“DOUBTING THOMAS”
TEXT: JOHN 20:24-31
Sunday, February 29, 2004
We are continuing with the 12 disciples- looking at the lessons from their lives- who God picked and what God was able to do through these 12 ordinary people who are just like you and me today. Today we are talking about Thomas, or as the cliché goes, doubting Thomas. Is that a fair assessment of his life? Well, we are going to look at that. Some general things about his life are: Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts simply tell you that Thomas is a disciple. It is John who fills in the picture and adds a second name. He says that Thomas is also called Didymus; the meaning behind these names- and they actually are not names at all- the Hebrew word Thomas means the same thing as the Greek word Didymus; they are just translations of one another. Both the word Thomas and the word Didymus mean twin.
I find it to be a sad designation. Now it was common in those days that – well it was kind of uncommon for twins to be born. They didn’t have sonograms back then so they didn’t know if twins, or triplets or quadruplets were being born so they usually prepared for the ordinary and they usually chose just one person’s name. If a second child is born, it’s a surprise and usually they do not know what to do so they usually give the person the name Thomas, meaning it’s a twin. Later on they would name the child a special name that would coincide with how God led them or with their sense of the person’s personality. I find it a little sad that his parents didn’t go back and revisit his name. Forever in his life he lives under the shadow of his brother or his sister, his older sibling. He is only referred to as the twin, Bill’s brother.
Now imagine that, living your whole life simply being referred to by your parents, not being named a special name like everyone else, but simply as that’s “John’s brother”, or “Bill’s brother”. What does that do to you? It has an effect. Have you experienced being the least favorite of the children in your life? How does that affect you? Well, for some, it makes them resentful. For everyone it kind of lowers your sense of self esteem, in that it is hard to believe in yourself, hard to trust yourself and trust others, and typically, there usually is a sense of gloom, a shadow over the person’s life. If that happened to you in your life, I apologize to you. I apologize that life and people and your parents treated you that way because that was unfair. God believes that you are someone special when he creates you. In Thomas, if there is one lesson just from his name, it is this, and it is that these second children, these forgotten children, these least favorite children, God believes in and God called to service. He believes in you, he calls you to service, he trusts you and he wants you to trust yourself as well.
What else do we know about Thomas? We find much of his life in John, actually all about his life in John 11, 14, 20 and 21. I would like to look at John 20 which is where we get this quality, this cliché of his name, ‘doubting Thomas’, to see if that really is fair to him and to see what qualities are in this man. I think he is a wonderful guy! What are some of the shadows in his life and how does it apply to ours? Here is what it says:
Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’
But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.’
A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though 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; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’
Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’
Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’
Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
[Let’s pray.]
One of the qualities I like about Thomas, and really you do not get a sense in Chapter 20, it really sticks out in Chapter 11, but you get hints of it in Chapter 20, is that he has a really deep, passionate, intense love of God, so intense that he is willing to give everything up. He is extremely loyal and an extremely courageous disciple. Now you get a hint of this in Chapter 20, but not as much as you get in Chapter 11. In Chapter 20, think about it, here he is amidst the 11 disciples and they are trying to convince him about the fundamental tenets of the church, the big doctrines, you know, the Kerygma, the seven essential things that every gospel has, and he is able to stand in opposition and fire and say with courage, “I don’t believe you.” It is 10 to 1 and he stands resolute, firm. That takes great courage to stand in front of 10 preachers and tell them they are wrong; I don’t believe what you say. It is probably this intense love of Christ that made him unable to believe that Jesus had really risen. Most people really believe that what was causing Thomas to doubt was that he was just heart-sick over losing Christ. It was something he had a difficult time getting over and getting through. He saw him die and dead men don’t walk again. It was so hard. He was so in the midst of grief that all the church doctrine and all the things people were saying about him just sounded like pablum, blah, blah, blah. And though he wanted to believe hard, he just couldn’t.
I find that when people are in grief, that is very true. When life smacks against you and throws you for a loop with something you didn’t expect, you can hear all the doctrines and you know in your heart you love the Lord, and you know in your heart things to be true, but when people say them, they just sound like blah, blah, blah, blah because you are grieving, you can’t see. You know what? God understands that. What I love about this passage is that Jesus doesn’t go and condemn Thomas for this. He goes and graciously helps him get through the barriers to his faith. He graciously reaches out, “Thomas, Thomas, I want to help you. If there is a struggle in your life, come and see, touch me.” I find that a tremendous, gracious offer and the graciousness of the disciples allowed him to struggle in his faith, to not buy in quite yet. I think God gives us that same opportunity.
