Easter 2021

Today's scripture is from John chapter 20, verse 24 to 29.

John 20:24–29

It says, 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.

Eight days later his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them.

Although 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 and see my hands, and put out your hand and 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 and yet have believed.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

He is risen.

My name is James Rasp, and I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's great to see you all.

As Zach, our worship pastor, was sharing.

We've got uh an Easter egg hunt that's right after this.

So here's some Easter egg hunt news.

Are you ready?

Start time, 10:30.

Wait on the porch out front until it's time to start.

Uh if you need a bag to collect, look around for Beth.

Could you read there's Beth.

Uh or Julie Fuller, right there, two up front.

Lovely ladies that will have bags for children to collect.

All right, now here's the big rules.

Three and up, polka dot eggs only.

Three and under, any eggs.

If it's an egg, grab it.

If you can count to eight, only take eight eggs.

Those are our Easter egg hunt rules.

Or as we're calling it today, our halftime show.

Last year, as Zach was saying, we uh this is what our preaching looked like.

And so we uh uh wanted to reenact this picture.

That's why I did the back of my hair today.

So Zach is gonna take that picture.

So will you all give your best impression of yourselves if you sit in a picture?

Or if you weren't here, find a person in those pictures and imitate them with your face.

And uh let's take that picture.

Are you ready?

All right, three, two, one.

Doesn't matter what you do, you're wearing masks.

Do we get it?

Nice, all right.

Give yourselves a hand.

It's fun to remember.

All right, let's pray and we'll get into our text for today.

Holy Father, we praise you for this Easter Sunday, for gathering together.

Lord, we pray that you would be glorified and worshiped this morning.

Let us remember the fact of the resurrection, and Lord, might our lives be deeply impacted and changed by it.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So C.S.

Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, uh, and uh he was also an academic at Oxford for most of his career.

And he had a well-crafted academic form of atheism.

If you've ever taken a religious studies class like I have at a uh public university, then you have been acquainted with a well-formed academic sort of atheism.

And he tells the story of himself becoming a Christian in his autobiographical book called Surprised by Joy, which is a wonderful title, something that I hope for each of us this morning.

We might be surprised by joy.

And in it, he tells of this critical moment during a conversation with a person that he describes as his most hard-boiled atheist friend.

And it's a conversation where the friend says this phrase that sort of latches into Lewis's mind, and all of a sudden, God starts to become inescapable to him.

This is what he writes in the book.

He says, early in 1926, the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good.

Rum thing, he went on.

All that stuff of Fraser's about the dying God, rum thing.

It almost looks as if it had really happened once.

Now there are two things that I want to point out in that.

The first, of course, is we need to start saying rum thing.

Like, let's just get rid of strange, let's get rid of odd, just back to rum.

After this, we're gonna have a real rum do.

Second, look at how simple the thought is that rocks Lewis's world.

That whole Jesus thing, where God came to the earth and he died.

It looks like that actually happened once.

That's the simple idea that began to shake Lewis's world.

And what happens is this story of Jesus that Lewis was well acquainted with since he was a child, the story that God became a man, went to a cross, died in our place, and then rose again three days later, that by faith in him we might have new life with God, all of a sudden that story moved from a myth and leapt off the page into a fact that took place in our world.

Lewis was well acquainted with myth.

He was a philologist, which uh means that he studied languages and compared ancient myths between ancient languages.

And so he was well acquainted with the difference between a myth and a history.

But what he saw in Jesus was this myth of God being a man all of a sudden leapt off the page and became reality.

That means it became something that impacted our world, became a part of his real life, suddenly inescapable.

It was this matter-of-fact statement from a trusted skeptic that caused Lewis to see the gospel leap off of the page and into his very life.

Now, my hope this morning is that we will have that same sort of trusted skeptical friend because the scripture gives it to us in Thomas.

Thomas is one of the disciples, and Thomas acts as this sort of skeptic, not acts as, he was, a skeptic of the resurrection right after it happened.

And in seeing Thomas's response to the resurrection, we get this same sort of skeptical friend that Lewis had.

And I hope that we'll see that it draws us to see the reality of the resurrection.

And once it becomes real, a fact, it leaps off the page from myth into our everyday lives.

Now it's something that can actually become transformative for us.

So three things.

We're gonna look at the skeptic, we're gonna look at the evidence, and we're gonna look at the response to the evidence.

Ready?

Break.

John 20, 24, verse 24.

Now Thomas was one of the twelve, called the twin.

