Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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A John Chapter Twenty, verses twenty
four through thirty. We're considering this passage
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today because this is an account of
the disciples meeting a week after Jesus arose
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from the dead, so a week
after Easter. We will consider this passage
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this morning. John Chapter Twenty,
a beginning of Verse Twenty Four. Now
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Thomas, one of the twelve called
the twin, was not with them when
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Jesus came. So the other disciples
told him, we have seen the Lord,
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but he said to them unless I
see it his in his hands,
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the mark of the nails, and
place my finger into the mark of the
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nails and place my hand into his
side, I will never believe. Eight
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days later, his disciples were inside
again and Thomas was with them, although
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the doors were locked. Jesus came
and stood among them and said peace be
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with you. Then he said to
Thomas, put your finger here and see
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my hands, and put out your
hand and place it in my side.
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Do not disbelieve, but believe.
Thomas answered him, my Lord and my
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God, Jesus said to him.
Have you believed because you have seen me?
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Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have believed. Now Jesus
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did many other signs in the presence
of the disciples which are not written in
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this book, but these are written
so that you may believe that Jesus is
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the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have
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life in his name. You may
be seated. Oh, I love this
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story. When you read a commentators
on this passage, they'll often talk about
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how great it is that John recorded
this for us, a reminder that doubt
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and faith are not like on off
switches, where it's fully on and fully
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off all the time. Of course, there is such a thing as having
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faith or not having faith, but
there are real struggles that we all have,
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and that this apostle of Jesus had
them is is is a reminder to
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us. As I might say later
on, Jesus doesn't honor doubt here,
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he he he honors His mercy.
He shows us how far he goes to
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help us to know him, to
see him. We want to consider a
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number of different things in in this
account this morning, but for this man
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sometimes people called doubting Thomas, I
want to begin with one one lesson,
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one moral of the story, you
might say. It relates to this meeting
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in which the this meeting that they
are are having. It comes out a
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couple times in a couple different ways
and it reminds us, it's a good
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reminder why we meet together on what
we call the Lord's Day. If you
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haven't grown up in reformed churches,
one of the things you'll pick up here
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in our church and other similar churches
is that we believe there's something special about
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about Sunday, something special about what
we call the Lord's Day, and we
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try to value it and prioritize it
to worship and to rest, in particular
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gathering, just as you have this
morning, with other saints in worship.
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One of the reasons for that,
and there are many, but one of
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the reasons for that are the apostles
themselves first, because we see them setting
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this pattern very early indeed, from
day one, day one of Christ's resurrection,
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and they met together and then eight
days later, a way of speaking
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about the next week in the New
Testament, they met again, and we
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see this pattern continuing throughout acts and
and beyond as well. This is why
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we call it the Lord's Day.
Every day, every Sunday here, is
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Resurrection Day, every day that we
come on, every Sunday that we come
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and worship. We Are we are
settling ourselves on and in the fact that
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Jesus Christ has been raised from the
dead, that our faith rests in him
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and that we know him. It's
the day in which we meet together.
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It's the day in which the Lord
meets with us, as he did on
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that first day, on that first
Sunday, and on the second Sunday as
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well. So the apostle set this
pattern for us. It's one reason we
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observe the Lord's Day. The second
is that we don't want to be like
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Thomas. Let me explain. There's
a couple reasons for this. The first
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is that Thomas Almost missed belonging to
Christ. He almost missed it. Other
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scriptures say he wasn't with them on
that first day that Jesus met with them,
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Jesus the resurrected savior, after promising
that he would come, after promising
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and telling them, I will come
and I will meet with you, wait
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here for me, Thomas wasn't there. The Lord promised. The other apostles
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were there. Thomas, I don't
know. He had better things to do,
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he thought. And what happened?
He missed being with the Lord.
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The other disciples told him. They
said, we have seen the Lord.
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And what happened? Did Thomas get
better for his missing this this meeting?
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No, he got more doubty.
Unless I see his hands, the mark
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of the nails. It's really crass
right the way. I want to put
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my hand into his side. This
is a very extreme way of talking.
