Holding Back on Hope

Transcript

If you’d be so kind as to turn with me in your Bibles. We’re gonna be looking at the Gospel of John chapter 20. This morning we’re gonna be looking at verses 24 through 31. If you don’t have a Bible, there are some Bibles in front of you in that basket in the front seat in front of you. That basket there. Feel free to use that. And if you don’t own a Bible, please take that with you as our gift to you. We’d love to give that to you. I’ll read, we’ll pray, and then we’ll we’ll dive in. Now Thomas, one of the 12 called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see his hands, see 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. Eight days later his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, 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. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Would you take a moment to pray with me? Our Father and our God, we approach you this morning recognizing that unless you give us eyes to see the beauty and power of your Word, we will miss it. And so we pray, oh God, that even now you would give us the help of the Holy Spirit to illuminate the text and to crack open our heart so that these truths would penetrate deeply. Lord, we love you, we are dependent upon you, and we pray when there are seeds of doubt that you would help our unbelief. We pray these things in Christ’s name, amen. When something you’ve placed your hope in collapses, it doesn’t just lead to disappointment. It kind of trains you. It informs your future. It teaches you how to hold back so that the next time hope is set in front of you, you hesitate. Not because you don’t want it, but because you remember what it cost the last time. You sometimes feel this in friendship. You meet someone, you eventually let them in. You give them access to your life, your thoughts, your struggles, your story. You trust them. And for a season it feels like something real and permanent is being built. There’s all this hope for the future of your friendship. Finally, I have someone who gets me. But then something fractures. Maybe they did something they shouldn’t have done and it hurt you. Maybe they shared something that wasn’t supposed to be shared publicly and that broke your trust. And by virtue of hurt and broken trust, the once promising friendship was broken. And listen, it’s not always conflict. Maybe, you know, your forever friend was offered a job and then moved to another state. And the lack of proximity became a greater problem than you thought. So there was a slow drift. The promised scheduled Zoom calls become less frequent. And then they eventually just stop happening altogether. Until one day you realize that what you once had isn’t really there anymore. There’s something in you that shifts in that moment of realization so that the next time someone tries to move close and build a friendship with you, the next time there’s an invitation to trust again, you hesitate. You’re a little more guarded. You’re a little more careful with your words. A little slower to open up. Not because you don’t want connection, but because you learned what it feels like to lose connection. This can sometimes happen even in the church. You commit. You serve. You build your life around a community of people. And for a time, it feels like home. There’s trust. There’s shared mission. There’s a sense that something real is being built. But then something breaks. A pastor has a moral failure or a split happens. And something that was supposed to feel like family doesn’t feel like it anymore. It doesn’t just stay with that church. It follows you. So that the next time you step into a church, the next time someone invites you to belong, you hesitate. You keep a little distance. You guard your expectations. You don’t open your hands as quickly as you once did. Not because Christ has failed in any way. And not because the gospel isn’t true, but because your experience from the past has in every way shaped the way you approach the future. And that feeling of allowing the past to cause you to doubt the future is exactly where Thomas sits in this passage. He’s not just doubting. He’s not simply questioning. He’s holding back. Because the last time he gave his hope fully to Jesus, he watched Jesus die. And his hope died with it. And now the other disciples are standing in front of him and saying, we have seen the Lord. But Thomas just won’t let himself go there. At least not yet. And here’s what I want you to see this morning. This passage is not just about doubt. It’s about what happens when hope has been crushed, but then comes back knocking. It’s about a man who refused to believe, a Savior who refused to leave him there, and a confession so full, so weighty, and so glorious that it becomes the theological climax of this entire gospel of John. And so to help us see all the beauty in our text this morning, I’ve broken this passage into three scenes. The demand, the wounds, and the confession. And so let’s begin with the demand. Look at verse 24. Now Thomas, one of the twelve called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So this one little sentence sets the entire context for the scene. Thomas was not there. Now we don’t know why. John doesn’t tell us. Maybe Thomas was grieving