesus. At the end of our passage,
Jesus said to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have believed” (John 20:29b, ESV). That includes you and me. Even though I haven’t
seen Jesus face-to-face physically, I’ve seen Him at work in my own life and in
the lives of other believers that have overcome addiction, adultery, idolatry, hatred,
deceit, and yes, even doubt among other sins. There is no sin God cannot
forgive. There is no life that God cannot change. In Mark 1:15, Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and
believe in the gospel” (ESV). Salvation in Jesus is free, but it isn’t cheap.
It cost Jesus His life. If you put your faith in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection,
you can have new life. The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your
heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9,
ESV).
NOTE: This blog post is an adapted transcript of my sermon streamed live on Facebook on April 25, 2020. Please check out Hope Church Clinton by CLICKING HERE!
