Seeing and Believing

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Well, tonight we have our living Lord’s Supper. And as Jack said earlier, I hope that you’ll all be back for that. It’s not real long, but there’s a choir presentation part of it.

There’s drama where the parts of the apostles are acted out given their testimonies of their experiences with Jesus. We’ll take the Lord’s Supper together. And it’s something I’m looking forward to.

Last year was my first year to be here and be part of it. and I’ve been looking forward to doing it again for months. Now, when I got here last year and was able to be part of it, there seems to have been an expectation that because I’m the pastor, I was going to play Jesus.

And some of you were shocked when I said, no, I’m not doing it. Number one, I was determined not to make it look like I just have to be the center of attention all the time, because that’s not really my thing. but also when I heard that the role of Thomas was available I kind of jumped at that one because I’ve always felt a little sorry for Thomas I identify with Thomas a little bit because I’m I’m a little bit of a skeptic or maybe a lot a bit of a skeptic if we depending on what we’re talking about Charles and my first argument as a married couple actually I think our first argument ever was about grammar.

Because we were both English teachers once upon a time. And by the way, if you’re worried, does he get in trouble for the stories he tells? You know, sometimes if I have trouble coming up with a sermon illustration, I call her while I’m working on it and say, give me ideas.

So some of this stuff comes from her, right? But our first argument as a married couple was about grammar. And we argued back and forth for close to an hour.

I know you’re probably thinking y’all are so weird. Most couples fight over money or the kid, we fight over grammar. But I just was determined I was not going to believe what she was saying, not because it was her, but just because I had never heard this before, was not going to believe what she said until she pulled out old textbooks.

How many of you have ever settled a marital argument pulling out textbooks and laying them out on the table? But I wanted to see it in black and white before I was going to believe that what she was talking about was a thing. She does the same thing to me too, by the way.

We have a running joke that the whole reason I’m getting my doctorate is so she’ll listen to me. Because I’ve told her things. I’ve told her, you know, her knee hurts or her stomach hurts or stuff with the pregnancy.

And I’ve said, it’s this, it’s this. Well, I don’t know. Let’s go pay lots of money and talk to Dr.

Whoever. Let’s see what he’s got to say. And he tells her the exact same thing.

So I said, I’m getting my doctorate. I’m going to save us some money here. But I tend to be, and yes, she said, I could tell you that, but we tend to be skeptical people.

We want to see the evidence. We want to investigate things. And I assume the whole world is going to be that way.

I had to cash a check for Benjamin this week because somebody sent him a cashier’s check for his birthday. And our bank down here, he’s not on any of the accounts. I don’t know how this is going to work.

So I brought in a stack of documentation that thick, including his birth certificate, to prove that I had the right to cash that check for him. They didn’t even ask questions. Apparently they’re not as skeptical as I am.

But I like to see evidence. I like to know that there’s a reason for thinking that things are true before I just accept that they’re true. And Thomas is a lot like that.

We’re going to see that about Thomas this morning in John chapter 20. If you would turn with me there in God’s Word to John chapter 20 in your Bibles. If you’re using a device, there’s a link in our bulletin that will get you right where you need to go.

And it will also be on your screen if you don’t have one with you today. John chapter 20. And if you would stand with me if you’re able to without too much trouble as we take a look at Thomas’ skepticism, his desire for evidence, and what it can teach us today.

We’re going to start in John 20, verse 24. And we’re going to go through verse 31 this morning. It says, Now Thomas, called the twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

The other disciples therefore said to him, We have seen the Lord. Now this is after Jesus shows up in the upper room there in Jerusalem where they are on the night of the resurrection. So several hours after the news first broke that Jesus is alive again, they had not all seen Him as a group.

And then suddenly they’re all gathered together. Can it be true? Is it true?

Well, I heard this is what I heard. And they’re all going back and forth. And suddenly Jesus shows up and scares them out of their wits, right?

He leaves. Thomas didn’t happen to be there. And Thomas comes back and they say to him, we have seen the Lord.

That’s where we are in verse 25. So he said to them, Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight days his disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them, Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace to you.

Now he says peace to you because every time Jesus shows up in a locked room, it scares them so he basically has to tell them calm down because until we get much further until these appearances get to be almost routine for them they keep reacting like they’re seeing a ghost they don’t know what they’re looking at at first when he shows up so he says peace to you calms them down verse 27 then he said to thomas reach your finger here and look at my hands and reach your hand here and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing. And Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God.

