Four Acts of Faith (John 20)

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Well, good morning church. Good to see you all here this morning. If you want to go ahead and grab your Bibles, you can open up to John chapter 20. If you don’t have a Bible, there should be one right there in front of you in the pew, black Bible. If you use that one, it’s on page 880 in the black Bible in front of you. If you got your own Bible, I can’t help you with page numbers. Sorry, couple things to say about that. By the way, if you don’t own a Bible, just go ahead and take that one. Okay, that’s yours. That’s our gift to you. We would love for you to have one. So take it home. Just make sure you read it. It’s not there to collect dust, of course. Second thing is, please, really do grab that Bible and open it up to page 880, or whatever page it is in your Bible, because it’s so important that you see where I’m getting what I’m talking about. This morning, you did not come here to hear my thoughts, which are unimportant, I promise you, but we need to hear the very Word of God, John, chapter 20, as you’re turning there, what does it take for you to believe a crazy story? Let’s say your friend rushes up to you and says, You’ll never believe what just happened? I just met Taylor Swift at the local coffee shop, you know, down the street here she was with her boyfriend, the baseball player, or whatever he is. And so if this is a friend you trust, you know, never made up something like this before, you’re like, okay, that like, that’s amazing. This is awesome. Tell me about this. But others of us, maybe it’ll take a few stages before we would actually believe. You know, maybe your friend has to say, no, no, Joe was there too. You could ask him, and you go, Okay, well, he wouldn’t throw Joe under the bus unless it were true. So it’s probably true. Or, look, look, she, you know, she signed my shirt or whatever, or something like that. But, you know, I mean, you can always fake a signature, of course. How do I know this wasn’t just fan club auto pen kind of thing or something like that? And they’re like, Well, here’s the picture of us all at Elijah’s like, it’s, it’s real. And you’re like, there’s nothing we believe less than pictures these days, right? Yeah, I heard an AI, Yeah, funny story, by the way. So Kyle and I were having a conversation about how I was gonna open this sermon. This was a week or so ago, and I was running through this Taylor Swift idea with him, and he didn’t like it, by the way, but that’s okay. No, he liked it as we’re talking about it, Jake, whom you just met, was standing awkwardly outside my office door. Not unusual, but it was like, extra awkward this time. And so I finally, like Kyle, opened the door, like, what does Jake need or whatnot, and what does he have? He’s got a picture of one of our mutual friends, eight months pregnant. And he was like, Is this real? Because that was it, right? Like, you don’t believe pictures anymore. It’s like, No, it can’t be. Like, I just saw her and she wasn’t and now she’s like, like, what is this? And sure enough, you know, her finger was weird, and her, like, missing an ear and stuff, and so it was AI, but, like, that’s the point, right? So it takes a lot for us to believe crazy stories these days, you understand why I’m bringing this up, because the resurrection is a crazy story to believe. You should be skeptical about it, at least initially. And it’s not crazy just for us to believe, you know, modern folk, because we are so enlightened, supposedly, all evidence to the contrary, of course, but it was hard to believe then, too. So even Jesus’s followers were like, I don’t think so. Like, you’re gonna have to convince me. And that’s why we get these four acts of faith that we’re gonna talk about this morning, four acts like acts in a play, sure, but also these four acts that Jesus performs to get his followers to believe, to bring them along. Looking at these four acts will help us answer the question for ourselves too. What would it take for me to believe? What would it take for me to believe to receive this report as true and life changing, if true. Now, a little bit of context, just because we’re diving in John 20 here, middle of the story. Of course, we only need the resurrection because of the cross, as Kyle mentioned a moment ago. We’re only here on Sunday because what happened on Friday when Jesus is crucified by the Romans because of sedition. You know, he claimed to be king. I guess everyone kind of knew that was a made up charge. He’s crucified by the Jewish leaders, not because of sedition, but because of blasphemy. He didn’t claim to be king. He actually claimed to be God, and that is significant, of course, claimed to be God, and God’s Lamb, the sacrifice that would be offered for the sins of His people to pay this debt that we owe as a result of our rebellion against God. Now, it was no surprise to Jesus that he went to the cross. He kept saying this. He kept telling his followers, you know, I need to die, right? And then he you know, he would. Things as the day approached, like my time has come, so he knew what he was doing, and when he’s on the cross, as he’s breathing his last what does he say? He doesn’t say, I’m dying. He says, it’s finished. It’s