Show Notes
John 20:24-31
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the resurrection of your Son and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who is the beginning and the end, the author and perfecter of our salvation and through whom we have all good things.
[00:00:22] Lord, it is through his work that grace and mercy, peace and joy come to us.
[00:00:28] And we celebrate this and are filled with thanksgiving and praise. Lord, we ask that you would strengthen our hearts in these truths and that you would proclaim the message of good news not only here today, but throughout the world.
[00:00:43] We keep in mind our missionaries this morning in Uganda and Uruguay, in Haiti and other places. We ask that you would bless them and be with them, strengthen them and the work that they are doing.
[00:00:55] We ask, Lord, that the good news of the Gospel would shine brightly on your people, that more and more would come to you and give you praise.
[00:01:07] We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:12] Let's remain standing and we'll turn to the reading and preaching of God's word in the Book of John.
[00:01:35] We're going to be focusing on Jesus encounter with Thomas, or rather Thomas's encounter with Jesus. But we're going to start at the beginning of the chapter in chapter 20. So 20 John 21.
[00:02:00] Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.
[00:02:08] So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they have taken our Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him.
[00:02:19] So Peter went out with the other disciple and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together. But the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.
[00:02:28] And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in.
[00:02:34] Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. And he saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth which had been on Jesus head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first, also went in and he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
[00:02:59] Then the disciples went back to their homes.
[00:03:02] But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.
[00:03:05] And she wept and stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, woman, why are you weeping? She said to them. They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.
[00:03:22] Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing. But she did not know that it was Jesus.
[00:03:28] Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?
[00:03:33] Supposing him to be the gardener. She said to him, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.
[00:03:41] Jesus said to her, mary.
[00:03:44] She turned and said to him in Aramaic, rabboni, which means teacher.
[00:03:49] Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.
[00:04:02] Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord. And that he had said these things to her.
[00:04:09] 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 he said to them, peace be with you.
[00:04:21] When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
[00:04:25] 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, so I am. Even so, I am sending you. And when he 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.
[00:04:47] Now, Thomas, one of the 12 called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
[00:04:53] So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see his hands in his hands, the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.
[00:05:09] Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them.
[00:05:13] Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you.
[00:05:18] Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side.
[00:05:29] Do not disbelieve, but believe.
[00:05:33] Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God.
[00:05:37] Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me?
[00:05:42] Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
[00:05:47] Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book.
[00:05:53] But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that by believing, you may have life in his name.
[00:06:02] Amen.
[00:06:03] Please be seated.
[00:06:20] You know how sometimes we say, I'd Rather not be known for the worst thing I did in my life.
[00:06:28] Poor Thomas, Doubting Thomas.
[00:06:32] I'm sure he did a lot of other really great things. You know, he followed the Lord all those years. And here in this moment, we could call him Confessing Thomas, right? My Lord and my God, he says, poor Thomas, poor us.
[00:06:49] Have you ever doubted? Of course you have.
[00:06:52] We doubt in all kinds of ways. Maybe not in extreme ways or maybe, but practically and every day. There's all kinds of ways in which we don't trust the Lord, ways in which we don't put our faith in him in the ways that we should.
[00:07:11] We are to love God with all our heart, our soul, our strength and mind, and we're to put our faith in him with everything that we have.
[00:07:19] Funny thing about doubt in our culture is it's often celebrated.
[00:07:25] The skeptic, the outsider, the conspiracy minded person, the untrusting person.
[00:07:33] Sometimes these things are valued in our culture.
[00:07:36] They're valued because it signifies perhaps a person who doesn't just go along with the sheep, a person who thinks for himself, a person who questions things and wants to know the truth. And so doubt sometimes is celebrated and sometimes doubt should be celebrated.
[00:07:56] If someone, if you get an email and they're trying to get you to buy gift cards and mail them somewhere, you, you should have some doubt. It's a good thing. Not everything deserves to be trusted. In fact, lots of things deserve not to be trusted.
[00:08:11] But doubt is not good when we fail to put it. When we fail to put our faith in what must be trusted.
[00:08:20] If you refuse to believe your math teacher, when they tell you that you have to solve in the parentheses before you solve the rest of the expression, you, you're going to get a lot of things wrong.
[00:08:32] If your football coach tells you you need to do strength training in order to be strong and play well, and you say, I don't think that's important.
[00:08:39] You're going to have a lot of injuries.
[00:08:43] If an expert plumber comes to your house and says, you better take care of this soon, you probably should listen.
[00:08:50] If we fail to put our faith in things that we should put our faith in, we can make massive mistakes. And when it comes to Jesus, eternal ones, and not just mistakes, but sins.
[00:09:06] Because it's one thing to take another person's word and question it. Because you know, not everybody tells the truth. And we know people can lie, be mistaken and wrong. But that's not the case with God.