alone, which is how many people choose to grieve. Maybe he had given up hope and gone home to try to rebuild his life or find orientation around everything that was lost. Or maybe he couldn’t bear to be in a room with ten other men who were just as confused and crushed as he was. We don’t know for sure why he wasn’t there, but what we do know is that when Jesus showed up to make himself known, Thomas missed it. The risen Jesus came to the disciples on Easter evening. He walked through a locked door. He said, peace be with you. He showed them his hands and his side. He breathed on them, gave them the Holy Spirit, and Thomas was nowhere to be found. He was somewhere else. And notice John tells us that Thomas was one of the twelve. So he wasn’t simply a bystander. He wasn’t a stranger. He was an apostle. He was chosen by Jesus. He walked with Jesus for three years. Remember, he saw Lazarus come out of the tomb. He heard when Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. And now ten men that he trusts, ten men that he’s lived with, traveled with, suffered with, are all standing in front of him all saying the same thing. We’ve seen him. So this is not some rumor Thomas heard from across town. This is the unanimous testimony of ten credible eyewitnesses whom he trusts, who have known Jesus just as long as he has. And still Thomas says, no way. I don’t believe it. And notice Thomas double downs on his disbelief. Look at verse 25. Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my fingers into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will never believe. I want you to feel the weight of that statement for a moment. In the original language that phrase is about as strong as it can possibly get. I mean the way it’s broken down grammatically is that there’s two, there’s a double negative with this kind of emphatic construction. Now if you’re a word nerd, that doesn’t mean anything to you, and that’s cool. This is what it means essentially. Thomas is not saying I’m having a hard time believing that Jesus is alive. He’s not saying, you know, I’d love to believe but I have a lot of questions that I need answered first. Here’s what he’s saying in the most forceful terms available. I will absolutely, categorically, under no circumstances believe this nonsense. This would be akin to the phrase when pigs fly. You heard that? I don’t even know where that came from but that’s, it is what it is. I will not believe. Not unless and not until. In other words, not without conditions. And notice the conditions. He doesn’t just want to see Jesus in the flesh, he wants to put his finger into the marks of his flesh. He has essentially drawn up a contract in his heart and until God signs it on Thomas’s terms, there’s no deal. I won’t believe. And here’s the thing, we’ve nicknamed this man Doubting Thomas and I can understand why but I don’t think doubt is the right word to describe Thomas here. You see, doubt is when you want to believe something and just can’t quite get there. What Thomas is doing is something far more than that. Thomas is not asking a question. He’s actually making a demand. You see, there’s a difference between a juror weighing evidence and a judge setting conditions. Thomas is not placing himself in the position of weighing the evidence. I mean, he has ten witnesses and in a courtroom, any courtroom on earth, ten credible firsthand witnesses would be far more sufficient evidence than necessary. Thomas is not playing the role of juror sifting through the facts. He’s trying to be the judge. He’s trying to establish some demands. He’s telling God what it will take. He’s setting the terms under which he will believe and if those terms aren’t met, he will withhold his faith. And family, this is so common in our culture. Even within Christian culture, we do this all the time. We say things like, well, if God would just show me a sign, then I will believe. Or if God would just answer this one prayer, then I will follow him in complete obedience. Or if I could just feel his presence the way other people seem to feel his presence, then I will know he is real. We even dress it up as a kind of intellectual honesty. We call it questioning or processing or being authentic about my doubts. But underneath all of that, if we’re honest, what we’re really doing is the same thing Thomas is doing. We are positioning ourselves as the authority. We are telling the God of the universe what would be sufficient to earn our belief. And do you see the complete inversion here? God is not on trial and we are not the judge. But sin has so distorted our posture that we genuinely believe that the creator of heaven and earth owes us a personal responsibility to meet our demands before we begin to trust him. And I want you to notice one more thing before we move on from this section here. Thomas’s doubt grew in isolation. He was not with the disciples when Jesus came. He was alone. And alone is when his unbelief began to harden. And family, I do think there is a subtle warning here from the gospel writer John about forsaking the assembly or not regularly gathering with the church. Family, belief is nurtured in Christian community. This is one of the reasons why we recite the truths we believe every single week. Why we open up God’s Word every