"Christ with Doubting Thomas" by larry&flo is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Sunday was the final installment of the sermon series Tableau of Faith. The sermon title was Expressing Doubt. An image of Thomas confronted by the risen Christ with the wound in His side and holes in His hands was on the bulletin, which made me happy. I love Thomas specifically because he doubted. Christ confronted him with His resurrection and didn’t chastise him for his doubts. He showed up and helped him have a greater faith. Let’s read that encounter in John’s Gospel.
18Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that He had said these things to her.
19So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
20And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
21So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”
22And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
23“If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”
24But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
25So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
26After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
27Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
28Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
29Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”
30Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;
31but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.
John 20:18–31 (NASB95)
As the service opened, they sang a song, The Commission I was not familiar with. It had a line in it that struck me. The line went, “Goodbye is not the end.” I really like that. Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, but it wasn’t the end. He rose and appeared to the disciples before being taken up into Haven, but that wasn’t the end either.
Pastor Lee went through all the installments in this series, connecting a biblical figure with a concept, weaving them all into our “tableau of faith” as she went. A small discrepancy needs to be cleared up, though. The Easter service showed us a risen Christ on the third day. Pastor Lee stated the events in the upper room in John’s gospel here are “on the same day.” They are not. From the Easter appearance, Thomas is not present and refuses to believe. The events John relates in the scripture above are one week later back in Galilee, not the same day. It’s not vital to the story but is important as it relates to the setting and Thomas’ absence.
This scripture and the events are next linked to the first sermon in the series in the Garden of Eden. Here Adam and Eve are disobedient to God, but God comes looking for them anyway. In John’s Gospel above, Jesus knows Thomas's doubts but comes looking for him anyway.
8They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
9Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
10He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
Genesis 3:8–10 (NASB95)
This is true in our case too. In our disobedience and unbelief, God looks for us too. We might run from Him like Jonah or follow our own path, but God is still there, like the prodigal father waiting on the son to return. In the case of Adam and Even, yes, they had to suffer the consequences of their actions, but God provided for them, making them clothes as they went forth.
21The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
22Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—
23therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
Genesis 3:21–23 (NASB95)
God has no evil in Him, but human beings who know the difference and have free will can choose evil. God decided to deny us everlasting life so long as we have evil in us. This becomes central to the crucifixion of Christ and why we want to acknowledge and follow Him. Jesus’ righteousness becomes imputed upon us when we take him as our Lord. That means following God’s ways as Jesus did, not Man’s ways. Our following Jesus isn’t what makes us righteous. Nothing we can do does that. Jesus did that when He sacrificed Himself for our sins.
It sounds like circular logic, and to a degree, it is. We must have faith that Jesus did what He did because there simply can be no “proof” of that salvation in this life. Therefore, it is by faith alone that we believe these things. That’s Jesus’ point when He talks about Thomas believing but more so us who believe without the proof of seeing Thomas got in verse twenty-nine above.
As the sermon continued, Pastor Lee mentioned Thomas wanting what his friends had. It occurred to me that means Thomas coveted what they had. We can imply that doubting something then is coveting someone else's belief. Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit regularly reinforce the idea that when we need Them, They will be there for us.
From there, we moved into communion. Pastor Lee summed up by labeling us all “a resurrection people.” She further stated that we “believe God will show up.” Her meaning seemed to be that when we need the divine, it will show up because we have faith in the resurrected Christ. That’s not a statement that implies, nor am I implying, that we don’t have a strong enough faith if our prayers aren't answered. I despise that statement made by some people to other people who want to know why some healing or request wasn’t granted. God doesn’t work that way. He works the way He works. We are simply called to be as obedient as possible to His call on our lives. When we do that, God “shows up” because we showed up, and we were His hands and feet. The question this week is where will God show up in our lives, and where will we show up for Him in someone else’s life? God bless and Godspeed.