THOMAS: THE BELIEVER
by Pastor Jim Lincoln on March 9, 2008
People deal with grief in different ways. Some need companionship and some need to be alone. When my mother died, I just needed to be alone for a while. After Jesus was crucified, we don't know where Thomas went. Maybe he just needed to be alone. But, sometime that evening, he rejoined the other disciples and they began to describe the details of their encounter with the resurrected Jesus. They told Thomas how they had locked themselves in the house and yet, somehow Jesus stood right in front of them. They spoke of how death only made him stronger than before. He didn't appear as a spirit. They saw him, touched him, held him and ate a meal with Him.
A Glimpse of Your Future
The Bible says that when Christians see Him when He returns, we shall be like Him. For those who trust in the Lord Jesus, you're not going to be floating around on some cloud like a ghost. It means you are going to dance, sing, hug and eat and drink. Think of what this means for the disabled, the deaf, the blind, or for those with deep emotional disorders. Beloved, all the physical pleasures of this world can only fill a thimble compared to the tangible joys of the new heaven, the new earth and our new bodies unaffected by sin. Today, you may not be able to sing but some day you will. Today you may not be able to dance. However, in Christ, some day you will. Some day all disease and all imperfection will be done away with. If you belong to Christ, you're not going to miss out on any good physical pleasure offered here today on this earth. So, whatever good thing you think you're missing now, don't be afraid. All this world has to offer here is just a dew drop in the ocean compared to what awaits us. Jesus' resurrection body shows us that this physical world, as we know it now, is not all there is or will be. There is more to come, more than you can think or imagine.
The Resurrection
Before we get to Thomas' confession of faith, I want us to understand the claim the apostle's are making. First, they're claiming that the resurrection is an historic event. They're saying that after His death, Jesus appeared to them in a physical body in time and space and that He appeared to over five hundred people over a period of six weeks. No, other religion claims such a thing. At the time this idea was simply unheard of. Thomas reveals they weren't having a spiritual vision or spiritual experience. Jesus' resurrected body was as real and concrete in time and space as anything else you might see or touch today. Also, all of these people could have been questioned and cross-examined about their witness. If not true, their testimony could have easily been contradicted. But, no one even challenged the resurrection of Jesus in the first 100 years after it happened. There was just too much evidence.
The best the religious leaders could do was to start a rumor that the disciples stole the body. So, let's see how this goes. After the armed Roman military guard was forewarned that the disciples might attempt to take the body, (on the penalty of death if they failed), a band of powerful seminary students overpowered the Roman guard. They held them down in headlocks while the others stole the body from the tomb. After that, the guards did nothing to pursue them. Look, you can make up any story, but theories like this are harder to believe than the simple truth. The historical evidence is overwhelming unless your philosophical biases and prejudices blind you to the evidence.
But the resurrection was more than an historical reality. Paul writes, "I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection." The resurrection is also about the transforming grace of God that changes us and gives us eternal hope. Thomas came to know both things. If the historical reality of the resurrection is true then it demands a personal response. It is an exclusive claim. And this is just what happened to Thomas.
Thomas Rejects
For seven days Thomas rejected the witness of his friends. I wonder how they felt about that? Perhaps they remembered how they too were so unbelieving before they saw the risen Jesus. When the women told them Jesus had risen, they didn't believe them. They called it, "woman talk." Not one of them went to the tomb and said, "Jesus told us He would rise from the grave in three days. Why don't we just hang out here and wait for what He said to come true?" The resurrection of a human body in this life was absolutely incomprehensible to them. None of them believed it without overwhelming proof. I have to smile when someone says, "You know people back in those days - before the scientific era - people just believed these kinds of things." Beloved, Thomas' and the unbelief of the others demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth. He's not buying it, even if his best friends unanimously believe it! He's as skeptical as any one 21st c. person can be. Listen to his conditions.
"Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hands into His side I will not believe." (20:25)
Unless he can confirm it with concrete evidence, Thomas refuses to believe it. Now, how does Jesus deal with Thomas? Four ways. 1. He's merciful. 2. He gives him the evidence he asked for. 3. He receives Thomas' worship and 4. He blesses those who will share his faith.
First, Jesus treats Thomas with grace and mercy (John 20:25).