single week. And why we aim to saturate our services with the Word of God every single week. So that as we gather we can be reminded. There’s something about gathering together with God’s people and hearing and speaking and singing the truths of God that helps our unbelief. Family, we are so prone to wander. It’s just part of our human condition. And when you pull away from the gathered people of God, when you stop showing up, when you isolate, when you convince yourself that you can figure things out on your own, you become vulnerable. Not because the church is perfect and it’s the only place where you get truth, but because God meets his people when they are gathered together. You should see that as a great benefit. That gathering helps cultivate belief in the soil of our hearts. Thomas missed it because he wasn’t there. Because he lost a sense of hope. Instead of finding hope for his despair among the people of God, he isolated. Family, don’t let isolation or neglecting the gathering be the means by which you drift into deeper degrees of unbelief. I think it’s also important to know that Thomas is not a stranger in this gospel. John has been meticulously building his character across several chapters. Back in chapter 11 when Jesus decided to go to Bethany after Lazarus died, the disciples were terrified. The Jews had just tried to stone Jesus and it was Thomas, this same Thomas, who said, let us also go that we may die with him. Okay, that’s crazy loyalty. Maybe fatalistic, maybe a little melodramatic, but at its core it’s loyalty. He was willing to walk into death with Jesus. Then in chapter 14 at the Last Supper, Jesus says, I go to prepare a place for you and Thomas, the same Thomas, says, Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? And that’s an honest, you know, assessment of confusion. He wants to follow, he just doesn’t know the directions. He doesn’t have the map. And now here in chapter 20, he essentially says, I will never believe. And you see that crazy movement from loyalty to confusion and then ultimately to defiance. Remember, Thomas is not a villain in the story. He is a disciple who is under enormous pressure. The man he was willing to die with actually died. The destination he couldn’t understand seems to have been the grave and everything he hoped for was nailed to that cross on Friday afternoon. And now people are telling him it’s not over and in the thick of all that pressure he just can’t seem to bring himself to hope again. Because hope that has been crushed once is terrified of being crushed a second time. And maybe that’s where some of you are this morning. You’re not necessarily defiant, you’re just afraid of hope. And this is where Thomas stops being a kind of historical figure in the text and really starts to become more of a mirror. Because that progression we just walked through, that’s not just Thomas’s story, that’s ours. We know what it is to be loyal in moments of clarity. To say, I will follow you anywhere, Jesus. To sing loudly when things are steady. To speak boldly when faith feels strong but when something shifts, when the circumstances change, when our prayers go unanswered, when suffering shows up uninvited, suddenly our loyalty starts to feel complicated. We still want to follow but now we’re confused. Lord, what are you doing here? Where are you leading me? This doesn’t look like the path that I was on. And if we stay there long enough, confusion can begin to harden. We’ll move from honest questions to guarded resistance. Maybe not in a way that’s loud and public or aggressive but quietly and internally our souls begin to say, I’m not going there again. I’m not trusting like this again. I’m not hoping like that again. And here’s why that happens. Because disappointment doesn’t just hurt, it trains us. It teaches us to protect ourselves. It tells us, the last time I trusted you, it cost me everything. Last time I hoped, it broke you. So now, instead of open hands, you come to God with conditions. Show me first. Prove it to me on my terms and then I’ll believe. We can even dress that up in intellectual doubt. But underneath it, is so often just emotional self-protection. And it’s not just that we don’t have enough evidence of his faithfulness. Family, we know he has been faithful. It’s that we’re afraid of what it will cost to believe again. If we go through something like that again. And this is what makes Thomas so relatable to us this morning. He’s not standing at a distance critiquing Jesus. He’s standing in the wreckage of what he thought his life with Jesus was supposed to look like. Jesus had said countless times that he’s building a kingdom. He told him there was going to be peace. And all Thomas seems to see is death and destruction. And so he cannot bring himself to rebuild hope on that same foundation. Unless he is absolutely certain it won’t collapse again. And some of us are doing the exact same thing. We’re not hostile to Jesus. We’re just cautious. We’ll still show up. We’ll still take time to listen. We’ll still stay close enough to be around the conversation. But internally we’ve pulled back. We’ve lowered our expectations. We’ve decided it’s safer to manage disappointment than to risk hope. And the danger in that place is subtle but it’s massive. Because