Believing Thomas

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church

Henley and thanks so much for tuning into our

podcast. Our prayer is that through this podcast,

you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life. And now get ready for an inspiring

message from our preaching team. Today's Bible

reading is from John 20, 24 to 29. Now Thomas,

known as 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 in his side, I will not

believe. 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 fingers here. See my hands.

Reach out your hand and put it in 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.

This is the word of the Lord. Awesome. Welcome,

welcome. I'm Ashley. I'm one of the pastors here.

And today we had growth track and we had three

beautiful people finish up. Oh, look at them.

They're cute. So their faces are going to go

on the board. Missed out. Um, could someone grab

more scriptures? Let all distraction fall away.

Let me just hear your voice clearly, Lord. I'm

gonna have to turn these photos up the other

way, because I just had Alex Evans looking at

me. Now there's a question, and I want you to

hold on, so I'm gonna ask you a few times throughout

today, so don't worry if you forget. What conditions

would have to be true for you to hear something

and have it change your life forever? Have it

change your life forever. You know, my childhood

was in part shaped by my military family. From

a very early age, I was taught that life runs

on protocols and schedules. Charlie's not here,

he knows. And 24 -hour time, definitely. You

know, there's a chain of command. My dad was

the top. There was a clear set of goals and there

was a right way to go about it. You follow the

steps and you get the result. Maybe it was my

upbringing, maybe it's just the way my brain

works. But you know, this mindset kind of followed

me into my adult life. In my uni study, I spend

time solving analytical problems and writing

lines of code. My brain just gets used to looking

for patterns. When I'm stuck with a calculation,

I'm studying mathematics by the way, if you didn't

pick that part up. When I'm stuck solving a calculation

or my piece of code fails, which is all the time,

I don't sit down and empathize with my computer.

I just fix it. I look at the objective numbers

in front of me, the bad code I've written, and

I fix it. This causes a bit of tension and grief

in my own life because I naturally assume that

humans operate the very same way. You know when

someone I I know is in care about is making a

destructive choice or they're wrestling with

the deep questions of life My immediate instinct

is to teach them why it's teach them. Yeah teach

them is to treat them like a math problem. I

Assume that what they're missing is the right

information That if I just give them the perfect

logical answer outline the consequences and provide

the undeniable facts, they will feel better.

You know, I take times, I take this approach

to God myself, you know, Jesus, what book do

I need to read? Jesus, not Tim. Sometimes the

one, you know, Tim was Jesus' book. Do I need

to read? What prayer? What prayer do I need to

pray? What am I failing to understand that will

make everything better? What would change everything?

Do I need to go to yet another conference? Because

I'll do it. They've normally got really good

lemon slice. But you need history. But I am constant

transformation, which is upsetting as I write

a sermon. But what a relief And she got a little

too high which is wasn't that high But she got

a little too high and she looked down and she

suddenly was in absolute panic And in that moment,

she didn't need a physics lecture on and the

statistical probability of her falling here Facts

do put my hand on her back grab her left leg

grab her right leg and physically guide her down.

You know, information is utterly powerless when

what we really need is an intervention. And so

that brings us back to that first question. What

conditions would have to be true for you to hear

something and have it change your life forever?

We're in the middle of a series on resurrection

of Jesus and over the course of this series we've

talked about historical facts, we've talked about

the empty tomb, eyewitness accounts, the undeniable

reality that Jesus rose from the dead physically.

We have to confront a difficult truth today that

facts alone do not change us. We're actually

logical arguments usually only deepen our already

held beliefs. In the 1970s, I was gonna say the

70s, but I feel like we nearly had to clarify

that. The 1970s, the researchers at Stanford

University surveyed a group of students. 50 %

of them were pro capital punishment and 50 %

of them were against capital punishment. And

they gave them two fabricated studies. with fabricated

statistics in them, one of them advocating for

each side. And then they surveyed, so the people

read the studies and they surveyed the people

again and no one changed sides, not a single

person. The students were simply weaponized with

new facts. barricading themselves deeper and

deeper into the corners that they already occupied.

You know, we do this exact same thing with God.