finished. The work I came to do is done. I paid that sin debt. And then he died, and he was placed in the tomb, which we could see in the paragraph right before where we’re going to begin at the end of chapter 19. So it was no surprise to him. It was a surprise to his followers, though they were expecting, you know, kind of a political, military king who would, you know, make their lives immediately better, and so they’re a bit bummed. Saviors shouldn’t die, at least until they’ve, you know, saved the people. And so they’re confused, crestfallen and cowering in fear. They certainly don’t think Jesus is God anymore. They’re not even sure he’s a prophet anymore. Dead People can’t rescue the living, and so they’re hopeless. And if you’re going to kick them out of that moment, if you’re going to bring them into this new stage of faith, it’s going to take some proof. Jesus can have to do something to vindicate his message. And that’s where we pick up then. So John, chapter 20, let’s look at Act One, which is from ignorance to understanding. John 20 verses one to 10, from ignorance to understanding. I’ll read the passage for us early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon, Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they had put him. So Peter and the other disciples started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb. First, he bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went inside. He saw and believed they still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to where they were staying. Alright? Pause there. So it’s the first day of the week. That is, as Kyle just mentioned, why we celebrate on Sunday. It’s why we’re here every Sunday, because that’s the day Jesus rose from the dead and Mary approaches the tomb while it’s still dark, which is important. A lot of the other gospels say it wasn’t light yet, which is a little bit different, like we haven’t had a light break through. That’s not what John says. Because John loves this word darkness. He uses it as a metaphor for our spiritual darkness, even ignorance. So Mary is approaching it in a stage where she is still lost and confused. It is interesting that it’s Mary also says Mary Magdalene, by the way, and she she has a checkered past, so already she’s like probably not the best one to be the first person to see the empty tomb and then the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection. Plus she is a woman, which does not matter to us now, but back then mattered a lot, because a woman’s testimony wasn’t admissible in court. And so it’s really interesting that it is a woman every Gospel says this. That’s significant. Because if you’re gonna make a story up, you would you want it to be as believable as possible? Like, if you’re gonna make up a story about meeting Taylor Swift, you’re not gonna say she pulled you on stage at the Super Bowl halftime show, because, like, that’s easy to prove wrong. Like, you want it to be now it was right afterwards we were out there. There was no one else there, like, conveniently, right? And so you would fabricate the most believable story possible that wouldn’t be Mary. So it’s interesting. She arrives, it’s dark, she sees the stone has been removed, has been moved, and she assumes right away that it’s a grave robbery. This is a good assumption, grave robbery was so common back then that within about a decade, the Emperor Claudius, at the time, actually orders capital punishment for anyone caught robbing a grave. That’s how common it was. So you gotta, gotta deal with it severely. So this is a logical conclusion that she reaches. She rushes back to tell Peter and John, who is writing this gospel. By the way, he refers to himself as the disciple Jesus loved not because he thought Jesus loved him better than anyone else, but he just he couldn’t believe that Jesus would love him, and so that’s just how he talks about himself from then on. So she rushes back to tell Peter and John, you can’t even imagine that the anger and grief they must have been feeling to know that somebody had desecrated the grave of the one they loved. And so, of course, they take off running. John is almost certainly younger than Peter. He’s in better shape. He gets there first he looks in but he doesn’t go in the tomb. Why not? And he tells us it’s because he saw the strips of linen lying there. And we go so but that’s actually significant, because that’s enough for him to realize that this wasn’t a grave robbery, because if you were robbing a grave, you would not leave the expensive linen and spices sitting there and just take the body, which is, of course, worth nothing. And so wheels are already turning in John’s mind when Peter, who is a slower runner, yes, but faster at absolutely everything else, for example, talking before thinking, you know, this is his strength, right? He rushes straight in. Probably smacks his head on the doorway as he goes in, and and he sees the strips of linen as well as the cloth that was wrapped around, almost like a turban around a corpse’s head back then. Now that’s interesting that we get all this information about the linen and the cloth and they’re separate, and all that stuff that’s a lot of detail in a story that doesn’t have much detail. So what’s going on it must be