what it means is that you can still be close to the people of God. And slowly distance yourself away from the promises of God. You can be in the room with other Christians. And in your heart still say I will never believe. That’s not for me. He hasn’t made that promise to me. How could he do that for me? And you see what this text is doing is exposing that movement. Not to shame you but to show you where you are. Because you cannot be met by the risen Jesus if you refuse to admit where your hope has died. Scene 2, the wounds. Verses 26 and 27. Eight days later his disciples were inside again. And Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. So eight days have passed. And just think about that for a second. Jesus lets Thomas, an apostle, sit in his unbelief for a full week. Seven days of the other disciples saying, Thomas, seriously, we’ve seen him. Why won’t you believe us? Seven days of Thomas crossing his arms, shaking his head, nah, nah. Seven nights of lying awake wondering if maybe they’re right. But every morning wakes up again in stubbornness. Jesus does not show up on day two. He does not show up on day four. He lets the full weight of that week press down on Thomas. Now to be clear, this is not Jesus being cruel. This is patience. Grace, family, has a timeline and it’s not always on our timeline. Sometimes God lets you sit in the tension longer than you think you can bear it. Not because he’s forgotten you, but because he’s teaching you through the providence of time. God will often use time to press us past our own strength and certainty to bring us to the end of ourself so that the only place left for you to turn is to him. And here’s what makes this passage so beautiful. Jesus comes back. The doors are locked again. The disciples are hiding still. A full week after Easter and they’re still behind locked doors, which tells you fear is still persistent. Resurrection doesn’t always cure anxiety and depression overnight. But locked doors are no obstacle for the risen Jesus and so he walks through them again. And the first thing he says is the same thing he said a week ago. Peace be with you. And I love that he says that again because Thomas missed it the first time. And Thomas needed to hear it. The same peace in the face of fear is reiterated to the disciples, but it falls fresh on the ears of Thomas. Thomas’s delay did not disqualify him from the fullness of what the risen Jesus had to offer, which is peace. And then Jesus, in an act of deep and affectionate love, turns to Thomas. Look at verse 27. Put your finger here and see my hands and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. And you really need to slow down to feel the weight of this moment. Jesus uses Thomas’s exact words. Did you notice that? Thomas said, unless I place my finger into the mark of the nails, Jesus says, put your finger here. Thomas said, unless I place my hand into his side, Jesus says, put out your hand. Place it into my side. Word for word. Term for term. You got to remember, Jesus was not in the room when Thomas said those things. And yet he knew every word. This is quiet omniscience. The God who knows all things, even the hard-hearted expressions of disbelief. But notice, Jesus doesn’t make a big deal of it. He doesn’t say, I heard what you said, Thomas. Now what? What do you got to say for yourself now? Because Jesus is not a capricious God, he simply repeats the words back to him. And the fact that Jesus knows what Thomas said should have been enough to make Thomas tremble. But here’s the grace in all of it. Jesus doesn’t argue with Thomas. He doesn’t lecture Thomas. He doesn’t say, how dare you doubt me after everything I’ve done and everything I’ve said. He meets Thomas exactly where Thomas drew the line. It’s like a parent with a child who says, you know, I’ll never trust you again. And the parent doesn’t shout back, doesn’t give a speech, or at least we shouldn’t do that. Dads, especially. But instead, the parent just keeps showing up. Keeps being faithful. Keeps being persistent until the child’s resistance melts. Not because of a better argument. Not because you’ve made your point clear for a child. But because of persistent love. That’s what Jesus does with Thomas. He doesn’t debate him. He reveals himself. And notice what he reveals. His wounds. I keep mentioning this to you because it’s so important. But the risen Jesus appears in a glorified body that can pass through locked doors. He’s no longer bound by the limitations of mortal flesh. And yet, the nail marks are still there. The spear wound is still there. Because again, the resurrection did not erase the cross. You might have expected the resurrection body to be pristine. Unmarked. Perfect beyond all memory or suffering. But it isn’t. The scars remain. Because in the economy of the gospel, scars are not a sign of defeat. They are proof of love that went all the way. But family, we tend to hide our scars. We cover them up. We treat them as evidence of weakness or failure. Jesus displays his. He offers them. He invites Thomas to touch them. Because those are not the wounds of a victim. They are the credentials of a servant king. They’re beauty marks. The marks of the nails in his hands beautifully communicate, I paid for you. The wounds in his side beautifully speak, I was pierced for you. And the fact that they remain on a risen glorified body says that the cross is not a stage Jesus passed through on the way to glory. The cross is the means of glory. Revelation 5 tells us that the scars Jesus shows Thomas in the room are the same scars he will bear for eternity in the new creation. The cross, family, is never left behind. It’s carried into glory. And then Jesus gives Thomas this command. You see this in the last phrase of verse 29. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Again, in the original language, this is better translated. Stop becoming faithless and become faithful. You hear that? Stop becoming faithless and become faithful. The present tense tells you something. That Thomas was in the process of settling into faithlessness or unbelief. There was a hardening that was happening. Unbelief was becoming a part of his identity. And Jesus, in an act of mercy, arrests that trajectory. He doesn’t say, you know, take your time. He doesn’t say, I understand where you’re coming from. He says, stop. Stop, Thomas. Stop becoming what you’re becoming. But instead, become what I am calling you to be. And you see, family, this is the relentless pursuit of God to persevere the saints. He won’t leave you. He will chase you down and help you. There is a tenderness here from Jesus, but there’s also a sense of urgency. Stop. Because unbelief is not static. It’s a direction. And if you don’t reverse course with your unbelief, it will take you somewhere you don’t want it to go. Notice there is something the text does not say. It never says that Thomas touched the wounds. Did you notice that? He demanded to touch. Jesus offered to let him touch. But the text never records that he actually did touch. And maybe it’s because the moment Thomas saw Jesus, the moment he heard that voice and saw the scars, he realized the one standing before him knew every word he said in that room a week ago. The demand began to dissolve. He didn’t need to touch. The presence of the risen Jesus was enough. And in that moment, the conditions fell away. All the demands, all the hesitation, all the guarded distance, they collapsed under the weight of a person. King Jesus. Because when doubt finally meets the risen Jesus, it no longer feels the need to negotiate. Instead, it turns in worship. We see that in scene three, the confession. Verse 28, Thomas in response says this, My Lord and my God. Only five words in English, but it’s seven words in the original language. And they are the most important seven words any human being has ever spoken to Jesus in the Gospels. This, family, is what real confession of faith sounds like. The grammar is precise. Thomas uses the definitive article and the possessive pronoun. Word nerds, I get it. But listen, this is important. What he means to say here is, the Lord of me and the God of me. The Lord of me and the God of me. He is looking at Jesus, he is speaking to Jesus, and he’s calling Jesus something that no faithful Jew would call any created being. He’s calling him God. Yahweh. I want you to see what John is doing here. If you turn your mind back to the very first verse in this Gospel, if you can go back that long, John 1.1, he writes, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That is a narrator’s declaration. John the author is telling you who Jesus is before you even meet him in the text. Now, you come all the way to chapter 20, verse 28, almost to the end of the book, Thomas, a character inside the story, looks at the risen Jesus and says, My God. And do you see what John has done? He has written an entire Gospel, 20 chapters, 7 signs, countless discourses, a trial, a crucifixion, a burial, and a resurrection, and he has bookend this whole thing with one truth. Chapter 1, the Word was God. Chapter 20, my Lord and my God. What the narrator declares at the beginning, a disciple confesses at the end. What was a theological proposition in the beginning of the book has become personal worship. And notice the possessive pronoun. Thomas does not say, You are God. He says, My God. And that changes everything. Because there’s a difference between knowing that Jesus is God and knowing that Jesus is your God. There’s a difference between theological accuracy and personal trust. Demons know that Jesus is God. Thomas is not stating a fact. He is staking his life. This is what saving faith looks like. Not just Jesus is Lord, but my Lord. Not just Jesus is God, but my God. Here is where theology becomes worship. Doctrine becomes devotion, where the doubter becomes the worshiper. And here is the deepest irony in this passage. The man who refused to believe has just made the greatest confession of faith in the entire gospel. Greater than Peter’s. Greater than Martha’s. Greater than the man born blind. The deepest doubt produced the highest worship. Isn’t that fascinating? And you should know that this confession, this was not just theological. This was political. In the Roman Empire in the first century, the emperor had insisted on a particular title. He wanted to be called Dominus et Deus Noster. Okay, that’s Latin, which means our Lord and our God. That was the language of imperial worship. This is what you said to Caesar if you wanted to keep your