Jesus said to him, Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

And you may be seated. It was seeing Jesus alive that convinced Thomas of his claims. And that’s not just true of Thomas, that’s true of several people. Even Jesus’ brother James was skeptical about Jesus.

As a matter of fact, when we’ve been going through the book of Mark on Sunday nights, we’ve seen that Jesus’ brothers and possibly even his mother thought he was a little messed up in the head when he started making some of the claims he made, when he started developing a following. They thought he was crazy and they staged basically an intervention early on in his ministry, tried to get him to come home. You’re working too hard.

You need a rest. You’re not thinking clearly. And he wouldn’t. They were wrong.

But James is one of those who saw Jesus alive and later on goes from being a skeptic to being one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. And it was seeing Jesus alive that made the difference. Now, there was a skeptic who once wrote that if Jesus had risen from the dead, it still wouldn’t prove He was anything more than an ordinary man.

Actually, I’ve seen a few people make this claim. When you can’t disprove the resurrection, just discount the resurrection. Okay, even if He did rise from the dead, it doesn’t prove anything.

And my thought is kind of, well, I want to see you do it then. If this is just something that happens to ordinary people all the time, I’ve never seen it, but you go right ahead. You go right ahead.

Let’s watch you rise from the dead. That might be true if people were rising from the dead every day, but they don’t. They didn’t.

Rising from the dead was an extraordinary feat. It was an extraordinary accomplishment. And for Thomas, who was admittedly skeptical, As we’ll see tonight, it’s probably not fair necessarily to call him a doubter, but he was certainly a skeptic.

That was what it took to convince him that Jesus was God. Not just that Jesus rose from the dead, but to convince him that everything Jesus claimed about himself was true. He said to them in verse 25, Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

We talked about this a little bit last week, some of the physical aspects of the crucifixion, some of the things that Jesus went through. That would have been unmistakable evidence on his body. If any imposter had shown up and said, oh, it’s me, I’m Jesus, I’m here again.

Like you see Peter in a wig and sunglasses or something trying to pretend that he’s Jesus. There’d be pretty noticeable evidence, you’re not Jesus, right? You’re missing something right around in here.

There should be a gaping hole or at least a scar where there was a gaping hole. There should be some evidence right around in here. And Thomas said, unless I see that, I mean, that’s what it’s going to take to convince me.

We should at least give credit to Thomas for being honest. Here’s what it’s going to take. We often think of Thomas as being a hardened skeptic, but that’s not the case because when somebody’s a hardened skeptic, there really is no evidence one way or the other. Hardened skeptics, a lot of times, will present that mine is the intellectual position.

I don’t believe these things because I’m too intellectual. If there’s no evidence that can convince you of something other than your position, what you have is not an intellectual position. It is blind faith. Let me say that again because I think that’s important for us to understand.

If what you believe, you say, there’s no evidence that could ever convince me otherwise. This is what I believe and don’t convince me with the facts. That is not an intellectual position.

That is not a well-reasoned, well-thought-out position to hold. That is just blind faith in what you want to be true. He’s not a hardened skeptic because he says, here’s what it would take to convince me.

Show me that and I’ll believe. And sometimes we want to hold him to this tough standard and say, well, he was just a doubter for saying this. You know, sometimes in difficult situations, we will make rash statements.

I think his, I will not believe unless, was probably, was maybe a rash statement on his part. But honestly, it is a lot to take in. I mean, we have the benefit of looking back at this over 2,000 years of history and being acquainted with the story.

They were hearing this was happening to them in real time. They’re hearing this for the first time as it’s happening. And if you had never heard anything like this before, and you walked with Jesus for three years, you saw him dead, you knew where he was buried, and suddenly somebody’s coming and saying, the tomb is empty, and he’s alive, and we’ve seen him, wouldn’t you need to pause and think about that for a minute?

Wouldn’t you need to process that? This was a lot for Thomas to take in. And I think before we fault him too much, we need to understand he just wanted to make sure.

He just wanted to make sure. And so he says in verses 26 and 27, after eight days the disciples were inside again. That means the eighth day starting the resurrection.

So this is the following Sunday night. The disciples were inside again, Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace to you.

That’s when he told Thomas, put your finger right here. Stick your hand right here. What Jesus did was appear to Thomas and offer him firsthand experiential evidence.

The exact kind of evidence that Thomas was looking for. Jesus was there. Thomas could see that Jesus was there.

The wounds were there. Thomas could see them. He could examine them.

He could see not only that Jesus was there, but Jesus was there in the same body alive that he had died in. That’s important because some people will say, it’s just a spiritual resurrection, like a ghost, because I don’t see that happening a lot of times either. But no, the Bible is abundantly clear.

