Easter Sunday – John 20

Happy Easter, everyone.

It's great that you are with us.

Christ is indeed risen.

Hallelujah.

And wherever you are tuning in from, we're glad that you're with us in this sunny Dublin morning as we remember the most significant event in all of human history.

Thank you for joining us.

My name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders of City Church Dublin.

And it is good to reflect and to celebrate and remember that Jesus is alive, that he is ruling and reigning in heaven and is Lord of all.

Let's pray to him as we come to God's word together.

Thank you, Daniel, for reading all of that passage.

We're not going to be preaching all of that passage.

We're just going to be looking at Jesus' interaction with Thomas.

So if you want to keep open verses 24 to 31, that's where we're going to be focusing our time.

But let's pray together now.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by your power, the power of the Holy Spirit, you raised Jesus to life, that He is alive today with you, ruling and reigning in heaven.

Thank you that that means that our salvation is secured, forgiveness is possible, reconciliation with you, and new life are indeed possible because of what Jesus has done.

Help us to trust Him and ultimately to cry with Thomas, my Lord and my God.

Give us eyes to see and ears to hear now as we come to your word.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

As I've said, uh today, Christians are remembering the single most significant historical event that has ever occurred.

And I do mean that quite seriously, that it is a historical event that happened.

It's not a metaphor, it's not a myth.

It is something that we really believe happened in history bodily, in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

But I recognize that uh some of you uh may be skeptical about that.

I also recognize that perhaps some of you who are watching uh this year, that over the last year your faith in the resurrection or the the truthfulness of the gospel or of the Christian faith has been has been shaken.

Perhaps you're watching this morning and you have doubts.

You are skeptical, you are questioning, you are in very good company this morning, and I am glad that you are watching.

It's worth acknowledging as we uh introduce this section of scripture that doubts can come from different places.

Some doubts can be uh primarily intellectual.

You have uh questions that you feel need to be answered.

I remember uh meeting with a uh a young man from City Church, he's now gone and moved to America now, but uh he uh came very suddenly um by a recommendation into our church family, and he had questions, literally pads and pads of questions.

And we would sit uh in a uh in a bar in Dublin, back when you could sit in bars in Dublin, and we would go through the questions.

I mean we'd talk for about two, two and a half hours, and he'd say, Go, can I meet you again next week?

And we'd meet again next week, and there would be another list of questions, another two, two and a half hours, and we'd do it again and again and again.

And in the intervening period between one of our meetings, he said, Well, actually, I've become a Christian.

He'd had he'd been given the necessary information, he'd had his questions answered, and so he'd come to a fuller understanding of who Jesus is.

Other doubts come from a different place, they come not from a lack of information, they come actually from a from a deeper desire, a deeper desire for autonomy.

You don't want somebody else to be Lord and God, you don't want somebody else to uh to call the shots over your life.

There's a there's a deep desire for physical, moral, sexual uh control over your life, and your doubts are uh cover, maybe, to that sort of deeper desire, and that's where they come from.

Yet others have doubts because uh their faith has been shaken, oftentimes this is because of suffering, tragedy.

Things have happened to them that they cannot begin to square with who they thought God was, what they believed.

It's all been undermined, whatever your doubts are, the Bible would like to move you from a place of doubting to a place of increased confidence, confidence in who Jesus is, confidence in what he has done, confidence enough to live into that and to trust him as good.

Once you move move you from a place of doubt to a place of belief and faith.

If, by the way, uh your uh your doubts and your questions are around the things like the evidences to the resurrection.

Actually, last Easter's sermon, uh a year ago, went through a whole bunch of reasons why we can be confident that the resurrection is the is the best explanation for the the empty tomb on Easter Day.

And if that is something that would interest you, I would encourage you to go into our Facebook videos tab and to scroll back.

It's not too far, scroll back a year and you can watch that that talk.

This year, however, we will be looking specifically at Jesus' interaction with Thomas, one of the disciples.

Now, this portion of scripture has uh has earned Thomas a rather unfortunate nickname, the nickname of doubting Thomas.

You might have heard that.

It's slightly unfair, given that at other points uh in uh in the scripture, in John's gospel, even, uh, he's he's quite confident, he's quite gung-ho.

Uh, he uh exclaims things like, well, yeah, let's go to Jerusalem so that we can all die together, you know, that sort of thing.

It might be a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but he was he was pretty confident in his following of Jesus, and yet now we call him doubting Thomas.

He is doubting because, well, the end of chapter 19, Jesus is dead, he's been crucified.