head. And Thomas takes that exact title and gives it to a crucified Jewish rabbi standing in a locked room in Jerusalem. And do you see the subversion here? Thomas is not just making a theological statement. He’s making a declaration of allegiance at his highest cost. He’s saying there is one Lord and that one Lord is not Caesar. There is one God and he has nail marks in his hands. Family, every time the church confesses that Jesus is Lord, it is an act of deviance against every rival claim. Every power, every system, every ideology that demands your ultimate allegiance. Thomas’ confession says that seat is already taken and it cannot be replaced. And that should encourage every person in this room who has ever wrestled with what they believe. Family, God is not afraid of your questions. He is not threatened by your doubt. What he will not tolerate is your permanence in it. He will come to you. He will use brothers and sisters to go after you. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Now look at what Jesus says next in verse 29. Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Jesus is doing two things here at the same time. First, there is a kind of gentle rebuke. It’s not meant to be harsh here. Jesus doesn’t condemn Thomas, but what he does is like any good parent, he redirects him. He says, in fact, you believe now because you’ve seen and that’s good, but there’s a higher way. And then what he does is he turns. And this is the moment where Jesus looks past Thomas, past the ten disciples in the room, past the locked doors of the first century walls of Jerusalem, and he looks at you. And he says, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Church, he is speaking to us. We are not in that room. We did not see the risen Jesus walk through the door. We have not placed our fingers into the nail marks. And Jesus says, we are blessed. Not consoled, not compensated, but blessed. And that word blessed is the same word he used in the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. And now he says, blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. This is a pronouncement of divine favor on every person in every culture in every century who has ever trusted the word without demanding the evidence of physical sight. And just let that sink in for a moment. You’re blessed even though you have the impediment of not being able to see him in the flesh. In Jesus’ own estimation, the faith that trusts the testimony, the faith that receives the word and believes it without requiring personal empirical verification is in a more blessed condition than what Thomas experienced. So you’re not a second class disciple because you’ve not seen him. You are pronounced blessed by the risen Jesus Himself. And then John pulls back the curtain a bit in verses 30 and 31. He says, Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, 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. This is John telling you exactly why he wrote the book to begin with. He’s saying, I was there, I saw it, and I didn’t write everything down. I was selective. I chose specific signs, specific moments, and specific encounters, and I arranged them in a specific order. And why did He do that? So that you who were not there, who have not seen, could believe. This is John’s framework for why the word is sufficient. Thomas was the last person who could believe by seeing. Everyone after Thomas, including you and me, believes by reading. And the gospel of John is what we read. The written testimony of an eyewitness that was curated by the Holy Spirit, preserved across 2,000 years, and placed in your hands this morning. And its stated purpose is not simply information about Jesus, it’s to give you life. That by believing you may have life in His name. Not just that you would know certain things about Jesus, but that you would have life in Jesus. That your faith would connect you to the risen Jesus in such a way that His life becomes your life. That His death becomes your death, and that His resurrection becomes your resurrection. Think about it like this, verses 30 and 31 are like a witness signing a deposition. John is saying, I was there, I saw these things, I selected what to include, and I wrote them down so that you who were not there could believe what I saw and have life. Which means the gospel of John is not simply a history textbook. It’s a signed witness statement with a stated purpose, and that purpose is your life. This is why we read the Bible, family. Christian, you don’t read the Bible because of some kind of obligation or duty. It’s not simply a religious habit. You read it because it is the divinely appointed means by which the risen Jesus meets people who were not in that room. He shows Himself to you through the consistent reading of His word. Romans 10, 17 says, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. And what John is telling us in these verses and in this book, this gospel, is that the word of Christ is sufficient. It is enough. You don’t need a private vision. You don’t need miraculous signs. This is really, really common right now in Portland to say the word is not sufficient. What we need is more supernatural evidence, more manifestations of the Spirit. John says otherwise. He says the word is sufficient. You