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Eight days later we read in Verse
Twenty Six. His disciples were inside again
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and Thomas was with them. He
was with them this time. And what
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happened? He met the Lord and
good things happened. Matthew Henry comments those
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no, not, not, those
know not what they lose, who carelessly
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absent themselves from stated, sombly solemn
assemblies of Christians, but observed Christ did
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not appear to Thomas for his satisfaction
till he found him in society with the
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rest of his disciples, for there
he will be in the midst of them.
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Of course the Lord does and can
meet US outside the stated worship services
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of the church, and of course
there are also things which prohibit us from
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attending services on Sunday. But if
your ox is in a ditch, you
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still miss the meeting. It's a
bummer at least it's a disappointment and if
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it happens a long time, it
can be a dangerous even there should be
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something in us that long to meet
with God's people. Hebrews says, do
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not neglect the meeting together, encouraging
one another. It is the Lord's Day.
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It is a day in which he
promises to meet with us, he
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promises to bless us, he promises
to encourage us. I meet Christians all
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the time who say, I wish
I had more time for Bible Study,
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I wish I had more time for
fellowship, I wish I had more time
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to care about the things of the
Lord and not get caught up like the
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rich young man. Well, good
news. God has given you one day
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out of every seven to do exactly
that. He's given this to you and
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he's said he's as a gift and
he says, here you go, here's
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some time to do these things,
here's some time to worship and to rest,
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and on is on this day in
particular that God pours out an abundance
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of blessings, some of which Thomas
himself receive. Use these this next week
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when he comes and he meets with
the apostles. This is the external reason,
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and we might say Thomas missed the
Lord. He he wasn't at Church,
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if we could put it that way, church, of course, being
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just referring to those who are called
out, to those who call out and
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meet together in Christ. The second
reason Thomas almost missed the Lords. It
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was an internal struggle and internal and
internal reason. He refused to believe the
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testimony of his fellow disciples of Christ
when they said to him, Thomas,
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we have seen the Lord. They
were not tricking him, they were not
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pulling a fast one or trying to
trying to manipulate him into something. They
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were just being open and honest about
their experiences. You remember what happened right
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they Mary and the others go out
to the Tomb Peter later and it's empty
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and it's empty and they meet the
Lord and the Lord meets with them and
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they've seen the Lord and they tell
Thomas this. They say, Thomas,
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we've seen him. He's alive,
the one that we saw crucified, the
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one that we all scattered from under
this when he was taken and when he
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was beaten, when he was crucified, he is now alive and we have
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seen him. But he but Thomas
refused to believe. He says, I
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will never believe unless these stipulations are
met. Now, in that the Lord
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had, of course, every right
to simply leave Thomas there. You want
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to be in your unbelief, despite
all the proof I've already given, despite
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the fact that he's resurrected from the
dead, despite the fact that Thomas is
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receiving testimony of these things, the
Lord would have been perfectly done just to
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leave Thomas Right there. The Lord
does not owe it to Thomas or to
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anyone to give this proof for that
proof, especially when we have right here,
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as John puts it, all of
these signs that Jesus did in the
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presence of his disciples, many which
are not written in this book which Thomas
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had himself received, and yet they
are enough for us to believe. This
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reminds me of a point that Michael
Krueger, are TS president, recently made
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on his website. I thought it
was a very good one and relevant to
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what we see Thomas saying here.
Dr Krueger says that there are many ways
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in which we, of course,
can know the Bible is the word of
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God, that Jesus is the son
of God, the Christ to his calm
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are our savior. There is the
self authenticating nature of scripture. There is
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all kinds of historical reasons. But
Kruger writes, there is also another way
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in which we can know that the
Bible is the word of God, and
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it's this on the testimony of others
that we trust. As strange as it
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sounds, he writes, we are
justified by believing God's Word is true because
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those we trust have told us it's
true. Indeed, Paul Hints at this
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very reason when he exhorts timothy to
trust God's word. You might remember this
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from Second Timothy Three, fourteen and
fifteen. Paul says to Timothy, continue
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in the faith you have received that
you have learned and firmly believed, knowing
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that you learned it and firm and
knowing that you learned it from childhood,
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which is able to make you wise
for salvation. Well, how did Timothy
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Learn it from childhood? Well,
Paul tells us, in Second Timothy one
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five, his mom eunice, and
his grandma Lois told him about it.