important. And it’s probably important, because the contrast with Lazarus to we’re reading John’s Gospel from start to finish, this was just a few chapters earlier. It would have been just a few days earlier, really, weeks earlier, before this. But what happens when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead? Lazarus, you know, comes hopping out like a mummy because he’s still wrapped in the linen, because Lazarus is revival was different. Jesus revived Lazarus in his same body to die again. Lazarus is not alive currently, but that’s different from Jesus. Of course, Jesus somehow passed through the linen and the spices the same way he’s going to pass through locked doors here in just a little bit, because he’s in a new body. He’s in his glorified resurrection body. He really at this point is he kind of like straddling Heaven and Earth, and sort of moves in between them as he goes. So John finally goes in after Peter sees all this. He couldn’t see it from the door, and it says that he saw and believed. John has teased out the implications. At this point, he’s moved from ignorance to understanding. He realizes the only possible explanation is resurrection. Jesus has risen from the dead, just like he kept telling his disciples he would. He said, Yes, I must die and then I’ll rise again. And John goes, Oh, he meant he must die and then rise again. I get it now. It takes us a while we understand that this is why Jesus’ burial is so important for our faith, by the way, because the tomb is empty has to be empty. Of course, we know it’s empty because the disciples begin preaching his resurrection like right there a couple days later, if he his body had been in the the tomb, they would have said, No, he didn’t rise. So we know the tomb is empty has to be and it demands an explanation. And John has realized there’s really only one explanation at this point, and that’s what John realizes here. Now, it’s true. It’s a fledgling faith. He even says that verse nine, we didn’t get it all yet, guys, okay, we didn’t get it all to fledgling faith. We’re going to see him confused again later on, but it’s it’s so encouraging for us, this fledgling faith for a couple of different reasons. First of all, it reminds us that we’re never going to come to complete understanding. Are we? We all start here with more questions than answers, and that’s okay. In Christianity, we are being asked to trust a person, not accept a proposition only, yes, there’s some propositions we accept. We’re being asked to trust a person. And you don’t need to know everything to know you can trust someone. Imagine, you know a son, you know, with his dad, and they’re hiking out west somewhere, and all of a sudden the dad says, Stop. Okay, back up, really slowly, just start walking backwards to me right now, the son has no idea what’s going on. Does not have all the answers, but he trusts his dad, and so he starts backing up when he gets there. Fine, Dad can say, I heard a rattlesnake. Okay, that’s why we moved. We’re gonna keep moving. Actually. Let’s just keep going in this direction. And that’s the point. Right to to be saved, we must trust take that first step. We back up away from sin, towards our Father, and then, once we’re in safety, we can get we can get our questions answered more and more. We love questions. Here we talk about questions all the time. We just won’t have them all, and certainly not at the beginning. Second reason this is so encouraging for us, though, is that this is exactly how we’ll have to arrive at understanding, teasing out the implications that come with the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, the record that we have here, the birth of Christianity itself, even because we don’t get to do what happened. In the next three acts, and that is actually exactly where John’s going to take us through this story. So let’s keep reading. Here’s act two, then act two, from grief to meaning, from grief to meaning, verses 11 to 18. I’ll read it for us now. Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus’s body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. And they asked her, Woman, why are you crying? They have taken my lord away, she said, and I don’t know where they put him. At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for thinking he was the gardener. She said, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you put him and I will get him. Jesus said to her, Mary, she turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic rabboni, which means teacher, Jesus said, do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, I am ascending to my father and your father to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news, I have seen the Lord, and she told them that he had said these things to her. So Mary lags behind. Understandably, she’d already been to the tomb, rushed back to tell Peter and John, and then they take off running. And she’s like, seriously, I just did this. So she’s there. She arrives after John and Peter have gone. She follows their lead, though, and peers in at this point, although she doesn’t notice the linen and the cloth she sees instead the angels, which is significant, of course, because it shows us that God’s power, not grave robbers moved the stone. Except in