[00:09:18] God never lies.
[00:09:20] God never makes mistakes.
[00:09:22] He's never wrong. And so when he says, believe this, trust this, and you say, I have more confidence in myself, you put yourself in a really, really dangerous position, as Thomas did.
[00:09:40] What's the problem with doubting Jesus?
[00:09:43] Think about it from Thomas perspective for a second.
[00:09:47] If we look at the Gospel of Matthew, for example, Matthew 16:21, with still about 12 chapters I think left in the Gospel, so we're middle ish Jesus.
[00:09:59] Matthew writes just after Peter's famous confession. He writes this in 1621.
[00:10:06] From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.
[00:10:20] That's in Matthew 16.
[00:10:23] This means the resurrection should not have been a total shock to Thomas.
[00:10:30] And not only was he told then and did he, was he continued to be told. We're told in the Scriptures, but this just happened. This moment in Matthew happens just after Thomas saw these huge crowds come to Jesus.
[00:10:46] I'm in Matthew 15 now in my head, right?
[00:10:49] So Matthew 15, these huge crowds come to Jesus. Thousands and thousands of people. Matthew 15:30 says this great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others. And they put them at his feet and he healed them.
[00:11:07] Thousands of people coming to Jesus, bringing them to the. Bringing these people with incurable things, bringing them to Jesus, and He heals them.
[00:11:16] The reaction was that in verse 31, the crowd wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled, healthy, the lame walking and the blind seeking, and they glorified the God of Israel.
[00:11:32] That's what Thomas just saw and was a part of. And that's among many other things. This is just chapter 15. We're not going to go all the way back to the beginning.
[00:11:43] But you know what happened right after all of these people were healed, after mute people start speaking and blind people start seeing.
[00:11:52] They'd all been there for a long time and the crowds were hungry.
[00:11:57] And we read in Matthew 15:32 that Jesus called his disciples to him. So there's Thomas with him and says, I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I'm unwilling to send them away hungry lest they faint on the way.
[00:12:18] So after healing all of these individual people that their family and friends and all these people brought to Jesus, he now looks out on this great mass, 4,000 people, maybe more.
[00:12:33] And then he feeds them all with seven loaves and a few fish.
[00:12:39] That's who Thomas heard when Jesus said he would suffer at the hands of the elders and the scribes and the chief priests, that he would be killed and be raised on the third day.
[00:12:51] That then the person who just did those things said that to Thomas and his other disciples.
[00:12:59] And then after that, Matthew records Jesus saying this same thing essentially again in Matthew 17, and then again a third time on his way to Jerusalem in Matthew 20.
[00:13:10] Not only that, not only hearing this over and over and over again, we read that Jesus tells him that when he is raised, he will go before them to galilee.
[00:13:24] In Matthew 28:10, when Jesus meets with Mary Magdalene in the garden, he says, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me exactly as he said.
[00:13:36] It's after all of that and more that we haven't gone over that. Thomas is like, I'll never believe you're crazy. Thomas, what's going on? What's going on is his heart, a heart that is struggling and we don't know exactly why and all these things. But we see these things in ourselves after having all these proofs and many others in our own lives, we also struggle, don't we, to trust God fully, to believe him for all the things that he said.
[00:14:12] And when it comes to trusting Jesus, as we see, doubt is very much a weakness and a danger.
[00:14:20] And we see this in the story about Thomas. Thomas almost missed belonging to Christ. Humanly speaking.
[00:14:27] He wasn't with them on that first day to meet with Jesus, the resurrected Savior, the first resurrection day, the first Easter.
[00:14:37] Thomas wasn't there.
[00:14:39] He wasn't there after Jesus promised that he would come and meet them, after Mary told them to go and meet there, he didn't show up.
[00:14:50] The other apostles were there, but Thomas wasn't. And he missed the Lord.
[00:14:54] And that doubt that led him to not show up that day led to even more problems.
[00:15:03] Doubt in Jesus is a dangerous thing. It pushes us away from Christ and back into the world, away from all the things we receive through faith and, and into our own arms, our own self sufficiency, which as we all know, does not go that well for us.
[00:15:24] Doubt is how we lose and how we are driven away from the Lord.
[00:15:33] Thomas didn't get better for missing church that Sunday. We could say, and we hear it in his words, the arrogance, right?
[00:15:43] It's kind of hard to read and say honestly, right, which, but I'm going to do it unless I see his hand, in his hands, the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and Place my hand into his side. I will never believe.
[00:16:05] What's he saying?
[00:16:07] What's he imagining?
[00:16:09] Like, is he imagining that God the Son is going to appear before him in resurrected form and then he's going to want to take his hand and put it into the side of Jesus? Is that what he really wants?