Thomas rejected the testimony of all his friends; he rejected the very words of Jesus who predicted that He would die and be raised up on the third day. Thomas was suggesting they were all liars or that they were all just nuts. Yet, how does Jesus treat Thomas? Notice what Jesus doesn't say.
"OK, That's it. I've had enough. Thomas, we're done here. I'm moving on to someone who is more receptive."
Although Jesus had every right to say that, He didn't. Instead of writing Thomas off, He bears with His disciple who is struggling with some honest doubts and confusion about what all of this means. The first words Jesus spoke to Thomas, "Peace be with you!" Isn't that great? Peace, Thomas.
Now, peace isn't our natural reaction to the presence of God. Before the Lord, we all stand exposed for who we really are. In God's presence Isaiah fell down and said, "Woe is me, I'm undone". Before the glorified Jesus John fell down as though he was dead. David said, "If Thou O Lord were to mark our iniquities who could stand." Thomas doubted Jesus and everyone else who said they met with the risen Jesus. My guess is that when he saw the risen Jesus he felt unworthy, embarrassed and ashamed. And yet Jesus says,
"Peace, Thomas all is well with you and me. My wounds have made it so."
Isn't God gracious? Can you hear these words of peace? Do you know the peace - that comes from knowing that He has cast your sins as far as the east is from the west to be remembered no more? Can you hear these words? Do you know the peace --that comes from knowing that God is a mighty warrior in your midst and that He quiets you with His love and that He rejoices over you with loud singing? When was the last time you took the time to hear the Lord singing over you? We live in an anxious and stressed out world. The resurrected Jesus says to his doubting and flawed disciple, "Peace be with you." Can you hear these sweet words this morning?
Now, notice that peace doesn't come by simply visualizing peace. Jesus said,
"Look at my hands and feet; look at the love I have poured out for you. All is well between us Thomas ... My wounds have made it so."
Thomas' peace came at a price and so does ours. Can you believe this today?
Doubts Are Common
Doubts about the faith are normal. Read the stories of Sarah, Jacob, Naomi and Jeremiah. They all had their doubts. Jacob said, "All is against me." when it wasn't. Naomi said, "The hand of the Lord is against me." when it wasn't. Sarah laughed and even lied about the idea that she could have a child at her age. And you know what? The Lord loved them all anyway.
Jesus was patient with Thomas. And so were the disciples. Even though Thomas flat-out rejected their words, they didn't kick him out of the group. And even though Thomas thought that they were all nuts he didn't abandoned them. That's the way it often is in the family of God. I may think you are theologically off base and you may think that I am nuts. Look if we are agreed on the fundamental's that's alright. But listen, faith is not believing what you know can't be true. And Jesus helps Thomas with that doubt. Now, you can demand too much evidence as he did. But Jesus was patient and forebearing. Aren't you glad that the Lord is patient with us? He offers His doubting disciple peace. Jesus said, "Look at my wounds and be at peace." Will you do the same?
Second, Jesus gives him the evidence he asked for (vs. 27). Jesus makes His case.
"Then He said to Thomas, "Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing." NASU
Why? Well, Thomas is an Apostle. His testimony will be foundational for all who follow. Jesus wants Thomas to know that He has gone into the very maw of death and defeated it and come out greater and stronger in body and spirit. He's not hallucinating. He's not dreaming. He's not having a spiritual experience. He's having a concrete meeting with Jesus Christ. The risen Jesus is a real person who after being crucified and buried for three days is now more alive than ever and more alive than any person ever has been. Jesus gave the other disciples the same witness. In Lk.24:39, Jesus said,
"Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Why can't you believe what is obvious and with the physical evidence right here in front of you? He said to them, "Look, see my hands and My feet, that it's Me, Myself. It's really Me! Go ahead, touch Me and see, because a spirit doesn't have flesh and bone like I have, does it?"
Jesus is challenging their intellectual assumptions. He is after their hearts! But He knows that the heart cannot turn to what the mind doesn't accept. He knows that you don't love, adore, prize and cherish the things you believe in your mind are manifestly untrue. This isn't a vision, a mirage or ethereal experience. Thomas would have never bought that. Jesus said, "I am here bone and body, flesh and blood."