In Chapter 11 is where we really see this courageousness in Thomas. Chapter 11 deals with the raising of Lazarus. In the context Jesus just preached in Jerusalem and they said, “Jesus, tell us just who you are, just tell us, we’ll believe.” Jesus said if I tell you, you won’t believe. He tells them and they want to stone him, so he escapes Jerusalem just before this passage on Lazarus. He gets the message that Lazarus is sick and dying and he says I am going back. I don’t care. I have to minister to this guy. I am going back. The disciples said, “no, if you go back they will kill you.” Bethany is about one to two miles from Jerusalem, and they were right. The next time Jesus enters Jerusalem he dies, so they were right in what they said. But Jesus said, I am going back anyway, because Lazarus meant that much to him and his sisters. It was Thomas, not Peter, who says, and get the courage here, let’s go back with him so that we may die also.
Wow! That is courage. Do you have that type of courage? Is your walk with Christ so strong that you would rather die with him than live without him? I mean, that is an intense, potent faith. If you are not there yet, you can be and you can by simply taking the opportunity to grow in your faith. It takes times of worship and study, and I encourage you to see the movie The Passion. I heard it just makes men break down. It does something. It helps you see visually what you can’t comprehend any other way. I encourage you to take the class on The Passion or the 40 Days of Purpose and dig deeper into your life and faith. You will discover – I mean there will come a point in your life, as a lot of you know- that you can’t possibly believe that you could live without the Lord in your life. Life is just too hard, and you can’t believe that you could possibly survive.
In talking about The Passion of Christ (and you probably thought I would bring this up sometime), I am almost amazed by the controversy of the whole thing in that I find a startling difference in our culture in 44 years since Ben Hur was made in 1956, 47-48 years ago the Ten Commandments was made, no, no Ben Hur was made in 1959 and the Ten Commandments was made in 1956, now that is 44-48 years ago and there wasn’t a lot of controversy with that. They were very biblically based movies. I am thinking out loud in my mind, wow, in one generation’s time, look how much our culture has changed.
I wonder sometimes whether in my lifetime we will still be free religiously in our nation. If in one generation’s time we have come so far that a movie about Jesus is controversial, and I know the violence thing, but you know I am surprised, where was the opposition to violence in all the slasher movies that Hollywood has produced, or Private Ryan or Schindler’s List? The argument is, of course, that that is art and it is the way it was. The same can be said of the cross, it is as it was. Many people died at the scourging. The scourging alone killed those people so that is not a surprise, but I wonder sometimes if in our own day we will be called to take a courageous stand like Thomas had to -- that it would cost us our lives simply to say, I believe in Jesus Christ.
Now that may sound alarming. I am not sure that that will happen, but I am surprised by how far our culture has come in that teachers and students today are suspended for bringing Bibles into school, for wearing a cross, for having religious t-shirts. My daughter Ariel came home, and they had Chinese New Year in her school. What surprised me was they had a couple who celebrated Chinese New Year, not just the cultural aspect, but they talked about the religious aspect of Chinese New Year. The families presented and showed the children their ancestral idols that they worshiped and told them how they worshiped them and why they worshiped them. Now I don’t know, excuse me, but at Christmas we can’t even say Merry Christmas, let alone get out Jesus in the manger in school, and yet you are able to do it with Chinese New Year.
It flabbergasts me and I wonder, sometimes, what is so awful, anyway, about Jesus? I mean the message of Jesus is that God loves you and he took your sins upon the cross and he wants to save you and redeem your life; he suffers for us in our place and he calls us to love one another. What is so awful about that? I don’t know, so I wonder sometimes where we are going as a culture and whether or not we will need the courage that we see in Thomas, that we would have to take a courageous stand, and that we would rather die with him than live without him.
Even today, we are not really challenged in who Jesus is and about having basic faith in him, but we are challenged in our morality and our ethics. The issues and the morality of the church are always challenged. The latest one is the definition of marriage, and sometimes I wonder where the church is. Why aren’t we taking a more courageous stand? Why don’t we have the courage of Thomas and stand up for what is right and what is true? It is a good quality for us to have. Not in a mean-spirited way, but in a gentle, gracious and convicting way. That is what I appreciate about Thomas.
The second thing I appreciate about Thomas is actually his doubting. Now I am not sure the doubting is the issue in his life, in that doubting is not unique to Thomas. I don’t know why we call him ‘doubting Thomas’ because doubting is not unique to him. He is not the only one of the 12 disciples that doubted, was he? No. He is not the only one who needed to see in order to believe. All of them saw and as a result believed. Isn’t that right? I mean it is easy for them to say, “We have seen the Lord, you have got to believe,” because they saw. You know what? They had an advantage over him, so I feel sorry for him. People were just shouting at him. They saw; they had the advantage of seeing. Thomas’s issue was that he had a hard time trusting, he struggled with trusting. He needed some proof for his life, he was a bit skeptical, he wasn’t gullible and I don’t think that is a bad quality to be a little bit skeptical, a little bit gullible, in that I think it really is descriptive of a person who earnestly desires to believe, but needs to be certain before they give themselves to it and that is not a bad thing.
