Lectionary: Doubting Thomas April 12, 2026

Well, good morning and welcome to Trinity.

My name is Mike.

If I haven't met you before, and I'm one of the pastors here, and this morning I'd like to invite you to turn in your Bibles to John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, please don't hesitate to hop up and grab one from the stack in the back.

You can find John 20 on page 852 and 853 in the church Bibles.

If you don't have a Bible, we actually, of your own, we actually have a stack of those in the back too, like, you know, nice ones with nice covers and room in the margins to write notes.

Please feel free to take one with you.

Now this morning we're looking at the story from which one of Jesus' disciples, Thomas, gets his famous nickname.

Who knows what it is?

Doubting Thomas.

I love this story because we see faith and doubt all mixed up in one person.

Which is how I think it is for a lot of people, myself included, a lot of the time, isn't it?

And can I just say that one of the things I most appreciate about the Bible is that at least other than Jesus, there are no real heroes.

Have you noticed that?

Portrays people as people, screw-ups, broken, doubting, messing up, getting it wrong over and over and over again, even as it reminds us over and over and over again of God's patience and God's faithfulness.

Now, if you've heard me say it once, you've heard me say it a thousand times.

Anytime there's repetition in the Bible, we ought to what?

Pay attention.

And there's a few words that were repeated in our text this morning.

Did anyone catch them?

Go ahead, you can shout it out.

Peace be with you three times.

That's right.

And one other.

It's repeated at least seven times by my count.

Forgive?

Forgive is repeated twice.

Okay, thank you, smart alec.

Believe.

Believe seven times.

And what we're gonna do this morning is we're gonna zoom in just on that the bit with Thomas, verses 24 to 29.

The word believe there is repeated five times in those six verses.

The Greek word is pistos, it can be translated as belief or faith or trust.

This morning, for those of you who like to know where we're going, we'll map John's use of the word pistos in John 20, and we'll follow this pattern of unbelief, and invitation, and belief, and invitation, and belief, and what it reveals about Jesus and what there is for you and for me.

But first, let's pray.

Gracious God, thank you for this morning, for the sun outside, for the chance to gather, to pray, to sing, to hear from your word.

And I pray now that as my words line up with your words, that they would fall on ears and hearts ready to receive them and respond.

And gracious God, if I say anything that isn't from you, I pray that those words would quickly be forgotten.

And I pray all these things through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Now look with me at John chapter 20, starting at verse 24.

John 20 · chapter mention

John writes, Thomas, one of the twelve disciples, that is, called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came.

Maybe you remember this from the first half that we just read.

Jesus, after being raised from the dead, appeared to the disciples.

He greets them.

Peace be with you.

He shows them his hand in his side, but Thomas isn't there.

So the other disciples told him, This is verse 25, we've seen the Lord.

Thomas said to them, Unless I 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.

Now it is so easy for us to give Thomas a hard time here.

I mean, he's gone down in history as doubting Thomas because of this verse.

But I think I get it.

After all, people generally don't come back from the dead.

And if you were to tell me, like my children have, that Bigfoot is real, I would say I need to see it.

In fact, I would say photographic evidence, not enough.

Video, not enough.

I need to see Bigfoot before I believe Bigfoot is real.

And yet here, we give Thomas such a hard time.

People generally don't come back from the dead.

So it seems totally reasonable to me here that Thomas would want the same evidence that Jesus had already provided in the verses before to the other disciples.

Now, look again at verse 25.

You've got a Bible in your lap.

Maybe number the evidence Thomas is looking for.

This is important.

He wants to see the mark in the nails of his hands.

He wants to place his finger into the mark of the nails.

And he wants to place his hand into his side.

Three pieces of evidence that he's gonna need to believe.

Or he says, he will never believe.

That's that word pistos.

It's the first occurrence of the word believe in this section.

And if you've got a Bible in your lap, underline it.

If he doesn't see and feel and experience these three things, he will never believe.

Thomas, despite all he's seen and experienced over the last three years, and actually, this is one of the ways where Thomas is different from you and from me, because he actually has seen the dead come back to life.

He was there when it happened to Lazarus.

So he's got a little bit of, I've already seen this, but still he rejects the testimony of his friends here.

He won't trust their witness.

Instead, he sets his own conditions for belief, demanding specific evidence.

It's not that he doesn't believe, I don't think, yet, but it's that he doesn't believe yet.

But if his conditions aren't met, he declares that he will never believe.

Life without faith.

Maybe you've been there before.

If you haven't, there's a good chance you will be at some point.

You'll experience some sort of crisis, and you'll pray, God, if you will just fill in the blank, find me a new job, or fix my marriage, or get me out of this trouble, or that trouble, then I will trust you.