I heard a religious expert talking head on TV say, "Now, Just because we say that the resurrection wasn't historical we don't need to say that it didn't happen." And she added, "This is gospel... not history." Nothing could be more absurd. You can say that the disciples are insane. Say they are wrong. But don't tame what they are claiming. They know exactly what they are claiming and how unique, wondrous and unbelievable it is. That's why they went to so much trouble to document it and share their honest doubts about it.
C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright, are experts in fantasy and myth literature. They both tell us that this is not the way one would write a myth account. If you were going to make up a story about Jesus rising from the dead you would never make up a story like this. If you really wanted Jewish people to believe in the resurrection, you would present Jesus as this luminous, brilliant, dazzling light bursting through the doors and everyone amazed by the flash of glory. You wouldn't say, "Jesus appeared and asked for a fish stick sandwich." Vision and myth literature are just not like this. This is way too ordinary and mundane. "And they gave him a piece of broiled fish and He ate it." Why would they report this in such a mundane and completely uninspiring way? Here's the answer. That's the way it happened.
By the way, you can miss much of what God is doing if you're always looking for Him in the spectacular and not in the ordinary. Yes, there are a few evidences that His body was glorified. But it's amazing to me how understated all of this is. Can you see Jesus in the ordinary connections you make with your kids or in a good conversation with you wife or husband over a meal or with a Christian friend who encourages you in the Lord? Most of this is as ordinary as it gets.
Jesus gives Thomas enough historical and tangible evidence to believe what he is asking him to believe. Look, the stone was rolled away; the tomb was empty; the grave clothes were undisturbed as if his body just went right through them; Mary had a conversation with Jesus; and Jesus had visited the disciples at their home behind locked doors. They shared a meal. That was all documented. Jesus now stands in front of him calling him to look at His hands and put his hands in his side and believe all the evidence that is right in front of him. He says to Thomas, Look, Thomas the evidence is more than sufficient, "Be not unbelieving but believing."
How do you know that your faith is real? How do you know what you are reading is not distorted? You know it because Jesus inundated the Apostles with every kind of proof and evidence possible. Also, consider this. They lost the tomb of Jesus! How do you loose the grave site of the most famous person who ever lived? You loose it because no one ever made a monument out of his grave and no one ever made pilgrimages to it after the resurrection. Jesus was alive; they didn't need to visit his tomb. There was no reason to.
Jesus met every tangible condition Thomas had spelled out a week before. By taking up his challenge Jesus proves to Thomas that He hears them even when He isn't present. Thomas said, "Unless I see the imprints of the nails in His hands and put my fingers into the place where the nails were and put my hand in His side, I'm not believing it." Jesus stood there and told Thomas to do all three. Beloved, Jesus hears you even when He is not present. He assured Thomas that He heard him and then He gave Thomas plenty of evidence to believe.
Third, Jesus accepted Thomas' worship as LORD and God (v. 28).
Compelled by all of this evidence Thomas makes the greatest confession of faith in Jesus recorded the gospels. He answered and said to Jesus, "My Lord and My God." That's why this story is included, not because he was such an extraordinary doubter, but because Thomas became such a great believer.1 His confession was the most accurate of any in John's gospel yet. In one way this is the climax of John's book. The first sentence of the John's gospel is, "In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the word was God." Now, here at the end of the book, Thomas says of Jesus, "My LORD and my God." The truth of who Jesus is has now been born in the heart of His disciple. And so Thomas worshipped Jesus.
And Jesus received this worship without any qualification. This is so extraordinary and amazing. A good Jewish Rabbi would have never accepted such worship like this. It's blasphemy to call someone God. Anyone who knows that they aren't God and lets other think they are isn't an ethical person or a good teacher. That is unless... He was indeed God with us after all. But, this is what Jesus had been saying all along.
"Before Abraham...Jesus said...was I Am" (8:58) "I am the Way the Truth and the Life (Jn 10) "All should honor the Son just as they honor the Father." (5:23) "I only do what the Father tells me to do."
In John 5:18 the Jews said that when Jesus called God his Father, He was "making Himself out to be equal with God and they picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy." Jesus accepts the charge without complaint and never once tries to correct or qualify their understanding.