When life is abundant with blessing, praise be

to God, we can think it's because we're doing

or believing the right things. Doesn't it go,

God is good all the time, all the time God is

good? But when life breaks our hearts, when the

diagnosis come back, so our marriage is falling

apart, or God feels entirely silent despite us

screaming out for Him, we retreat behind a wall

of cynicism, you know, we fold our arms and we

look up to heaven, and we demand evidence. Prove

it to me. Show it to me. Show me that I am on

the right path. But here's what we need to understand

today. Our demand for proof is very rarely an

intellectual pursuit. More often than not, it's

just a defense mechanism. Psychologists tell

us that cynicism and skepticism are not just

personality traits. They're not just a skeptic.

but they are profound defense mechanism. Cynicism

develops as a response to the brains, the psyche's

way. You know, we hold up our skepticism like

a shield because our minds are trying to avoid

emotional overload. You know, it's so important

to protect our wounds. And tragically, the church

can be a difficult place to bring this heartache.

According to recent studies by the Barna Group,

52 % of adults and teens experience profound

religious doubt. But when that doubt hits, 45

% of them simply stop attending church. Only

18 % of them consider talking to a pastor. The

rest just leave. Like, why? Why? Well, you know,

the secular world celebrates skepticism as an

intellectual virtue. But, you know, in our pews,

we don't have them, but we can call them that.

In our chairs, in this, in this chair, doubt

is often treated like a moral failure. The church

has historically failed to hold space for doubters.

You know, if you have questions, you're made

to feel as though your faith is defective. So

terrified of being judged, you know, we lock

the doors to our hearts and we hide behind our

defense mechanisms. You know, this tension that

we're left with is agonizing. We desperately

need God to intervene in our pain. but we're

too terrified to drop the shield of our intellect

to let them in. How can God possibly reach us

when we demand cold facts, but we actually need

a warm and near Savior? You know, I wonder what

conditions would have to be true for you to hear

something and have it change your life forever.

I wonder what conditions you need to be true

before you believe. What is stopping you from

believing? You know, this tension, this collision

of intellectual defence mechanisms and deep,

deep heartbreak is played out in the Gospel of

John that Matt read out. You know, to understand

Thomas, we have to realise this absolute agony

that he's in. On the evening of the first Easter

Sunday, the resurrected Jesus appeared to the

disciples and they are overjoyed, naturally.

But Thomas wasn't in the room. He missed out.

He's got FOMO. Thomas banked his entire life

on Jesus and he had just watched the man he loved

be publicly tortured and executed and when the

other disciples run to him breathless and excited

saying Jesus is alive Thomas's response is born

out of out of his grief that he's feeling. John

20 25 says unless I see the nail marks in his

hands and put my finger where the nows were put

my hand into his side. That's what the heading

in the Bible says. He's devastated. He's putting

up a shield. He's using this demonism at bay.

You know, and then Thomas at God is absolutely

nothing. Celebrate a miracle that he hasn't experienced.

His heart is weary and he's completely like locked

into his after some unweight believe harder You

must try harder to believe But if Thomas just

needed to try harder To believe the evidence

The testimony of his ten closest friends Would

have been enough But facts Do not cast out fear.

You know, Tyler Stanton captures the heart of

this. When he asked that question that I've been

asking, what conditions would have to be true

for you to hear something and have it change

your life forever? And he answers it like this.

You know, it's not evidence. It's encounter.

The overlap of the subjective and the object,

no, that's the wrong way around, the overlap

of objective and subjective information. Information

I found easy to overlook plenty of times before

is now colliding with my personal story at just

the right moment, in just the right way. That's

what changes us. Church, it's not evidence, it's

an encounter with the living, breathing Jesus.

Jesus doesn't wait for Thomas to fix his own

faith. A week later, Thomas is back in that house.

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

in my side. Stop doubting and believe. Thomas

said to him, my Lord and my God. Jesus doesn't

send a theological argument. He doesn't scold

Thomas for his lack of faith. He steps right

through the locked doors of Thomas' desperate

and weary soul. There's something incredible

about the resurrection here. Jesus has a glorified,

perfected A resurrected body and by all accounts

a perfect body shouldn't have holes in it. The

wounds should have been completely healed. But

why does Jesus keep his scars? Well that's another

sermon that Tim can preach another day. But you

know he keeps, he's resurrected with holes in

his hands in part to provide comfort to a doubter.