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They told him, his parents and
his grandparents told him about the word of
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God. And Paul says to Timothy, you heard to this trustworthy word from
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these trustworthy women continue to believe it. A Kruger then deals with four objections,
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on two of which I'll mention here, some of which you might be
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thinking about. The first one is
the testimony of others is not valid grounds
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for our beliefs. Why? Because
we have to check it out for ourselves.
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Right. Well, of course it's
always good to go check things out
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for yourself. It's good to evaluate
the evidence. Paul commends the Bourrians for
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testing what he says are based on
the word of God. But does it
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make sense to only believe things that
you have checked out for yourself, as
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it makes sense to only believe those
things which you have yourself collected and evaluated
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the evidence? It doesn't. And
the truth is is that people are very
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inconsistent on this point. Just as
Thomas Has Thomas wants the evidence. Thomas
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wants to experience this for himself,
and that is the only way in which
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he will believe. This is the
only evidence on which he will rest his
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faith. Sometimes people say they have
to test things for themselves when it comes
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to Christ, but yet they don't
do this for other things. For example,
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I am blessed to have a good
and trustworthy mechanic for my car,
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and when he tells me that I
need to pay five hundred dollars to fix
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something, something I've never heard of
before, in order from my car to
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work, if I have the money, I pay it now. Of course,
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if he's lying, I'm going to
lose my money and continue having a
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broken car. But I know he's
not. I trust him, I trust
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his testimony about the car and I
pay the money. And if I don't,
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there's consequences. If I don't trust
his testimony and my car goes from
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bad to worse, I might end
up with even bigger and more expensive problems.
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And this is true of all kinds
of knowledge. We are constantly relying
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on the testimony of other people.
Imagine if you only believed those things for
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which you yourself have evaluated all the
evidence, and only those things you would
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believe a very, very tiny portion
of things. You would be in doubt
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about everything. Is JK rolling really
the author of Harry Potter? How do
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you know? Have you examined the
evidence? Have you met her in person?
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did C S Lewis ever really live? Is the rainbow always in the
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same order of colors? Perhaps that
is something you've examined for yourself. Perhaps
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not. The truth is is we
are constantly dependent on the testimony of others
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for most of what we know,
almost everything. Number two, my parents
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could be wrong, the disciples could
be wrong. Right, Thomas could go
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to these other ten people that he's
known and walked with and trusted, who
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are speaking to him now truthfully and
believably, and say you could be wrong,
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maybe you saw it wrong. Maybe
all ten of you and the women
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and the other disciples, maybe all
of you just mass hallucinated something. Okay,
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Thomas, right, of course.
Well, mass hallucination isn't possible,
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but just the general fact of the
testimony of someone else. Right, could
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be wrong. Right, that is
a possibility. No one would would deny
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that. But, as Krueger says, this miss is the point. The
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issue is, is it reasonable?
Is it reasonable to believe those we trust
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and have good reasons to trust,
when they tell us certain things are true?
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The only alternative, he writes,
is to doubt all sources of knowledge
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merely because they could be wrong.
And in such a case you would then
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have to doubt even your own sense
of self perception and accept nothing that you
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see touch or here. After all, maybe your own sense perception could be
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deceiving you. But you see,
then, is that Thomas's desire to not
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trust anything else but what his own
eyes and his own hands and ears and
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his own senses perceive is an unreasonable
request. To say I will never believe
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except on this one thing. It's
just unreasonable. We don't operate that in
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any other way in other areas of
our lives. And if, even if
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we do that, we might be
wrong. Going back to the car mechanic
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example again, let maybe I'd let's
say I didn't trust my mechanic and I
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go to him and I say,
I don't believe you, I want to
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see if you're a much myself,
and he says mine with me. It
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would take me a year, two, three, I don't know how long
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to discover what he was able to
discover in half an hour or forty five
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minutes. Even if I had,
in other words, the evidence right in
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front of me, my ability to
evaluate my car is very, very low,
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and that's true of a lot of
things, a lot of things in
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life. Just because we have the
evidence right in front of us doesn't necessarily
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mean that we are equipped to evaluate
it. Of course, Jesus does not
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throw Thomas out for his doubt and
miss is of this is truly the great
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message of this passage. We ought
not to follow Thomas for his doubt,
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but we ought to follow the Lord
for His mercy. We ought to rest
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ourselves in him and be thankful for
to him that, even in our unreasonableness,
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Jesus still does come to us.