The eyewitness records in the New Testament are abundantly clear that what they saw was Jesus in the same body back again. I can’t remember the exact number. I’ve been studying the details and the nuts and bolts and the minutia of the resurrection for a long time now.

I’ve got all these ideas and facts swirling around in my head, so I can’t remember the numbers offhand. But I want to say it was more than seven instances in the Gospels where Jesus does something that makes it clear that He was not a ghost or a spirit or some ephemeral figure. He was back in His same resurrected body, or His same body that was crucified.

Because that was the proof. That was the proof that He had conquered death. If Jesus just came back as a spirit, That doesn’t really say anything about his power over death.

But for him to come back in the same body was important. He was there alive in the same body that had been crucified. And when Thomas saw the wounds, when Thomas saw Jesus back in, we don’t have any record that Thomas actually felt the wounds.

It looks like he saw the wounds, he saw Jesus, he heard Jesus, and that was enough to convince him. And so Thomas said in verse 28, my Lord and my God. Now for him to say, my Lord and my God, he’s not just acknowledging his presence.

He’s not just acknowledging that Jesus is back. It’s not just like, oh, hey, Lord. Oh, my Lord, there you are.

It’s more than that. It’s an acknowledgement that Jesus is everything he claimed to be. These were not terms that they would just throw around flippantly.

In Judaism, one of the worst things you could do was to confuse the creature with the creator. to look at a mere man and call them God, or say that they were equal to God in any way. This is not something they would have done lightly, and yet Jesus walks in bearing the wounds from his crucifixion, and he’s alive again, and Thomas looks at that and says, my Lord and my God.

He recognized it was Jesus, and he was recognizing Jesus as God. He was everything he claimed to be. He was God’s son.

He was Israel’s Messiah. He was mankind’s savior. He was all the things he claimed, and Thomas was convinced of that.

Now for Thomas, just like the other disciples, seeing Jesus again, this was a turning point in their lives. From this moment on, there doesn’t seem to be any more question among Jesus’ inner circle as to whether He’s alive or not. They’re all convinced.

Now Jesus shows up at other times and places and for various reasons they’re not sure it’s Him at that moment. Like when He appears on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and they see Him on the shore and they think, is it a spirit? And some skeptics have looked at that and said, well, see, they thought he was a spirit.

Yeah, they were looking at Jesus in the dark from 300 yards, 300 feet away. You’ll have to forgive them for not being able to instantly identify people that far away. My goodness, in full light, I sometimes can’t look at the back of the room and tell who I’m looking at.

Once they got close, they recognized it was Jesus. It was not a ghost. From here on out, they are convinced he’s alive again and it turns their entire worlds upside down. These men who had been so cowardly, these men who had been so timid, these men who had doubted and run in fear, at this point they become fearless.

I mean, Peter, who denied Jesus three times, Peter who was scared of a little girl during Jesus’ trial, and does everything he can to deny Jesus and to distance himself from Jesus, That same Peter stands up and challenges the entire city of Jerusalem and says, you’re all murderers. You know that, right? You crucified the Son of God.

These men who ran and hid, you notice it says the room was shut up. They locked themselves up because they were worried about who might be coming for them. From this point on, they go out looking for trouble.

You’ll hear stories tonight if you come back, how many of these men died martyrs’ deaths. Every one of them was persecuted. Every one of them was tortured.

As many as 10 of them may have been killed for their faith. At least five of them we know for sure from historical records were, and possibly as many as 10. Tell me they weren’t convinced by what they saw.

But to understand what he’s saying here, because we could take this as, oh, he’s just telling us we should believe things without seeing it. We should believe without evidence. We should be into blind faith.

We need to understand that even without seeing him there in his physical form, there was already evidence that Jesus had risen from the dead. There was evidence there for Thomas. And I think this is important because sometimes in Christianity, we get faith confused with blind faith.

You’ve probably noticed by now I’m into apologetics. Well, I mentioned at the beginning of the message that I’m very into evidence. And there have been times when I’ve talked about the evidence of the trustworthiness of Scripture, evidence for the resurrection, evidence of this or that, where in the past I’ve had people tell me, you know, we don’t need to know all that, we just need to believe.

We just need to have faith. Well, I agree. The Bible tells us to have faith.

But there’s a difference between faith and blind faith. There are a lot of people in this world who have blind faith in something, and what they’ve put their faith in is wrong. When all the religions of the world say opposite and contradictory things, they can’t all be right.