[00:16:27] That's what he's saying.
[00:16:29] I don't know if that's what he really wants or not. We often say crazy things when we're in a crazy state of mind.
[00:16:35] It's shocking what he says. It's arrogant, it's cringy, it's weird, it's full of doubt. It's a very extreme way of speaking.
[00:16:49] But here's the good news, of course, for Thomas and for us, even in all of our arrogance, all of our pride, all of our shame, Jesus comes to doubting people.
[00:17:01] Arrogant people, sinful people, prideful people, extreme people.
[00:17:07] And he gives us life, giving faith.
[00:17:11] Jesus comes to us in all of our blindness and all of our sin. And he gives to us the gift of faith. And in doing so, he brings life and healing and transformation.
[00:17:26] So ask yourself.
[00:17:28] We'll do a little heart test for a moment.
[00:17:31] In what ways are you doubting Jesus?
[00:17:35] Do you doubt that he can or wants to forgive your sins?
[00:17:42] Do you doubt that he can and will preserve you and all his people through death?
[00:17:52] Do you doubt that he will provide for your needs in this life? Or do you doubt that he will provide for your needs after your death? Do you doubt his love for you, his joy in you?
[00:18:02] Do you doubt his delight in you?
[00:18:05] Wherever you may be doubting Jesus in your life, this story is of course for you.
[00:18:11] Because here we see not only the dangers of doubt, but the more important thing to see is the mercies of Jesus who comes in the midst of our mixed up, troubled, sinful, arrogant hearts.
[00:18:28] The good news of Jesus, the Gospel is that even though Thomas rejected Jesus that day, Jesus did not reject Thomas and instead he meets him in his mercy and he does the same for us.
[00:18:43] He comes to Thomas and He says, go ahead, put your hand in, put your finger in.
[00:18:53] How does Jesus do this for us?
[00:18:56] How does Jesus come to us in his mercy?
[00:19:00] I'll mention just two things.
[00:19:02] The first thing is he gives us trustworthy testimony.
[00:19:06] He gives us trustworthy testimony. He gives us. He gives us a promise. He tells us something about Himself that is true.
[00:19:15] And we. How do we know this is true? Well, we can see it in the miracles, like the feeding of the 4000. We can see it in the Miracles like the healing of the blind and the lame and others.
[00:19:27] We see it in the miracle of his resurrection from the dead and in all the witnesses that testified to it.
[00:19:35] And Mary and Mary Magdalene, Peter and John and the disciples who were there in that upper room and many, many others who saw him, who witnessed this. We see it in the scrambling of the people and the leaders trying to figure out how to deal with this and how to cover up the problem. We see it in that this is the only explanation for what happened after the way he was killed.
[00:20:01] We see it in the prophecies that are fulfilled. The scriptures that were promised not only Jesus in the weeks and months and time leading up to his death, but thousands of years before.
[00:20:13] Many, many prophecies in which God, through people, spoke and proclaimed that these are the things that would happen.
[00:20:22] There's trustworthy testimony.
[00:20:24] And on top of all that, we add the character of God who. Who speaks to us, talk about Trustworthy testimony.
[00:20:32] Hebrews 6:18 says this. It is impossible for God to lie.
[00:20:39] If you think of God like the Greek and Roman gods or other pagan gods of this world, you need to separate that out from what you should believe about the true God.
[00:20:52] He's not like that.
[00:20:54] He not only doesn't lie, it is impossible for him to lie.
[00:21:01] So here's what Hebrews 6:18 says. Because it's impossible for him to lie, it reminds us that we who have fled for refuge might have a strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
[00:21:15] We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor for the soul.
[00:21:22] I don't. I grew up in Phoenix and then I moved to Tucson. I don't know anything about boats, but from what I understand, when you drop an anchor down, the whole point of it, right, is to keep a boat from moving, right? It's heavy, it's strong. I believe they have hooks on things, right, that grab onto things and hold you in place.
[00:21:44] A lot of times we talk about ourselves feeling adrift, right? This sort of nautical feeling of lostness, of wandering, of being disconnected.
[00:21:56] What can be a sure and steadfast anchor for your soul, for your soul, not your day, your soul.
[00:22:10] The answer that Hebrews 6 gives is, is this doctrine that it is impossible for God to lie and that he swears all these things with an oath in his own name.
[00:22:25] One of the ways Jesus comes and meets us, one of the way God meets to us through his word and spirit, is by giving to us a sure and true testimony, a trustworthy testimony that he is being merciful towards us and all who put their faith in Jesus, all who believe will have eternal life.
[00:22:46] That's the first thing. The second thing, a second way in which Jesus comes to us and gives us this mercy, gives to us the announcement of this good news and all these promises is he provides a place and a time to hear that testimony.