It's pretty clear when you read the Gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that the disciples never really expected that.

Yet, sure, uh, Jesus had taught about it, but they didn't really know what it meant.

They didn't expect that when he rode into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday that uh that he wouldn't then proceed to overthrow the religious leaders and Roman rule and establish this uh this new uh kingdom on earth.

They they thought that that would happen.

They didn't think that he would end up be to be bound and taken away, scourged and and ultimately crucified.

We know that they didn't expect it because they're cowering, they're hiding away, they are in fear of their lives, they are terrified as to what might happen to them.

Jesus is dead, really dead, but then on that Sunday morning, the first reports begin to come in.

The women returning from the tomb tell the disciples that the tomb is empty.

We're told in uh earlier on in chapter 20 that uh Peter went out with John, that's the other disciple.

If you're looking at verse 4 of chapter chapter 20, they ran to the tomb and that they they looked.

You might just note something about verse 5, uh, where it says, and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but did not go in.

Uh, when it says in verses five and six that they saw, it's interesting, it's not actually the normal word for seeing.

The normal word for seeing is the word blepo, but it's not the word, it's the word the where we get the word theorize.

The disciples have run to the term, Peter and John have run to the term, and they are theorizing, they are trying to piece it together because they're seeing the linens and the spices there.

They're thinking, well, if it was grave robbers, then why would they have left the expensive stuff like the linen?

If it was other disciples, why would they have dishonored the body by carrying it away naked?

They're trying to piece it together, they're not just seeing, they're seeing and trying to theorize, trying to make sense of what they are saying.

Do you see?

And then in verse 19, Jesus appears.

He appears in a locked room, he materializes before them.

He appears to the ten disciples.

It it seems Judas has already committed suicide.

And it seems that Thomas wasn't there.

We're not told why, but it seems that he wasn't.

Then later on in our passage, they tell him that they have seen the Lord.

Let's look at Thomas's response.

This is the the cry of the skeptic, isn't it?

It's a cry of doubt.

That's our first point.

The cry of doubt, verses 24 and 25.

Now, Thomas, one of the twelve, 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 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.

Excuse me.

What kind of doubt is this?

What is what is Thomas uh asserting here?

Is this the doubt of the of the of the scientific empiricist, the evidence-based person seeking to analyze, uh, to do a uh a kind of living autopsy, as it were?

Well, it might help that sort of person, but that's not primarily where Thomas is coming from.

No, Thomas is coming from a place of of deep, deep spiritual disappointment and disillusionment.

It's like the the person that we described just a moment ago whose faith has been shaken by suffering and tragedy.

He's deeply disillusioned.

He's kicking himself.

That he'd been such a fool that he'd been suckered in.

He doesn't want to be taken for a ride again.

He's questioning everything that has happened.

So when the others tell him that they have seen Jesus, his response is something akin to, yeah, yeah, you you might want it to be true, but you're delusional.

And let me tell you why you're delusional.

And he throws down this seemingly impossible gauntlet gauntlet.

He wants the body, not just an apparition, not a goat, a ghost, not a not someone who looked like Jesus.

He wants the reanimated actual physical body of Jesus, who was crucified.

It's worth noting that Jesus had some fairly distinct wounds, not just because he was crucified, but also the manner of his crucifixion.

Let me let me explain a little bit what I mean by that.

In order to do so, it's worth just explaining a little bit about what crucifixion was and what it did.

When a person was crucified, they would they would carry the uh the cross beam.

Normally the uh the vertical pole would remain in the ground.

And so these images of uh of people kind of carrying uh a full cross, it probably isn't kind of uh totally accurate as to what actually happened.

They're carrying a single cross beam that goes on the on the horizontal, and then when they arrived at the place of crucifixion, they would be tied or nailed to the cross beam.

Then that cross beam would be hoisted up and either notched into or set on top of the the vertical.

The person's feet were then either tied or nailed to that uh to that vertical beam.

The way crucifixion killed you wasn't through that nailing, it was asphyxiation.

You suffocated to death.

You had to push yourself up on your uh on your pierced hands and feet in order to open your chest cavity and to get a breath, then you become exhausted and you would slump again and you would begin to slowly asphyxiate again, your muscles would go into spasm.

And this process could actually go on for days and days and days.

And the reason why I tell you all of that is because if the Romans, and indeed John talks about this in chapter 19, then if the Romans wanted to speed up the process, what they would do is they would come along and they would smash the shin bones of uh of the poor soul being crucified.

At that point, he would or she uh would slump on the cross, unable to push uh himself or herself up, unable to get air, and they would die in a few minutes' time.