I mean, this is not rocket science. If I say it’s daytime and you say it’s not daytime, we can’t both be right. It’s called the law of non-contradiction.

When all the religions of the world say opposite things, they can’t all be right. And yet, people believe things every day without evidence because it’s blind faith. If I had blind faith that Muhammad is the prophet of God, does that make it the case?

If I have blind faith that the Buddha really did achieve enlightenment, sitting under the Bodhi tree, if I have blind faith in that, does that automatically make it right? If I have blind faith without any kind of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, does that prove it’s true? No.

But we see throughout God’s Word that when He calls us to have faith, there’s always a track record of evidence to back it up. Every time they were trying to get Israel to summon up their courage and step out in faith and take the next leap into trusting God and doing the next thing He said, so many times in the Old Testament we see where they do an accounting of all the ways that God had proven himself faithful up to that point. The example that comes to mind is in Nehemiah, where he’s talking to them about building the wall and rebuilding the city.

They go through a time of talking about how God has been faithful up to that point. And it’s like Nehemiah’s point is that God isn’t saying, just build the wall. God is saying, you can build the wall because you can trust me to come through for you just like I came through for Abraham, just like I came through for Moses, Just like I came through, and you go through the list, all the ways that God has demonstrated Himself to be faithful.

There’s always a track record. Faith, blind faith is just a shot in the dark. Faith is asking us to take the next step without seeing it, but knowing that God has been faithful through every other step.

Knowing that there’s a track record of evidence that leads to this step, that we can trust God and take Him at His word for this next one. And there was some evidence here.

there was already what for Thomas could have been some pretty compelling evidence that all these people that he knew and trusted look at verses 24 and 25 Thomas called the twin one of the twelve was not with them when Jesus came the other disciples therefore said to him we have seen the Lord there was eyewitness testimony that’s the testimony that is that is the most obvious in the text they said we’ve seen the Lord and you might say well big deal a lot of people say a lot of things Thomas knew these people Thomas knew these 10 men he had spent the last three years with them day in day out he knew them they were not going to lie they were and and really to explain the sudden transformation because the last time Thomas saw them they were all afraid they were all doubting they were all scattered and suddenly something has taken place that now they’re telling him we’ve seen him alive but again he knew these people he knew their credibility when you live with somebody day out.

You know them. He knew these men to be credible. There was news going around the city that Jesus had been seen.

It was becoming common knowledge by then that the tomb was empty. And if anybody wanted to know whether that was a genuine story or not, just go to the tomb. The location of the tomb seems to have been the worst kept secret in all of Jerusalem.

Everybody knew where he was buried. Go see the tomb. The tomb’s empty.

Numerous people at this point have seen the tomb is empty. And now these guys are saying, I don’t know what happened, but he’s alive and we’ve seen him. There was some evidence there.

There was also the evidence of prior testimony because their story, what they were saying fit with everything Jesus had said about himself in advance. What they were now saying fit with what Thomas had heard with his own ears over the last three years of walking with Jesus. Jesus in Matthew chapter 12 told the Pharisees, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. His point there was that the Pharisees were asking him, if you really are who you say you are, prove it. Do some kind of sign.

Now Jesus had been showing miracles to tell who he was all this time he’d been teaching with authority. It’s not that they didn’t have evidence. They just wanted Jesus to jump through their hoops.

Give us the evidence we want. And by the way, they still weren’t going to believe anyone. And Jesus said, no, the only sign you get is the sign of Jonah.

You’ll know I am who I say I am when just like Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale and then was spit out when I am three days and three nights in the belly of the earth and I’m spit out too. Then Jesus said to them, to his disciples, all of you will be made to stumble because of me this night, for it is written, this was the night before the crucifixion, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, but after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee. He told them this very night, they’re going to strike down the shepherd, but after I’m raised, I’m going to go ahead of you to Galilee.

So right before he’d been crucified, he had told them again that he was going to rise from the dead. Luke chapter 9, he strictly warned and commanded them to tell no one one of his miracles, saying the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day. Early on in his ministry, Jesus was telling his followers, don’t make a big deal about the miracles that I’ve done.

We don’t want the people to sweep me into power because the plan here is for me to be killed and rise again three days later. So he’d been saying this over and over. In John 2, Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

So Jesus foretold for three years, he told them that he was going to rise from the dead. And then suddenly the tomb is empty, and credible eyewitnesses are saying we’ve seen him in the flesh. Is that evidence or is that not?

You might say it’s not enough. You might say it’s not enough. But for Thomas being right in the midst of it, There’s evidence.