don’t need Jesus to walk through your locked door tonight. What you need is what Thomas needed to hear the voice of Jesus through His inspired word. You have that voice. It’s sitting in your lap right now. Whenever you open it, you are hearing the word of God speaking directly to you. That’s why you should open up God’s word. Can I ask you this morning, which Thomas are you? I mean, there are many Thomases in this passage. Maybe you’re the Thomas before the encounter. You’ve drawn the line, you’ve told God what it would take, and He hasn’t met your conditions, not because He can’t, but because He’s not interested in performing for you. He’s interested in revealing Himself to you, and those are not the same things. Maybe you’re the Thomas somewhere in the middle of the eight days. You’ve heard the testimony, you know the claims, the people you respect and love, they’re telling you that Jesus is alive, and you’re not sure you’re ready to believe it. You’re not sure you’re willing to make that leap of faith. Hear this this morning. Jesus came back for Thomas. He didn’t leave him in his doubt. He pursued him, and He will pursue you. Maybe you’re the Thomas at the confession. You’ve seen enough. The evidence is in, the testimony is clear, you know who Jesus is, and the only appropriate response is not more investigation, it’s worship. My Lord and my God. Or maybe, and I think this might be most of us, maybe you’re in verse 29. You have believed without seeing, you have trusted the Word, you’ve staked your life on the resurrection that you didn’t personally witness, and some days it feels very strong, and some days it doesn’t. Hear Jesus say this to you this morning, the same thing He said 2,000 years ago. You’re blessed. You’re blessed. I know it’s hard because you haven’t seen me in the flesh, but you’re blessed. Trust my testimony is sufficient. You are not a second-class Christian. You’re not at a disadvantage. You are blessed, pronounced so by the risen Jesus Himself. And so here’s where we land this morning. The demand says, I will believe when I see. The wounds say, come and see. The confession says, my Lord and my God. The King who stood before Thomas in that locked room is alive. The scars He offers to a doubter are real. The Word that was written so that you might believe is in your hand, and His invitation this morning is the same one He gave to Thomas. Do not disbelieve, but believe. If you’re here this morning and you’re not a Christian, this invitation is especially for you. And to be clear, this is not an invitation to clean yourself up, make yourself more presentable or more moral. It’s not an invitation to get your life together first. It’s not an invitation to solve all your questions before your come. It’s an invitation to come just as you are, with some of your questions and some of your doubts, with some of your fears, with your past. It’s an invitation to come and believe, to believe that Jesus is not dead but alive, to believe that the cross was not a tragedy but a rescue, that when Jesus died, He was bearing the sins of humanity, and that when He rose, He wasn’t just proving a point that He is alive, but He was opening a way for sinners like you and me to be forgiven, a way for all of your shame to be removed, a way for you to be brought back to God. And notice, Jesus did not wait for Thomas to find His way back. Jesus came to him. Maybe the Lord is coming to you this morning, and you feel it. You’re hearing His words, and they’re reverberating in your soul this morning. Don’t disregard them. Come to Him this morning. He will gladly receive you with joy. He died so that you could come to Him and have peace with Him. Come this morning. Through His Word, by His Spirit, He is coming to you, not to shame you but to call you. Do not disbelieve but believe. Listen, belief is not simply agreeing with facts. It’s trusting in a person. It’s laying down your resistance and placing your faith in His hands. So this morning, turn from your sins, turn from trusting yourself, and turn to trust in Christ Jesus. You don’t need to see what Thomas saw. You have something Thomas did not have, the full testimony of the risen Jesus in the Scriptures and the promise that’s attached to it. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. So come. Don’t wait for tomorrow. When you feel more ready, if you wait, you might not come at all. So come now and say with Thomas, my Lord and my God. And if you have questions about what it means to follow Jesus, to turn from your sins and turn in faith to trust Him, ask any Christian in this room. If they say they’re a Christian, they will happily help you to know more about what it means to follow Jesus. Amen? Family, when doubt becomes persistent in your life, your default position should be, Lord, help my unbelief. And He will help you. Amen? Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, we love you. We thank you. We are prone to wander. We are prone to disbelief. We are prone to believe the lies of this world. When circumstances become so heavy, they distract us from what we ought to believe. And so, God, corporately, we say, help our unbelief. We need it. We pray these things in the name of our risen King who died for our unbelief. We pray these things in His name. Amen.