In Jesus' case, what was noted in chapter 19, verses 31 to 37, is that Jesus was already dead when they came to the point of breaking the legs of the other men.

And so, in order to confirm that they were dead, that he was dead, uh they took a javelin, they took a spear, and and they uh they they jammed it up under the inside, under Jesus' ribcage, piercing the the pericardial sack, the the sack that surrounds the heart, and blood and water flowed out, and that was the confirmation that Jesus was in fact dead.

That wound in his side means that Jesus bears a rare wound, it wasn't standard practice for crucifixion, it wasn't unheard of, but it was distinctive, it was unusual.

So come back to Thomas.

What does he say?

He doesn't just say, I want to see the nail-pierced hands and the nail-pierced feet.

So I want to see those things, but I also want to see the side wind.

I also want to place my hand into where they pierced him.

He's saying, I won't believe unless I have the actual alive person of Jesus.

And how I will know is I will see his pierced side.

I will place my hand into that side wound.

Thomas wants to place his faith on something solid, something tangible, something real and true.

He doesn't want to be suckered in.

He doesn't want to be gullible.

Thomas' second cry comes in the second half of this account.

And it's not a cry of doubt, is it?

It's a cry of faith.

That is our second point.

We read.

Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here, see, and see my hands, and put out your hand, 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 me and yet have believed.

Jesus appears to the disciples, and Thomas is there.

And notice the first thing that Jesus says, Jesus says, Peace be with you.

On one level, this is the ancient way of saying hello.

In fact, it's the way that some people still say hello.

It's shalom or salam.

But in the context of John's gospel, in the context of all that is given, surely there is a far weirtier sense here.

Because shalom in the Bible isn't just a way of saying hello.

Shalom in the Bible, peace is the goal of it's the goal towards which everything has been moving.

It's the goal towards which God is working.

Peace isn't just a greeting in the Bible, it's a state of being.

And so when Jesus comes to the disciples and says, peace be with you, he really means it.

When he says, peace be with you, what you need to realize is that by his death and resurrection, he has just secured that peace that the Bible has been anticipating and longing for.

Uh, to just immediately blaspheme.

The other reason why it was probably not that is because Jesus commends him for his faith.

Jesus blesses him for his exclamation.

So it's probably not a blasphemy.

It's probably not just, you know, overwrought surprise.

So what are we to make of it?

My Lord and my God.

In verse 26, we're told right at the start of the verse, that this encounter happened eight days later.

Eight days later, uh uh a week after that first Easter Sunday.

Eight days had passed.

Eight days of theorizing, eight days of questioning, eight days of processing, eight days of thinking, wondering.

And then after those eight days, Jesus is there in the flesh, standing before Thomas.

And after those eight days, it is as though the penny finally drops.

In a sense, it is as though all of the things of Jesus' ministry come flooding back to Thomas, like a uh like one of those montages of somebody's life flashing before his eyes.

He remembers all of the things of Jesus' ministry, and it all hits him at once.

He remembers, for example, the healing of the paralytic that is recounted for us in Mark chapter 2, and and how he turns to the paralytic and he says, My son, your sins are forgiven.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

And they there's the questioning of the of the religious leaders, and they ask and they say, Who can forgive sins but God alone?

Or Jesus' own teaching in John chapter 5, that it is the will of the Father that all would honor the Son.

John 5 · chapter mention

Or John chapter 8, when he turns to the religious leaders and says, Before Abraham was, I am, claiming pre-existence and preeminence to the great father of faith.

John 8 · chapter mention

Or John 10, when Jesus says that he is the good shepherd who willingly lays down his life for his sheep, that he lays down his life voluntarily, that no one takes it from him.

Or John 14 in the upper room, when Jesus turns to Philip and says to him, If you've seen me, you have seen the Father.

To say nothing of all of the things that he will have learned from his upbringing and what all the things that Jesus will have taught him about the Old Testament scriptures, he will have undoubtedly resonating in his mind all of those images, all of those types and shadows, all of those prophecies.

Things like Isaiah 9, for to us the child is born, to us the son is given, and he shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Or the song of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.

He was pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was laid on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

It is as though all of those things come crowding in on Thomas at once, and Jesus is standing there with nail-pierced hands and spear-pierced side, and it all suddenly clicks.

The penny clunks from brain to heart, and he exclaims this proclamation of adoration.

My Lord and my God, he gets it.

He hasn't been succored in, he wasn't fooled, he wasn't gullible, it all was right, it was true.