her grief, she doesn’t process this. It’s true, sometimes angels appear kind of dazzling in white, and you go, that’s not a person, but often in Scripture, angels appear as if they are humans. That must be what it is here. So she starts to have just a normal conversation. Doesn’t seem to care about the fact that the two guys sitting in an empty tomb, but whatever. Again, she’s in grief at this time, she’s talking to them, and she senses this presence behind her, and so she turns and sees, but doesn’t recognize Jesus. Again, quite common. Not sure why exactly. If he’s veiled himself, somehow it happens a bunch. That’s one of the questions we don’t have an answer to. And he says a similar sort of thing where he says, Woman, which, by the way, sounds off putting to us today, but was a term of respect, probably ma’am would be a really good translation here. Like Ma’am, what’s going on? The questions make sense on the surface level. Why are you crying? If you saw somebody just sobbing, you’d be like, what’s wrong? Can I help somehow? Who is it that you’re looking for? So they they make sense on the surface, but there’s a much deeper meaning on reflection after she gets it, why are you crying? Becomes then almost a mild rebuke. Why are you crying? I just defeated sin and death. Today is a day for joy. Why are you crying? Who is it that you are looking for? Helps her to think, what exactly did you think the Messiah was going to be? Who did you think I am? Jesus is asking her because her view had been too small. She didn’t realize that Jesus had come not to defeat Rome, but to defeat Sin and death forever and then to rise in triumph from the grave. But she’s not there yet. In fact, she thinks he’s a gardener, and so maybe he’s been told to move, you know, this criminal’s body from this nice cemetery, and she doesn’t blame him. Just says, All right, look, if you move him, just tell me where, and I’ll go take care of things from here. At this point, Jesus says just one word that is enough to change her life forever. Mary, that’s it. She hears her name, and it overcomes instantly her grief and her blindness. I mean, it’s interesting, if John’s Faith comes by reasoning, Mary’s comes by hearing and especially by hearing her name, you think of how powerful it is to hear your name. It just speaks of intimacy, recognition, of being seen like if you’re past the CEO in the hallway and he says, Tom right, you’re like he knows me like. This is exciting. Now, imagine that with God Almighty. That’s what’s just happened here. Of course, Jesus said this is exactly what would happen in John 10. He says, I’m the Good Shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know my voice, and sure enough, Mary has heard his voice, and there is instant trust teacher. She cries out, which is what she had called him. She falls at his feet, begins clinging to him. There is no more grief, only joy. I. Then we get this difficult vert, verse, verse, verse 17, where Jesus says, like, let go. Don’t cling, because I haven’t ascended. So what’s he saying here? He’s saying you can let go, because I’ll be here for a little while. It’s got 40 days, in fact, until he’s going to ascend. So this is not the time for those, you know the what I’m talking about, those hugs where you squeeze tight and you think, I’m never letting go, like your kid’s going off to college, and you’re like, sorry, gonna miss your freshman year because I refuse to Stop hugging you. So it’s coming up for me. So this is like, I don’t like this. This is more like when a vet returns from deployment. You back, right, and you hug, and you think, I don’t want to let go, and you go, it’s fine. I’m back. I live here now. Go tell Mom, go tell Dad, go get your brother. Like it’s time to party. That’s what Jesus is saying here. This is a time for a joyful sharing of good news. And so he moves Mary from grief to mission like she’s given a task, a purpose. She has a reason to go on. Her life has meaning, which can be hard to find in grief, of course, but he’s overcome the grief and given her this new purpose and meaning. And notice how good the task is, and how much meaning it gives to all those who trust in Jesus. He says, go tell my brothers the disciples. That is, go tell my brothers that I am ascending. Like that day is coming. I will ascend to my father and your father to my God and your God. It’s so carefully phrased, there is some distance. Of course, we when we trust in Christ, become children of God, the Father. But differently than Jesus is God’s Son, of course. But still, Jesus is saying, you can know the blessing of adoption into God’s family like you belong to him now. So if you go back, you can look in John’s Gospel 71 times Jesus talks about the Father, and another 27 times he talks about my father. There’s only one time in John’s Gospel where he talks about your father, and it’s right here. It’s actually the only place where he calls the disciples brothers too. Go tell my brothers, not my followers. Go tell my brothers. He’s saying to see the new relationship that we have because it’s finished, because it’s done, we are family now, which just pulls this whole scene together. Because, of course, Jesus is going to ascend. What then, like, there goes all our joy. No, it’ll be even