[00:23:02] Jesus rose on Sunday, the first day of the week, and met with his disciples eight days later, including Sunday, a way of speaking in the New Testament, about a week.
[00:23:13] So Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. On the next first day of the week, they met again. And this pattern of meeting on Sundays, the day of the Lord's resurrection, the day of celebrating that day, we see continued throughout Acts and beyond. And that's why we call it around here the Lord's Day.
[00:23:33] Right? It's a day that belongs to the Lord. It's a day that the Lord resurrected. Every Sunday here is a resurrection day. Every Sunday is the Lord's day. As we gather ourselves and settle our souls, as we hear his word that he has risen from the dead and that we're okay and that we have a sure and steadfast anchor for our souls in the midst of a world that knocks us around and pushes us in the midst of a battle that's going on in our hearts.
[00:24:07] Every time we gather, we are gathering to hear that trustworthy testimony.
[00:24:13] And this isn't just a thing we do. What I'm trying to say is that God has not only given us a trustworthy testimony, he's given us a place and a time to hear that, or a time in particular.
[00:24:27] He's given us a time to hear that. He knows we need it. He knows we struggle. And so he says we I'm going before you, and I'm going to meet with you. Meet me.
[00:24:39] And so when we meet on the Lord's Day, we put our faith in him again. We renew our faith in him as we hear the testimony of His Word again.
[00:24:50] It's not just a day that we celebrate. It's the resurrection day and a day for hope and settling and anchoring.
[00:25:00] And this is why at Covenant and with other Christians throughout the world, we value and prioritize this day because it's a day in which the Lord meets with us and brings us mercy.
[00:25:10] Matthew Henry says, those who carelessly absent themselves from the assemblies of Christian do not. Christians do not know what they lose.
[00:25:19] Just as Thomas didn't know what he was missing out when he was meeting with the resurrected Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[00:25:28] But the Lord Keeps coming again and again and again.
[00:25:32] And the amazing thing about this is the Lord keeps coming to us over and over again. And as we go, we see Thomas through the work of the Lord move from being shameful, filled with doubt and pride, to making one of the greatest confessions that we have in the Scriptures about the Lord Jesus.
[00:25:55] That's transformation. What does he say? My Lord and my God.
[00:26:03] Here Thomas is not just acknowledging a truth, he's worshipping.
[00:26:08] And that's what we were made to do.
[00:26:10] These doctrines about the resurrection, about the trustworthiness of God, about the work of God and all these sort of things, these doctrines lead to this transformation to doxology, to giving glory to God, my Lord and my God. Jesus doesn't, Thomas doesn't just say Jesus is my Lord, he confesses him as his God, one who is worthy of his worship.
[00:26:41] You and I are here today, like Thomas.
[00:26:45] There's no way that I or you can, you know, sort of look down at Thomas in all his silliness.
[00:26:54] He is us in different ways, different times.
[00:27:00] We all experience these things because of sin. But what I'm telling you is that's what the Lord comes to solve. That is the problem. He answers and he comes and he meets with us. He gives us his mercy. He gives us a trustworthy word to believe.
[00:27:15] So what I want you to remember is that even though you may have rejected Jesus at various points in your life, even though there might be parts of you in practical ways in which you reject him or doubt him in your life, he has not rejected us.
[00:27:31] He's not rejected you. Instead, he came into this world. He gave himself up on a cross. He was a sacrifice for our sins, to turn away God's wrath, to earn for us God's favor and to give us the hope of resurrection life.
[00:27:48] As we sang earlier, he rose victorious over the grave. And now he's telling us about it. Why? As John ends, so that you may believe.
[00:27:59] He's telling you this so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.
[00:28:12] Amen. Let's pray.
[00:28:16] Our Heavenly Father, we confess our sin and our sinfulness to you. We do not want to lose this moment and gloss over the fact that we have neglected the Lord Jesus Christ when he has come to us. We have not believed the words that he has spoken to us. We've doubted, we've wrestled, we've not trusted.
[00:28:36] And there might be moments in the lives of various of us here who are struggling in very great ways to put their faith in you.
[00:28:48] Lord, I ask that you would knock down on these barriers and walls in our hearts. Help us not to lean on the false promises of this world or a pretend self sufficiency in our hearts.
[00:29:02] Help us to be humble, Lord.
[00:29:05] Humble us so that we might find ourselves safe and secure in you. So that we might believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and have life in his name.
[00:29:15] Because we know from your Word, and your Word is true, that when we put our faith in him, we are safe, we are secure, we are forgiven, and we will one day be perfectly glorified.
[00:29:31] Lord God, we ask that you would fill our mouths now with the great confession that Jesus Christ is our Lord and our God. My Lord and my God, give us life in his name. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