This is not a blind leap in the dark. This is saying, look at the evidence here. What is the best possible, best reasonable explanation?

I think Jesus is back from the dead. That’s the evidence He had available. And then Jesus in His grace showed Him the evidence He said He needed.

I think the difference between Him and the Pharisees is Jesus knew He actually would believe if He got the evidence. The Pharisees were just determined not to believe. Now why is this important?

Why is this important to us? Because you and I are called to believe in the resurrected Savior as well. We’re called to believe, but again, there’s a difference between faith and blind faith.

We’re called to have faith. And contrary to the way the story is often portrayed, Jesus didn’t exactly rebuke Thomas here. He didn’t exactly shame Thomas for his supposed lack of faith.

Jesus said, Thomas, you’ve seen me. Because you’ve seen me, you’ve believed. It’s really just a statement of fact.

You believed because you saw me. You know what? That’s not a bad thing.

Some people saw him and still didn’t believe. The main thing is he believed. But this statement in here, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

This doesn’t mean blessed are those who believed without evidence. It doesn’t mean blessed are those who believe just because they feel like that’s what works for them and they don’t know for sure. When he says Thomas has seen and others have not seen, he’s talking about the physical evidence.

Those who have believed and not seen are you and me, because we have not had the luxury of seeing Jesus in the flesh with the wounds in his hands and the wounds in his feet and the wound in his side. We haven’t gotten to see that. What we have is the same evidence that Thomas had at the beginning of the story, and maybe a few years more evidence on top of that, but we still have not seen Jesus in the flesh.

What Jesus pointed out was that it took a direct visit from for Thomas to believe. But he’s saying, blessed are those who still believe even though they don’t have that luxury. When God calls people to believe, when God calls people to trust Him, there’s always that track record of God demonstrating who He is and what the truth is.

That God says we can trust in Him because of what He’s already shown, because of what He’s already proven about Himself. When God calls us to believe in Jesus as the resurrected Son of God, as the Savior of mankind, It’s not just because it’s a story that we’ve heard. It’s not just because it’s something we saw in the little flannel graph things when we were kids in Sunday school.

Any of you remember that? And it’s something that we have a coloring sheet about and it’s what my mom and dad taught me. And so I just believe it’s true.

There is evidence. There is evidence. I spent four weeks last Easter time going over evidence for the resurrection and I feel like I barely scratched the surface.

We might say, well, why is there not more? Why is there not more evidence of a lot of things from ancient history? By ancient standards, I mean, we don’t have videotape.

We don’t have DNA evidence. We don’t have a lot of things that we would expect from them if we’re trying to prove something in modern times. But that’s unreasonable from ancient standards.

We don’t expect that kind of evidence for any other event in ancient history. When you consider that it was 2,000 years ago, in some backwater of the Roman Empire that really wasn’t all that important, that a carpenter turned itinerant preacher was crucified by the Romans and that his followers believed he rose again three days later, when you consider it from that standpoint, there is an enormous amount of evidence compared to the evidence that we should find. There are historical records, eyewitness testimony, that can be dated to within 20 to 30 years while the eyewitnesses were still alive, while others were still alive to corroborate it.

I better be careful going down this road or we’ll be here for four or five weeks. But there’s evidence. If you’re still on the fence about it, I’d be glad to visit with you one-on-one.

Bring a lunch, right? We’ll be here for a while. There’s evidence.

And based on that evidence, God calls us to believe just like Thomas was called to believe. Just like Thomas was given the opportunity to believe. And recording that evidence, John says, is why we’ve written this.

In verse 30, in verse 31, he says, truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book. There was much more that Jesus did that we just didn’t have time or space to write down. Verse 31 says, But these, the things we have written, are written that you may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

We could look at that and say, well, yeah, He’s trying to prove a religious point. He’ll say whatever He needs to. He was rooting His religious point in making sure we knew what exactly happened.

when Jesus walked this earth. He said, I want you to have the same knowledge or as close to the same knowledge as we did of what happened so you can know for yourself. So that you can look at the available evidence and you can make a decision that you’re not just having to go off of hearsay that’s been filtered through person after person after person like a game of telephone.

But so you can know what we saw who were there. So you can know what Jesus did. So you can know the story of what happened.

And those who saw Jesus, those who saw the tomb empty, those who saw Jesus, those who saw the prince in His hands, they walked away convinced, my Lord and my God, that Jesus Christ demonstrated through His death and resurrection that He was our Savior who paid for our sins in full and then rose again three days later to prove it. It is beyond important that He died as we talked about last week. If He had not died for us,