better, because he told us already earlier in John’s gospel, I will send my Spirit to be with us, to be with us. And of course, his spirit. That’s even closer than having Jesus in close physical proximity. Jesus in the flesh, is limited in space, but not the spirit. So when Jesus leaves there, no more resurrection appearances. When he ascends into heaven, the Spirit comes and dwells, not alongside us, but within us. And this is the Spirit who calls us, who speaks with God’s voice and his sheep here. And of course, the Spirit gives meaning to our lives, as well as He equips and empowers us to do the work that God has given us to do with His very presence. So Mary goes and carries out this task that she’s been given, and that takes us to act three of our story, from fear to joy. Act Three, from fear to joy, verses 19 to 23 I’ll read it for us on the evening of that first day of the week when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. After he said this, he showed them his hands and sighed. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord again. Jesus said, Peace be with you, as the Father has sent me, I am sending you with that. He breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. So this is later that evening on that Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, the disciples are huddled together behind locked doors because they are afraid. They’re afraid that they’re going to be arrested and put to death. Not unreasonably, by the way, oftentimes when you’re trying to quash a rebellion, you know you kill the leader, but you you kill the ringing leaders, all of them together. So yeah, they’re probably going to arrest his followers. So they’re afraid. No doubt they are ignorant and grieving to although you. Expect that Peter and John have at least told them something. So maybe they’ve got hope brewing inside them, but but the primary feeling is fear. Fear. Then Jesus shows up, even though the doors are locked again, not bound by the physical realm at this point. Now, what do you think Jesus is going to say to them in this moment? I mean, think of who these men are and what they have done. Judas betrayed him. Judas is gone at this point. But even still, those who are there and Peter denied him three times, and all the disciples, except for John, abandoned Jesus in His hour of need. You can understand if Jesus is a little peeved with them, angry, disappointed, and yet here he is, and he shows up and he says, Peace. He’s not angry, he’s not disappointed. He’s so tender with the disciples and how important that is for us also. Because how many of us think, Well, if God knew who I am, and by the way, he does, we’ll get there in a moment, he would be so angry with me, so disappointed in me. That’s not how God comes to us. He comes in love and mercy and tenderness. Peace, Jesus says now peace in English usually means something like the absence of conflict. Think of your world war two history. Peace in our time means we’re pretty sure Germany is not going to invade another country at this point. I guess they’re really low bar for peace. That is not what it means in Hebrew thought, peace is this huge word. Shalom is the word. It’s this huge word that means the fullness of the blessing that God brings. Like if we could sum up Good Friday with those words. It is finished. We can sum up Easter with this word, peace, shalom. Have come so that you could have everything that I was bringing to you, joy, love, understanding, whatever it is, the full blessings of life with God and then Jesus gives them not just peace, but meaning purpose, mission too, just like he did with Mary, he sends them out, just as he had been sent out to carry on his work. Although it’s different, of course, we’re sent out as ambassadors proclaiming what he had done. We don’t do it ourselves. Like Jesus came to procure forgiveness. We go out to proclaim forgiveness. And how do we do that? By preaching his word, whether formally, in a moment like this, or in informal conversations. But that’s what that last important verse means, verse 23 if you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven. It means we present as Christians the opportunity for forgiveness by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, and those who turn and receive this forgiveness are forgiven, and those who reject this forgiveness remain in unforgiveness. That’s what that means. Then we like we saw in the last section. Of course, we’re going to need the Spirit’s presence and power if we’re going to do this. And so Jesus promises that we will receive the Spirit, which is fulfilled after His ascension on Pentecost, the disciples are understandably overcome with joy. Why are they overjoyed? Though? Is it just because their friend is alive again? No, because that wouldn’t actually deal with their fear. Would it they could just kill him again? No, they’re overjoyed because they know that now they no longer have any reason to fear ever again. What could this world do to them that Christ hasn’t already undone. Yeah, they could kill the disciples. In fact, they do. Everyone but John is killed. Peter is crucified upside down. Philip watches his wife and children crucified in front of him before he is killed. By the way, really good sign that this was not a hoax that the disciples came up with. Because you’re watching your wife and kids be crucified, you probably go, I made it up, and he doesn’t, because it’s true. That’s why, right? So they die, and they die fearlessly because they go, Jesus is alive. We’re gonna be alive too. What do we have to fear? We can do whatever God calls us to do. That is cause for joy. So everything’s great for these disciples, except one of them, isn’t there? Bummer. That’s where we go next. Act Four from doubt to trust me. Read the rest of the chapter here, verses 24 to 31 Now Thomas, also known as Didymus, one of the 12 was. Not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later, his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them, but the doors were locked. Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. And he said to Thomas, Put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe. And Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God. Then Jesus told him, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. So Thomas wasn’t there when he finally arrives, the other 10 and tell him that they saw Jesus. Of course, they’re bursting with joy. They’re probably all talking over each other. You know how this goes. But Thomas is skeptical. Can you blame him? By the way? Like it’s really unfair that we call him Doubting Thomas, all of us would have responded this way, he didn’t get what the rest of the group got. So of course, it took him a little bit longer. He has, in other words, reasonable objections, like, I’m willing to believe. I’m just gonna need a little more here again, good reminder that people at this time were not overly credulous. Like, oh, somebody rose in the dead. Of course, that makes sense. That’s what people do, right? They didn’t think that way. A week passes, Jesus is in no rush. I love that. A week passes, he’s like, that’s cool. We’ll deal with it. God’s timing is rarely our timing. And then he comes to Thomas and repeats almost verbatim what Thomas said, not to him, but to the disciples, just this reminder that God hears everything. God hears all that we say, even behind locked doors, even the secret thoughts of our locked hearts as well. So God does know who we are, every thought we’ve ever thought, every word we’ve ever spoken, every deed we’ve ever performed, comes to Thomas says this, you know, repeats back his demands to him verbatim, and basically says, Look, everything you wanted. Go ahead and do it here. What do you need? In other words, he overcomes Thomas’s obstacles to faith. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Well, yeah, if he’d do that for me, I’d believe too. Hang on to it. We got more to say about that. But notice again, how tenderly and how lovingly Jesus meets Thomas where he is he meets Thomas’s doubts and even his, you know, kind of petulant demands with grace. The rest of the disciples believed when they saw Jesus. And here Jesus tells Thomas, look, if you need to touch in order to believe Awesome. Well, we don’t get the impression that Thomas actually did. I don’t think he stuck his fingers in the wounds, because he goes, nope, this is good enough for me. Jesus really did rise. Thomas knows that now beyond a shadow of a doubt, Jesus really did rise, and he gives us all we need to believe, and is even patient with us in our petulant demands. But this leads to Jesus’ invitation. He doesn’t just say, Okay, now you know, he says, Stop doubting and believe I’ve done everything you ask Thomas. So there’s only one response at this point, and sure enough, that’s Thomas’s response, My Lord and my God. Thomas is saying, Jesus is God. I know that now he was not blaspheming when he claimed to be God. He has proven it. So we can be confident that he is God, and if he is God, that he deserves total allegiance and total trust. He is not just God, He is Lord as well. In other words, Thomas confesses the truth and then commits to live in light of that truth, commits to Jesus, and then Thomas’s climactic declaration triggers Jesus’s climactic declaration. He’s looking ahead at this point, you believed because you saw and then I love this, he starts talking about us. What about all those people after I ascend, who aren’t going to get to do this? Blessed are those who see the. Don’t get to see and yet believe. And so there’s this difference between us and Thomas, although there are a lot of similarities at the same time, because Jesus really did rise, and Jesus really does give us all we need to believe. It’s just that the gift that he gives us is different. At this point, Paul explains it in Romans. Chapter 10 will be up on the screen for you. But he says, Faith comes from, at this point, not seeing, not touching wounds. Faith comes from hearing, hearing the Word of God. Message is heard through the word about Christ. Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of God. In other words, we need to hear, not see, not touch, and that’s why we get this little coda to this passage where John says, I could have written a bunch more. There are a whole bunch of other stories. They’re crazy. They blow your minds, guys. But I didn’t write those down because I chose these stories. Why? So that you may believe. I’m giving you what you need to believe so that you come to faith. Not like Thomas by touching the moons, not like the disciples through seeing Jesus in the flesh, not like Mary even by hearing an audible voice, but honestly like John by teasing out the implications. What we have here, eyewitness record of what Jesus did, making sense of the empty tomb, evidence for the resurrection, of other miracles, corroborating proof, whatever it may be, the word of the Lord, first and foremost, we’re going to have to pull all of these clues together like a detective and draw this conclusion that is beyond a reasonable doubt. We can believe, and in believing, John says we receive life in his name. Now, what does that mean? That you may have life in his name. Basically, that’s the peace he keeps offering us the fullness of life in so many ways, we are in the same spot as the characters in this story, aren’t we? I mean, anyone here ever struggled with ignorance, grief, fear, doubt, all of them right now, as I’m talking probably right in different ways. Of course, ignorance, yeah, aren’t we in the dark about some of life’s deepest questions? I know we are, because you can look at what some of the most popular Google searches are, and they’re big questions about ultimate things, and people are asking chat GPT instead of reading the Word of God, not a smart choice, by the way. Why are we typing this into Google? Though? We’re saying, Help me understand. It’s too important for me not to get it. I read once the story of a teenager growing up in India. He’d had a fight with his parents. That’s common to all cultures, of course, in those teenage years, and so he ran away. You know, he hopped on his bike and left for a bit, and he was biking past a cremation site and asked the Hindu priest who was serving there, where is this man now? And the Hindu priest looked at him and said, That’s a question you will ask for the rest of your life, and you will never have an answer. That’s what we mean by ignorance, being in the dark about life’s biggest questions, and so many of them have to do with death, which is why we’re we’re left in our grief so often. I mean, we are, all of us haunted by death every waking moment we live in the valley of the shadow of death, the knowledge that we are mortal and those we love are mortal. Do we have any reason to hope for life beyond the grave, or do we just get stuffed in a box, body decays and is eaten by worms. Most of us here probably don’t fear being arrested by the local authorities, but our whole lives are filled with fear. Again, maybe it’s not arrest, but maybe it has to do with finances or health or relationships, or how your kids are turning out. How do I know it’ll be all right in the end? And here’s the thing, you take away the resurrection of Christ, Jesus, and we are still stuck in all of those places, ignorance, grief, doubt, fear, there is no ultimate hope or meaning or joy that’s possible because death steals it all from us ultimately, like, what possible meaning Could your life have if you’re here for 70 years and then you’re gone for eternity, the sun burns out and the universe cools to nothingness? Yes, that’s a meaningless life that’ll steal your joy, that’ll steal your hope Absolutely. So how do we respond to this? Like we’ve only got a few options. We can delude ourselves. That’s probably not a big deal. We can this would be the most common one here. Certainly distract ourselves. No need to think about death. We got Netflix, it’s fine. We can detach ourselves from our desires, basically, just stop caring. Because if you don’t care about anyone, then I guess it doesn’t matter when they die. Good luck with that one, by the way. Or we can despair. Remember the Indian youth I mentioned a moment ago. That’s the option he chose. He biked home from that cremation site and attempted suicide after the Hindu priest gave that answer. By God’s grace, though he survived, and as he was recovering in the hospital, somebody gave him a Bible, and he read Jesus’s words, because I live, you also will live. And his life was changed
because the resurrection changes everything. It gives us all those things again. So Jesus’s words are hanging out there for us even now. Stop doubting and believe. Read the book that was written so that you may believe. That’s my takeaway for you today. Now you’re going to forget almost everything I said. I know that’s how it works, so I try to make this as short and as clever as possible, so that you can actually take it with you. The takeaway from this passage is, believe and receive. It rhymes, even guys, you can do this. I’ve got great faith in you, okay, believe in Jesus and receive life in his name. Understanding, meaning, joy, peace in his name. Now, what does that mean to believe and receive? It looks just like Thomas. We confess. We confess our sin. We confess that if God knew, and he does know, everything we’ve ever thought or said or done, we’re in a world of trouble. We have a sin debt that we owe and we cannot pay it. And so we confess also that Jesus paid it in our place. Again, that was good Friday. We confess, but then we commit to Jesus. We trust a person. We don’t just accept a proposition. It is finished. It’s done what Jesus came to do. He did so we can have God’s peace. Stop doubting, believe and receive let’s pray now.