He was not with them when Jesus came.

Alright, so our story today actually takes place one week after the resurrection Sunday.

Jesus is crucified on Friday, he's buried, and then resurrects on Sunday.

And that resurrection Sunday, he went and visited his disciples.

His disciples were hiding out together in a locked room.

But Thomas wasn't there.

He was out getting more ice or something.

And he comes back, and all the disciples are like, hey, the Lord was just here.

And this is Thomas's response.

It's skeptical.

John 20, verse 25.

John 20:25

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.

Look at how fresh the memory of the cross is in Thomas' mind.

When he hears that the Lord is alive, what does he jump back to?

He says, No, look, I saw him.

I saw him hung on the cross.

I saw the nails in his hands, I saw the spear put into his side.

Don't make light of this.

I can't come back into this room and you guys just say he's back.

You can feel the reality of it in his heart.

He's saying, don't over-spiritualize this thing.

He was our leader and our friend, and we saw him died, and I can recount to you physically how it happened.

And so he goes back to the physicality of the event of the crucifixion, and he says, unless I see the scars in his hand, unless I touch the wound in his side from the spear that killed him, then I cannot believe.

In fact, you can hear how emphatic he is, the intensity, and you can understand the emotional intensity of someone who had seen their friend crucified and then hears he's alive.

Don't make light of this.

He says, I will never believe unless I see the nails, the wounds from the nails, unless I touch the wound in the side, unless that happens, I will never believe.

It's an understandable position, isn't it?

I mean, we're talking about resurrection.

Then he sees the evidence.

John 20, verse 26.

John 20:26

Eight days later, so this is a week after today, you know, Easter Sunday, a week after resurrection.

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again.

They're gathered back together again, hiding out in a locked room because they would like to not be crucified.

Raise your hand if you would like to not be crucified.

And Thomas was with them.

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

Alright, so in this we see two rum things.

Jesus came through a locked door.

Jesus just appears in the rooms, sort of.

They're in a locked room, and Jesus, in his resurrected body, just comes into the room uninhibited by these normal physical factors that we all have to engage with.

Now, this is the uh second time that this has happened.

The first time that Jesus visited the disciples on Easter Sunday, he likewise came through locked doors.

And before that, when Jesus' resurrection itself is described, when Mary, who's the first, Mary Magdalene, who's the first to discover Jesus, uh, walks in and sees him, his grave clothes are laid out in such a way that it looks like he just moved through the clothes without being unwrapped from his grave clothes.

Now, John, in recounting these details in his gospel, he's drawing us to make a comparison between a previous resurrection that we've seen, which is the resurrection of Lazarus.

Jesus walks up to Lazarus' tomb and he says, Lazarus, arise, and Lazarus go comes out.

And the uh when Lazarus comes out, he's he's just like us.

You know, he's alive in the same way that we are.

He's not glorified in a new state of being like Jesus is, and so they have to unwrap his clothes.

But when Jesus comes out, he's saying this isn't like Lazarus, you see.

This is a different type of resurrection.

Jesus likewise, it understands Thomas's skeptical heart.

And so what is the first thing that Jesus says to him?

He says, Peace be with you.

The first thing that Jesus says to the skeptic is, I've made peace between us.

That's what the cross means.

And then Jesus offers this invitation to come to himself.

Look at this.

John 20, 27, the next thing Jesus does says, Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here, see my hands, and put out your hand, and place it in my side.

Do not disbelieve, but believe.

Rum thing number two.

Jesus answers Thomas a question that he never heard Thomas ask.

So Jesus comes through and appears, uninhibited by space, and then he speaks to Thomas as though he's omnipresent, always hearing him.

Now let's think of this in terms of the conditions that Thomas had asked for.

He had said, unless I touch you and see you.

Well, what does touching and seeing mean when it's a body that appears before you?

What does touching mean when it's the type of body that seems to be able to move through walls somehow or is unimpeded by physics?

And yet Jesus invites him to touch, and we know that Mary clings to him.

He's not a ghost, he is touchable.

And what does it mean when Jesus responds to Thomas, answering a question that he wasn't even present for him to ask?

He's acting omnipotently towards Thomas in this scene.

Thomas asked for Jesus to prove that Jesus was like us again.

Instead, Jesus proves to Thomas that he is like God.

Thomas laid out these conditions.

Unless you do this, I won't believe.

And Jesus says, I transcend your conditions, and I'm calling you to a type of belief that is far beyond anything you could test or concoct for yourself.