You know, he retained the marks of his pain and

because he did, because he did, he could speak

right to Thomas's pain. Jesus provides the objective

truth. He is undeniably historically alive, eating

broiled fish, but he overlaps it with subjective

empathy. The objective reality of the resurrection

collides with Thomas's highly personal and agonizing

grief at just the right moment, in just the right

way. Jesus completely bypasses Thomas's intellectual

defense mechanism by overwhelming him with radical

grace. You don't have to choose between your

intellect and your heart. Jesus redeems both

through encounter. I'm going to invite the band

back up. Notice how Thomas responds. He hasn't

poked the scars nor his head and say, all right,

the data checks out. I agree. to this reality.

You know, Thomas falls to his knees and he weeps.

His heart is completely softened by a savior

who would intentionally carry his scars out of

the grave to answer a friend's deepest fears.

So think about your own life right now. What

conditions would have to be true for you to hear

something and have it change your life forever?

You know, maybe you're sitting here today and

you're holding up a massive shield. You convince

yourself that you have sophisticated and analytical

questions about theology. You've read apologetic

books. You've listened to the debates. You keep

your faith strictly in your head. But the truth

is, is you have deep and unhealed wounds. Your

doubts look like intellectualism, but beneath

it you're just terrified of being vulnerable.

You know, you're using your brain to keep God

at arm's length. Maybe you're on the other side

of the room, and you're in your doubts, but you're

faking it. Maybe you're exhausted from projecting

certainty, and you come in here every week, every

other week, you sing the songs, you lift your

hands at the right moment, and you put on a brave

face because you think of anyone, especially

God, You how many different you do not have to

pretend skepticism And he does not require you

to fake a certainty you do not possess But you

must realize that a bulleted list of fat will

never heal your soul So drop the shield And stop

pretending that you don't need any Pray a dangerous,

honest prayer today, Church. Bring the absolute

mess of your story to Him. Tell Him exactly why

you are cynical. Tell Him exactly where you feel

betrayed. And ask Him to let those things collide

with the objective reality of His grace for you.

The Gospel tells us that we do not have to clean

up ourselves to encounter God. God stepped into

the locked rooms of our mess to encounter us.

It's so tempting to treat our faith like a logical

argument, a set of facts. It would be a lot easier

to print out the perfectly designed flyer, thanks

Carmen, with all the right doctrines and the

objective facts and drop it in the letterbox.

We all can do that now and hope the information

does the work. You know, one time in my old church,

we had a Mormon, I think it was Mormon apologetics

book nailed to the church door. And this is one

strategy. But like, what if we as a church held

space for doubters? What if we looked at the

statistics that people are leaving their faith

because they don't feel safe asking the hard

questions. And we decided to change that narrative

here at Henley. What if we dragged the barbecue

into the front yard, invited the neighborhood

over and became a safe haven for other people's

mess? You know, I think if we did that, then

we would be a community that doesn't that doesn't

like flinch. When someone says, I don't believe

any of this, I've been hurt too badly. You know,

we wouldn't fight to win the argument. We would

just pull up a chair, serve them a meal, invite

them to Alpha, and listen to the pain beneath

all that doubt. You know, we could hold to the

undeniable objective truth of the resurrection

but deliver it with the radical empathy of Jesus.

You know, if we do that, then we can be a place

where the lonely, the cynical, the skeptical,

the doubters, the completely broken, where you

find a family that holds space for scars because

we worship a God that still carries His. Friends,

Jesus wants to do that right now. The resurrection

isn't just a historical fact from 2 ,000 years

ago. It is a present reality. He is living. Breathing

Savior who wants to encounter us today. So why

don't we stand? You know, some of you walked

in here this afternoon with the doors of your

heart firmly deadbolted. You are protecting yourself.

It has kept you safe for so long, but you are

holding onto your skepticism. God is the only

thing that is keeping you from falling apart.

But the truth of the resurrection is that locked

doors cannot keep Jesus out. He is standing here

today offering you his wounded hands. waiting

for that glorious overlap when His objective

grace collides with your specific pain. He is

not asking you to figure it all out. He is not

asking you to fix your faith. He is simply asking

you to drop the walls, to reach out your hand

and let Him encounter you today. and watch it

change your life forever. Thanks so much for

tuning into this week's message. If you felt

challenged or need prayer, we'd love to hear

from you on Instagram at encounterhenley. Or

if you're interested in how you can support this

ministry, please go to our website encounteradelaide

.com .au. Thanks again for listening. God bless

you.