How many of you have prayed that prayer before?

I mean, I have.

And look, I'm not sure that it's good to set ultimatums with God.

After all, he's God, not us.

But Thomas is doing something right here that's worth noting, even as he sets his ultimatums.

He's still hanging out with the disciples.

I mean, he doesn't believe them, but he's still there with them.

Now, young people, especially, I want you to listen to what I say here, okay?

You will experience doubt and suffering.

There will be moments of faith crisis in your life.

And when those come, as they inevitably will, stick close to Christian community.

I can tell you, I can tell you from personal experience, those who end up far from God generally are those who drift away from the church.

Drift away from time spent with the people of God, from the Christian community.

Grown ups, some of us we've experienced that, haven't we?

And it's so easy.

So easy.

So we give Thomas a hard time, but he's still there in the room with the disciples.

And to his credit, he doesn't drift away.

He doesn't tell them you're crazy, and begin keeping his friends at an arm's distance.

Despite his lack of faith, he's still there.

Still hanging out with the disciples, even as he sets his ultimatum for Jesus.

Now, look at this, because this is where the story gets so good.

Jesus comes back for Thomas.

Jesus comes back for Thomas.

He seems to always be looking for the lost.

Picking the story back up at verse 26, eight days later, his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them.

And although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

It's the third peace be with you.

Now, verse 26 starts by telling us that what happens next happens on the eighth day.

And I'm gonna take a little detour for just a moment.

Would you humor the Bible nerd in me?

Did you know that there's a whole slew of eighth-day stories in the Bible?

There are.

In the scriptures, the eighth day is the start of something new.

Think about it like this.

Genesis tells us that God created the world in how many days?

Six days.

Six days.

What does he do on the seventh day?

He rests.

And then on the eighth day, the new world begins.

And so, generally speaking, the eighth day is the day of new creation.

It's the first day of the week, the start of something fresh.

It turns up over and over again in the Old Testament.

Sacrifices for new life on the eighth day.

Circumcision of a new baby, the eighth day.

Dedication of the new temple.

Feasts culminating on the eighth day.

And then in the New Testament, Jesus is crucified on Good Friday.

The next day, the Sabbath, Saturday, Jesus rests.

And then on the third day, which is also the first day of the week, the new week, Sunday, Jesus rises from the dead, and life begins again.

And so on the eighth day, the day life begins or begins again, Thomas is with the disciples in a locked room, and Jesus shows up, and life begins again for Thomas.

Jesus greets them.

Peace be with you, which is a sermon for another day.

And he says to Thomas, look at this in verse 27, it really matters.

Look at what he says.

Put your finger here and see my hands.

And put out your hand and place it in my side.

Do you see what Jesus does here?

Do you remember Thomas's conditions for unbelief?

Maybe you numbered them in your Bible.

See them, I must see the mark of the nails in his hands.

I must place my finger into the mark of the nails.

I must place my hand into his side.

And do you see what Jesus offers him?

You've got a Bible in your lap, number them first.

Put your finger here.

See my hands and put your hand in my side.

Oh, Jesus is so patient.

And he's so kind.

And he gives Thomas exactly what he needs to take his next step of faith.

He gives him exactly the evidence Thomas had asked for.

And in doing so, Jesus offers himself to Thomas along with an invitation.

Do not disbelieve.

There's the word again, but believe.

Jesus invites Thomas to see his hands and his side.

And he says, do not be faithless, but faithful.

And the seeing and touching invitation is aimed at producing faith.

He invites Thomas to turn away from unbelief and instead to believe, to take a step of faith towards Jesus.

Friends, in my experience, when we, even in our seasons of doubt or crisis, or despair, when we stick with Christian community, when we remain open to what Jesus might have for us, it seems to me, in my experience, that he seems to give us exactly what we need to take our next step of faith towards him.

Has he done that for you before?

He does it for us over and over and over again, just like he did for Thomas.

And Thomas responds with the most comprehensive declaration of faith in the whole New Testament.

Verse 28, Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God.

It's a loaded declaration.

I could spend 30 minutes just on this one, filled with all sorts of implications.

By declaring that Jesus is Lord, which is a title generally reserved for Caesar, the emperor of Rome, he's acknowledging that Jesus has complete power over him, authority to send him wherever he wants to send him to do whatever he wants him to do.

By declaring that Jesus is God, he's acknowledging that Jesus isn't just an ordinary or even extraordinary rabbi or prophet.

He's not the same as Moses or Elijah or David.

He's not from God, but he is God.

He's not even a God, like the Greek pantheon, but the very creator of the universe.

And the word that he uses twice to declare who he now believes Jesus to be my.