In the face of so much evidence the scales fall off and Thomas recognized beyond a reasonable doubt that Jesus was indeed Emanuel, God with us. Somehow, God had punched a hole in the universe and entered our world revealing Himself in His Son Jesus. All the wisdom, beauty, righteousness, compassion, truth and mercy of God is found in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "If you have seen me you have seen the Father." Hebrews says that Jesus is the "radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of God's being." To believe in Jesus is to believe that He is indeed the divine Son of God with all the wonder and authority that communicates. This is what Thomas believed and what Jesus calls all Christians to believe about Him.
But notice how personal it is. Thomas says, "My LORD and My God." This is not only an ecclesiastical confession. It's the joy and wonder of one man's undeserving heart that has been reconciled to God - his Creator, Redeemer and Savior. He wasn't just the LORD and Savior of the world. Jesus was his LORD and his God. His confession couldn't be more personal. If you want to know God...if you want to know the wisdom of God, the goodness of God, the righteousness of God, the compassion of God and the truth and mercy of God, then look to Jesus.
Thomas saw His wounds and stood before his grace and he knew that he was standing in the saving and awesome presence of His Creator alive and blessed. Saving faith is always personal. Is this your faith? Is the Lord Jesus Christ your LORD? Is He Your God? Is your faith your faith?
Finally the resurrected Jesus blesses those who share this same confession (v.29).
"Thomas you have believed seeing; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
There's a gentle rebuke in this to Thomas, not because he wanted evidence. He wanted too much evidence. Jesus tells Thomas that seeing the evidence, he was blessed. However, blessed are those who believe and have not seen. Jesus is anticipating those future believers who will share Thomas' faith without the visual aids. And they will be blessed without seeing. Notice that the way Jesus anticipates the blessing of saving faith to come about. It won't come through a vision, through a dream or through a visual encounter with Jesus. This faith He says will come without sight. In His priestly prayer, Jesus said, "I ask on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their word (the word of the apostles)." He said, "Sanctify them in the truth; Thy word is truth." This blessing of saving faith comes through the word. It comes about without seeing. That's why John and the other apostles wrote their gospels down. John wrote, "I have written these things to you who believe...in order that you may know that you have eternal life." Yet, we somehow think that those with stories of seeing Jesus or who claim to have come to faith through some vision, or dream or visual encounter with Jesus have had a greater blessing. Jesus suggests just the opposite. I'm not saying Jesus never gives someone a vision of Himself. I just want you to listen to Jesus who says, "OK. Thomas, you're blessed seeing. But - oh, how blessed - are those who believe without seeing." Jesus is blessing those who believe in Him through the word, who will never have a visual encounter with Jesus in this life. Don't think you have received something less by not having a visual encounter with Jesus. That day will come soon enough. Peter writes, "And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory..." (1Pe.1:8). Paul says that we walk by faith and not by sight.
One last thing, I notice that Thomas' confession is faith in Jesus as Lord and God. Beloved, that means to come to Jesus or to believe in Jesus means to renounce any other god in our lives. The gospel is not, "Believe in Jesus." or "Accept Jesus into your heart." The gospel is always, "Believe in Jesus AS HE IS." And so the Bible calls us to believe in "The Lord Jesus Christ." He is LORD and He is God. And that means to receive Him is to receive Him as that.
To come to faith in Jesus is to renounce allegiance to anyone or anything else as Lord of our life. When you were baptized you were buried with Christ. That means you died to anyone or anything that would deny Christ's authority in your life. If we say Thomas' confession is not important, we will cheapen the grace of God and all credibility as serious Christians. The grace of God not only forgives our sins it calls us to a renounce any other god that may have sway in our lives.
Jesus says to Thomas, "Don't be unbelieving, believe." Blessed are they who believe Jesus is Lord and God without seeing. Are you blessed? Jesus says that those who share this confession are blessed. Are you blessed?
Jesus stood in front of Thomas exposing His wounds. "Look at my hands and feet. Peace Thomas, my wounds have made it so." Jesus shows Thomas that He has already endured the fire of God's judgment that we all deserve. If Thomas believes in the Lord Jesus the fire of God's judgment will never fall on him because it's already fallen on Jesus. If you believe in the risen Lord Jesus, you too will be blessed and safe forever and ever. He is alive, you know. And no one can ever love you like the risen and resurrected Jesus. Believe in Him and be blessed beyond your wildest dreams.
FOOTNOTES
1In John's gospel we have been waiting since 1:1 ("In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God."): for someone to proclaim the awesome reality of the incarnation. Well, here it is!