He does in fact show himself to
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Thomas, not, as I say, to honor Thomas's doubt, but to
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show his own mercy and to bring
about faith. To go back to where
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I started, we want to remember
that doubt is a problem. Doubt is
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dangerous. Remember faith is how we
receive the blessings of Christ. DOUBT,
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we might say, blocks up the
plumbing. It Sends US away from Christ,
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it sends us back into the world
riches, passions, divisions, loneliness,
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brokenness. That's what we have in
the world. In Christ, as
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we've seen here and we've been seeing
in John, we have the resurrection life,
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we have glory, we have healing, we have transformation, we have
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glory. That's not something you want
to walk away from. Doubt is dangerous,
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and so, while we ought not
to follow Thomas's doubt, we certainly
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ought to follow his faith. The
Lord comes to Thomas and His mercy,
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as he comes to you today and
reveals himself to you today. Thomas,
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the doubter, as we see in
this passage, ends up making one of
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the greatest, if not the greatest, and most exalted confessions we have in
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all of the Gospels. My Lord
and my God. In these words we
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see fulfilled what Jesus said in John
Five, twenty feet twenty three, that
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it was the will of the father
that all may honor the son just as
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they honor the father. That's what
Thomas is doing. He is honoring the
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Son, the son of God,
Jesus, just as he honors the Father.
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He calls Jesus my God, not
just his Lord. Jesus proticted,
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predicted that this would happen. In
John Twenty eight, he said, when
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you lift up the son of man, you will realize that I am using
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those great words that Yahwah used with
Moses when he said when he gave him
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his name in the Wilderness, they
had come to see. The disciples had
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come to see. Thomas had now
come to see what was true. In
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John Fourteen, ten that Jesus is
in the father and the father is in
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him, and unbelieving, a man
in the named plenty. Of the younger
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writes around the time of the early
Church of the Christians, and he says
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of these early Christians, they sing
songs to Christ as to a God.
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Is How he describes the Christians.
They sing songs to Christ as to a
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God. Yep, you got your
listening plenty. Listen a little more right.
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That's exactly right. That is what
we do. Jesus is not just
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our Lord, he is not just
our teacher, he is God. This
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is how the gospel of John Begins. In the beginning was the word,
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and the word was with God and
the word was God. Thomas now gets
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that. But what makes that so, it makes this particular confession so wonderful,
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is that, as Michael Horton puts
it, the doctrine has led to
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doxology. Right. He's not only
confessing that Jesus is Lord and Jesus is
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God, which is great and I
hope every single one of you confesses that,
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but I hope even more that you
confess it in the way Thomas puts
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it. Jesus is my Lord and
Jesus is my God, as one commentator
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put it. Thomas's knowledge reminds not
that not just no, of not just
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knowledge, but how knowledge becomes faith. Thomas, doubting, Thomas, who
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has received this nickname in in in
church history, is also believing. Thomas,
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isn't he very, very strongly,
he puts it this way, and
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that is the goal of God for
you. This experience Thomas is having is
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very unique, of course, but
it is in many ways more similar to
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the experience you are having right now. Then it is different because we too
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are here meeting on the Lord's Day. We too are here meeting because God
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has called us to meet. We
also are meeting here with Christ in our
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midst. Indeed, as he's promised
us, in both the preaching of the
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word and in the sacrament, he
says, this is my body right,
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I am present here with you and
the water, the bread in the word.
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And not only is he present,
but he reveals himself in a way
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that we can know him and believe
him. Notice that this experience that Thomas
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had is not coming from some ancient
tale a long time ago. It was
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recorded here in the cannon of scripture
by the Holy Spirit so that you would
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know that it happened. This experience
that Thomas had is an experience, then,
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that you have through the testimony not
just of others but of God himself.
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John, his apostle, records these
words. Why? Verse Thirty One
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tells us that you may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the son of
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God, and that by believing,
you may have life in his name.
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So if you have questions, if
you have doubts, express them, talk
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about them, but don't rest in
them. The goal is exactly what Jesus
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says. Do not disbelieve, but
believe. Trust what the Lord has said,
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trust with his witnesses have said,
and you will have eternal life in
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his name. Amen.