What I discover is that Christ obliges him. Thomas, you want proof? Here is proof. Thomas asked for two forms of proof, to see and to touch and Jesus offered him three proofs. He said, see me, touch me and then let me tell you what you said when you didn’t think I was there. I mean, he repeated his words back to him. How did Jesus know that? He wasn’t there when Thomas talked to the other 10 unless he was there invisibly, quietly, and spiritually. He presents three wonderful proofs for Thomas to encourage his faith. Jesus makes a special trip; he makes a special effort to help Thomas believe and find the proof that he needed in order to encourage his faith, which is something I find all through Scripture. God frequently does this for his people. God graciously humbles himself and comes to us in personal earthen ways. He knelt down, in Christ, to our earthen floor, this almighty, omnipotent God, King of the universe, comes to us in our language and ultimately in our humanity so that we can know him, and he can communicate his love and his grace and his message which is good news. He did it for Moses in the burning bush; he did it for Gideon in the fleece; he does it for Elijah in the still, small voice; he does it with Thomas, and he says, you have a difficult time believing, touch me, listen to me, I am real.
What he does for Thomas I think he will do for us as well. I think the boomer generation, my generation probably relates to Thomas best. If you are a boomer, (that means you were born before 1964), like Thomas we have a hard time trusting people and institutions. Why? Because people and institutions have let us down. We are a generation that does not easily believe its government because the government has lied to us and has let us down. We are people who do not believe authority because for many of us our parents let us down through divorce and we have a hard time trusting authorities in our life as well. We have a hard time trusting even the church because the church has let us down - we looked at the church in our lives and we discovered the church doesn’t look any different than the world does, and we talk about spirituality but don’t even know the Word. The church in our lives didn’t answer the hard questions. They were spiritually inept at times. They are unable to address the issues of the day of racism, poverty and self-annihilation. What the church seemed to say to our generation is believe our doctrines, go to church, be good, be a good citizen. They reduced the Christian faith to intellectual ascent, doctrinal statements and dull services, and this generation said thanks, but no thanks, and we checked out. We came to a conclusion that if it is really real, if we are talking about a faith that proclaims a living God, then he should be experienced, he should be real - that is the cry of people’s hearts today. They want to believe, like Thomas, but they want to believe in something that is real, something you can taste, touch and see, something you can experience. If that is you, I have got some good news for you because God gave Thomas the proof that he needed and God will give you the proof that you need as well. He offers himself to you. If you have a hard time believing, look at me, see me, touch me, hear me. I will answer your questions, but you have got to seek me, though.
Revelations 3:19-20 says this: here I am, I am standing, [Jesus is talking], here I am, I am standing at the door of your life and I am knocking. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. We are talking about an inner, personal relationship that we experience God in a personal way. Do you hear his voice this morning? If so, I encourage you to open your heart to him and let him reside in your heart. Maybe you say, I am not ready to sign, I am not ready. Well what will it take? Tell God like Thomas did. Tell God what it is going to take. I was at a leadership retreat and it was fantastic just hearing people’s stories because it is interesting this Jesus of 2000 years ago still erupts in people’s lives in a hundred different ways and touches them right where they need to be touched to show how real he is.
For some of us what will it take? It took the birth of a child to go on that spiritual journey. For others it was a lifelong upbringing in a Christian home that enabled us to put our faith in Christ. For still others it is a gnawing inner hunger and thirst and you heard the message of the gospel and the light came on in your life and Christ became real for you. For others it was a crisis, the facing of death or a tragedy in their life. For still others it is an answered prayer or a string of coincidental events or a reasonable approach to faith, and if you have intellectual problems with the Christian faith, two good books that will help you, one is The Case For Christ written by Lee Strobel, who as an atheist and a journalist for the Chicago Tribune (why am I not surprised), and who wanted to really know and he tried to put Christ to the test and he became convinced through his own studies that Jesus was real. Josh McDowell writes a book also, Evidence That Demands A Verdict. I encourage you to read those. For me it was a combination of my parents’ divorce, cancer, a sense of inner void, hearing the gospel message, and then getting to know and being touched by real Christian people’s lives, and that was a big one.
Maybe you already believe and I am not addressing you. You can help others believe by simply being the hands, feet and lips of Jesus so that through you people experience the living God. That is what people want. People want to know that it is real and it can become flesh for them through you.
[Let’s pray.]