You see, he's transcending the skeptics' questions and drawing Thomas into a whole new way of viewing the world.

You asked, What's resurrection like?

I'm showing you I'm God.

It's a very different thing.

And you know, we do this all the time, where we set these particular conditions for our belief in God.

And they're just based on this thin human framework that we are able to develop.

It's the only one we have access to, being humans.

And we'll say things like, I would believe in God if he didn't seem so harsh with his sexual ethics.

I would believe in God if he didn't send people to hell.

Then that would be a God that I could believe in.

And I would believe in God if uh my divorce hadn't happened.

I would believe in God if my mother or father hadn't died, or if my uh my child I hadn't lost my child, or if I wasn't riddled by this disease, or had that financial loss.

And we offer these conditions, the same type of conditions that Thomas offers, where he says, I'll believe in you once I can touch it and see it.

I'll believe in you if you're acting like me, like I think you should act.

Jesus comes in and totally transcends those conditions.

Christ reveals himself not as someone who is like us after the resurrection, but as God himself.

And the response to that is worship.

Listen to Thomas's response.

John 20, 28, Thomas answered him.

My Lord and my God.

This is the climactic declaration in the Gospel of John for who Christ is.

And it comes out of the mouth of this doubter, Thomas.

My Lord and my God.

You have transcended the categories that I asked of you.

I can no longer call you teacher or rabbi.

I have seen you speak to me.

You have you have beyond met my conditions.

You have blown apart the very conditions that I had in my mind.

I must approach you differently now.

You are my Lord and my God.

And you can hear the worship in it.

You can hear he says the word my, my Lord and my God.

This is covenantal language.

We are together.

It is personal.

But it's not just personal, it's submissive.

He says, You are my Lord.

And that means what you say goes.

Because let's compare ourselves to one another.

I am a creature, and when I die, I'm dead.

You are the Lord.

And when you die, you come back to life.

What you say goes.

My conditions have fallen by the wayside completely.

You are my Lord.

Not only is it personal and submissive, it is transcendent.

My God.

God Himself has taken on flesh and died that we might be reconciled to Him.

It is an act of worship.

Leslie Nubigan says the resurrection cannot be part of any history unless it is the center and turning point.

The resurrection is a part of history.

It is not myth.

And that means in the life of the world, it is the center and turning point.

And in our lives, it must be, it demands to be the center and turning point of our lives.

This is the stakes of discovering that terrifyingly simple fact that was laid out by C.S.

Lewis's friend when he said, It looks like it happened once.

But look, you haven't seen him.

We haven't gotten to see or touch.

And by the way, notice, Thomas didn't see, didn't touch him either.

He no longer thought of things in those terms.

So what does that mean for us?

Jesus' next verse is the next thing Jesus says is this to Thomas, chapter 20, verse 29.

Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me?

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

This is the second beatitude in the Gospel of John.

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

Jesus answers the question that Thomas never asked.

Do you think that he showed up that first Sunday when Thomas wasn't there because he forgot Thomas wasn't going to be there?

Why do you think Jesus didn't just wait?

Wait until all the disciples were together, reveal himself to them all at once, and then there wouldn't have to have been this cynic, this skepticism that Thomas went through for a week.

Have you considered that perhaps it's because Jesus was waiting for you?

Because your heart is like Thomas's, and it needed a skeptical friend that we could see have the resurrection proven to themselves.

So that Thomas could become our friend and we could look at his story and then echo this statement that he makes afterwards, saying, You are my Lord and you are my God.

This is what we see in Jesus' resurrection.

That even in his waiting to reveal himself to his closest disciples, he is seeking us, those who wouldn't see him, that we might hear the story and be transformed.

Here's the crazy thought that I want you to entertain this Easter Sunday?

What if it actually happened once?

What if God became a man and dwelt among us as real as you are, as real as your squirmy child is on your lap?

What if he took on the punishment that you and all your earthly sin and flesh deserved?

What if three days later he rose from the dead?

What if all authority in heaven and on earth was given to him and that in him we have new life by faith alone?

What if it actually happened once?

It's Easter Sunday, I think it did.

Let's worship him for that.

Let's worship him saying, This happened.

This happened.

Let's pray.

Father, we praise you that you would take on flesh, that we might be drawn close to you.

Lord, we praise you that you deal with us in the reality of our hearts, and that even in the depths of our skepticism, you show up and speak peace to us and draw us towards yourself.

Lord, let us see the reality of your resurrection and let us manifest it in our lives by the power of your spirit.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.