He had simply misunderstood.

He didn't know what Jesus' kingdom had looked like.

It is a cry of faith, a cry of worship, a cry of adoration and of fealty, of loyalty and love.

But look at it.

It is not a liturgical cry, it is a personal cry.

A liturgical cry would be our Lord, our God, but it's not that.

It's personal, it's my Lord, it's my God.

He realizes that it is beholden upon him to place personal faith in the risen Lord Jesus.

My Lord, my God.

Jesus goes on.

Verse 29 and says, Have you believed because you have seen me?

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

Some people have mistakenly taken this uh to mean something like, Well, Thomas, I suppose you needed evidence, but it would be better if you didn't ask any questions.

It would be better if you just accepted it, if you just believed.

So many people, so many people in Ireland have grown up with a mistaken notion that you can't ask questions, that you can't have doubts, that all you do need to do is just believe.

Can I say that that is not what is going on here in verse 29?

That is not what Jesus is saying.

No, Jesus recognizes that Thomas now stands in that group of those first generation eyewitnesses.

Those who saw, who heard, who touched the risen Jesus.

And he says, in it in a sense, he says, You are blessed for being in that position.

But he says to Thomas in verse 29, you know, do you know what, Thomas?

There's many more coming after you.

This isn't just for you.

There are generations upon generations of people who will come to Jesus, and they too will be blessed.

They will not be second-class citizens with regards to their faith because they haven't seen or heard or touched.

They too will be blessed.

How?

Because of your witness, because of your testimony.

You pass on the baton of true faith on down the centuries, on down the millennia, and it comes to us.

Jesus is talking about us.

We are blessed.

We have not seen and yet believe.

Because we believe in the true testimony of the eyewitnesses, people like Thomas who asked the questions and threw threw down the gauntlets long before us and had their skepticisms met.

We believe in the same risen Jesus, we believe in the same gospel that he proclaimed to those first eyewitnesses.

This is the point of verses 30 and 31.

This is why John would include it here.

Let's read it again.

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in the book.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Life in his name.

That's what belief is.

Belief is confidence.

It's not a vague notion.

Faith these days has been emptied of all meaning.

It now means something like irrationally and illogically holding on to things that patently aren't true, like elves and fairies.

No biblical faith is not subjective.

It is concrete.

It is based in history, it is based on evidence.

The Bible never ever asks you to believe that something that isn't true.

Let me say that again.

The Bible never ever asks you to believe something that isn't true.

When Thomas exclaims, My Lord and my God, it is not because he has subjectively asserted Jesus' authority or his divinity.

No, it is that he sees with his eyes the evidence and draws the only correct conclusion that the resurrection means that Jesus is Lord and God, that he is Lord and God over everyone and everything in all times and all and in all places.

What we have in front of us in the documents of the New Testament are those eyewitnesses.

They are those eyewitness accounts of people like Thomas, who were shattered by disillusionment, crushed by disappointment.

Doubts were born from suffering and tragedy.

And I know that some of you, your faith has been shaken because of this last year.

Your faith has been shaken because of the suffering and tragedy that you have navigated your way through.

You have questions.

Thomas was the same.

Thomas was the same, and he saw the risen Lord Jesus.

He saw the nail-pierced hands, the nail-pierced feet, the spear-pierced side.

And he realized that all that Jesus had taught and promised was true, that he really was God, that he really had taken sin, that he really had defeated death, that he really could bring peace to your restless and grieving heart.

Thomas realized that with the resurrection of Jesus, the universe now pulses and crackles with hope, an indestructible hope that can never be taken away from you.

Thomas holds out his hand in a sense.

Disillusioned and crushed, disappointed.

Questioning everything I thought was right.

But I saw him.

I touched him.

I place my hand in his side.

He is my lord and my God.

With him all of the things begin to fall into place.

With him, all of the types and shadows come into glorious technicolor.

With him I have hope.

Even in the midst of suffering.

With him, I can know life in the midst of death.

With him I can enjoy and live into peace.

Peace with God and peace with one another.

Thomas find life in the name of Jesus.

The disciples find life in the name of Jesus.

Generations upon generations of people from every tribe and tongue and nation now know life in the name of Jesus.

Will you take that personal cry, my Lord and my God, upon your lips this Easter Sunday?

Happy Easter.

Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed.

Let's pray.

Help us to trust Jesus this morning, this Easter morning.

Thank you for all that He is, all that He has done.

Help us to celebrate that in our hearts and with our families today.

And hasten the day until we can celebrate and remember them together.

We pray all of these things in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.