It's a word that's personal and relational.

He's not a Lord.

He's not the Lord.

He is my Lord.

It carries a different sort of weight, doesn't it?

A different sort of implication.

One that directly and completely changes a personal reality for Thomas.

Thomas gets a bad rap.

He's remembered as a doubter.

But Jesus finds him and meets him in all of his questions, just like he does for us.

And in that he moves him from faithlessness to faithfulness, from needing to see and touch to belief and surrender and a declaration of total obedience.

This isn't just an intellectual assent, right?

He's not just believing in his head that this thing is true.

This is a life-changing, radically reorienting sort of faith, the kind that completely changes everything about your life.

Tradition tells us that Thomas would go on to journey to some of the farthest known corners of the world.

And he'd bring the good news of Jesus as far away as India.

Could you imagine walking to India before being killed as a martyr for his faith?

And isn't that so like Jesus?

He invites the faithless to believe, the blind to see, the lost to come.

And then he transforms us, doing far more in us and through us than we could ask or imagine.

He did it with Thomas.

And he can do it with you.

Which brings me to the last verse in our text this morning.

Look at verse 28 with me.

After Thomas declares his faith, Jesus replies, Have you believed?

There it is again, because you have seen me.

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

This is an invitation for the reader, directly from John.

It's an invitation for you and for me.

But in order to grasp it, we need to zoom out just a bit and go back to the beginning of John's gospel.

If you have a Bible in your lap, keep your finger here in John 20 before flipping back to John 1.

I'm sorry, I really, I this text is so exciting, and there's so many nuggets, and I let the Bible nerd get away from me a little bit.

Listen to the word of God.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that has been made.

In him was life.

The life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world.

The world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John bore witness about him, cried, This was he, of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.

For from him fullness, for from his fullness we've all received grace upon grace.

For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Now, listen to verse 18.

No one has ever seen God, the only God who's at the Father's side, he has made him known.

Now, listen closely again to verse 29 of chapter 20, here at the end of John's Gospel.

Jesus said to him, Have you believed?

Because you have seen?

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

This is what New Testament scholars call an inclusio.

It's an intentional, thematic bookend.

In the beginning, John 1, no one had seen God.

Over the course of the 20 chapters that followed, the reader does see God because we're shown Jesus.

And the people and the disciples, they see God in those pages because they see Jesus.

Thomas doesn't believe because he has not seen.

Then he sees and he believes and declares, My Lord and my God.

To which Jesus replies, For the reader, for you and for me.

Have you believed because you've seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet have believed.

It's an invitation right there.

To belief.

To you, to me.

I.

I have not seen the risen Christ.

Have you put your hands in the nails?

Have you put your hands in the side?

I haven't.

I haven't.

I mean, I've seen him here in the scriptures.

But like Thomas, before the eighth day, I'm dependent, reliant on the testimony of others.

You are too.

And it's to you and for you that John is writing.

And he sums up his invitation in these words: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

These words are an invitation to believe and be blessed, to trust.

They're an invitation to take another step of faith towards Jesus, despite being two thousand years removed from his resurrection.

An invitation to declare, as Thomas did, even without the physical proof that he had, my Lord and my God.

And in that declaration, there's an invitation to surrender our lives to Jesus.

Not in an abstract sense, like, I believe he is God, but in a personal sense.

He is my Lord.

That is, he has the final say over my life.

And he is my God, the one who holds my days in his hands.

It's an invitation to surrender, to open our hands and our hearts to Jesus, saying, Here, I'm yours, despite my not seeing.

It's an invitation to wholehearted faith.

Friends, I don't know where you are today when it comes to Jesus.

Maybe you're in crisis or a season of doubt.

Maybe it's been a little while.

Maybe he feels really far away.

Maybe your faith is half-hearted, or you're going through the motions, keeping Jesus at an arm's length.

Maybe you're here this morning saying, I believe.

Regardless, there's a reason that we gather to worship on the eighth day.

Because it's the day of resurrection, of life, new beginnings.

And it's the day of invitation.

No matter where you are in your spiritual life today, Jesus is offering you this invitation to come to Him and to believe.

Will you stand and pray with me?

Oh gracious God, just like that father earlier in the book of Mark who comes to you in need, saying, I believe, help my unbelief.

So we come to you this morning.

Like Thomas, belief and doubt all jumbled up.

Questions that are very real, doubts, crises, hardships are very real.

All mixed up with joy and faith and everything in between.

We come to you.

Gracious God, I pray that your Holy Spirit, even now, would come and stir in our hearts, moving us to respond to you anew and afresh in faith.

Would you help us to declare with Thomas, I believe, my Lord and my God.

Amen.