Doubting Thomas

Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Pastor Harry on “Doubting Thomas” (John 20:19-29). The sermon and the whole service can be watched on our WIC YouTube Channel:

It’s been an eventful time for the disciples. First, they are alarmed to find that the grave in which Jesus had been laid is empty. The lady folk are scared out of their wits by seeing what was obviously two angels standing right beside them. Now it’s slowly dawning on all the believers that Jesus did, in actual fact, rise from the dead – but no one expected Him to show Himself to them afterwards!

 

So there we have the disciples, all together behind locked doors that very same evening, according to John’s Gospel. They too are scared – because the mood of the Jews in Jerusalem has turned very ugly against all the followers of Jesus – and the Jewish leaders want to see a few more crucifixions. It’s all so very real. And suddenly Jesus is there in their midst! He’s not a ghost or a trick of the light. Jesus is there in the flesh: someone you can see, hear and touch. A dead man has come back as a physical human being – how is it possible? But at the same time, the scars of the wounds He endured on the cross are also there – perfectly visible to the disciples. The hands through which huge nails were knocked; and the side of His body, which a soldier had pierced with his sword, and from which blood and water had immediately gushed out.

 

Just doesn’t really go into how the disciples reacted, except to write that they were filled with joy. And Jesus gives them His peace. But He already has a rousing message for them! They’re in the process of hiding from the outside world – yet He says: “I am sending you!” Where’s He sending them to? Obviously He’s already sending them out as evangelists, to tell the whole world about Himself. Just like He sends you and me out. And in order to equip them, and endow them with spiritual power, He breathes on them and gives them His Holy Spirit – not at Pentecost, as many people think, but on the same day as He rose from the dead. And there’s this amazing verse: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you don’t forgive them their sins, they won’t be forgiven”.

 

How can we understand that? He’s giving them the same power that He Himself had, while He was still alive. Did the disciples keep this power? If so, for how long? Even more intriguing: since we have the Holy Spirit, do we also have that power to forgive anyone’s sins? It’s like another saying of Jesus, isn’t it, from Matthew 16:19: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”. Whatever it means, certainly we are to announce the forgiveness of sins to other people.

 

But our main focus today is on Thomas, who wasn’t there at the time, and who simply could not believe that Jesus could have come back from the dead, as it were physically. We know what happened a week later. Jesus appeared again, and made Thomas put his finger through the hand wounds, and his hand into Jesus’ side. It was this evidence that convinced him – and he broke down in awe and worship. What had seemed rationally impossible had just become possible to him. Christ can do what is totally impossible, in our life too.

 

The Poles call Thomas “faithless Thomas”, because of the word “faithless” that Jesus uses. Thomas wasn’t faithless in the sense of being without faith at all – he certainly had faith in Jesus. But he didn’t have enough of it – he doubted. Does that ring a bell? Aren’t we all like Thomas? We believe – and yet we don’t believe. Like Thomas, we believe when we see. But Jesus gently suggests that this is not enough. “Blessed are those who believe without seeing Me”. Blessed are those who fall to their knees and worship Jesus, and exclaim: “My Lord and my God” – even though they’ve never seen Jesus, or indeed, have never had a life-shattering experience at all. Some people are like that. They can’t tell you the moment of their conversion. Yet they’ve always felt close to God, strangely drawn to Jesus, and believing – for as long as they can remember – that Jesus was exactly who He said He was, and did exactly what the Bible said He did. Such people are blessed for their great and unwavering faith.

 

So, dear Friends, what does this story teach us? Do we see ourselves as Thomas? I think most people would say yes. We realise our faith isn’t adequate. Look at the number of times something goes wrong in our lives – in my life, I would say very often. Several times a week – maybe even many times a week. We fail the test of faith, because we forget again and again that God is behind it all. We forget that God is sovereign, and instead we tend to look at our sufferings from purely our point of view, without taking God into account, even though we say we believe. Yet it was Job in the Old Testament – yes, Job, the one who suffered more than most – who said, in Job 2:10: “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” For Job, God is sovereign, and He knows best what to give us and what to take away (Job 1:21): “The Lord gives and the Lord takes – blessed be the name of the Lord”. It is our lot to learn to accept daily what God ordains for us. And it’s one of the hardest lessons to learn.

 

May God help us to understand all the events of our life as being for our ultimate good. May He help us to believe in miracles, and for all that is impossible for us to become possible for Him. And may we constantly turn away from ourselves and our preoccupations, and always turn to the Lord as our only strength; our only effective shield in the battles we are given to fight; and the only one who can truly give us lasting joy. Amen.