special mission to head down to see how Roger and Diane behave themselves over the winter. A redacted version of that report will be coming out in a few days. But I was able for the last seven days in a row to stare at the great Gulf of Mexico and to have sensory overload with sights and sounds, and then to open up and worship and have the question asked, who has held the oceans in his hand? And it's a lock-in regarding worship. We worship a great, a mighty, a powerful God. So let's open up his word. He speaks to us. John chapter 20, we pick up in the account where Jesus has raised He appeared on Sunday night in the upper room to 10. Thomas wasn't there, but the Lord Jesus returns. John 20, 24, follow along as I read. But Thomas, one of the 12, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore were saying to him, we've seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I shall see his hands, the imprint of the nails and put the finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight days, again, his disciples were inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came The doors had been shut and stood in their midst and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, reach your finger and see my hands. Reach here your hand and put it into my side and be not unbelieving, but believing. And Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we consider your might and your power and the way that you swallowed up the earth with the waters. and how now here we are on dry ground, and here we are with an ark of safety, the Lord Jesus. And we praise you for him, and we ask that we would see him in the word by your spirit, and we would end up bowing down, saying, my Lord and my God. We pray this, asking your spirit then to be here. In Jesus' name, amen. The Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge, built in 1855 across the Niagara River, was the world's first railway suspension bridge. It spanned 825 feet over the chasm where the Niagara Falls Whirlpool thundered below. and it connected Niagara Falls, Ontario with Niagara Falls, New York. But many thought that bridge just couldn't be built. How can you span that distance from cliff to cliff? Well, the answer is by a thread. That's right, by a thread. A man named Charles Ellett hatched the idea of flying a single string over the canyon by a kite, and then that thread was used to pull over a cord, and then that cord pulled over a rope, and that rope pulled over a chain, and that chain a cable, and on that cable was built a bridge which huge trains rumbled across for decades. That's how you build a bridge. We asked the question, how do you build faith? Faith sturdy enough to span the chasm between earth and heaven. Faith sturdy enough to carry a never-dying soul home safely for eternity. Well, in this passage we see Jesus. He's a builder. He's the great carpenter at work in his post-resurrection appearances. He's spanning yawning gaps in a whole variety of personalities and temperaments after his resurrection here. People in whom there was no faith at all, but with Christ's work, he builds faith. We see it first. He began building for Peter. The denier in 20 in verse 5. He built faith in him with a post-resurrection appearance. Second, he began building in John, the lover. Remember John standing at the tomb in 28 and following? He's building faith in John. Third, we see in Mary Magdalene, the immorter. Different personality. Builds faith in her beginning at verse 11. Even in Luke 24, we think of those two men on the road to Emmaus. Those two thinkers! He built faith in them. And now fifthly, we see he begins building faith in Thomas, the doubter, here in verses 24 through 29. So let's look at Thomas the doubter. Christ building faith in him under six main headings. We'll do verse by verse, six verses. Come on there firstly to verse 24. We see an unfortunate absence An unfortunate absence. It says here, Thomas 1 of the 12, called Didymus, which means twin, he was not with them when Jesus came. Let's zoom lens in on this Thomas fellow. We met him back in John chapter 11 and verse 16. Remember Lazarus was sick. They got to travel to Judea, but the Jews are going to stone Jesus in Judea, Thomas thought. So Thomas says, let us go there and let us die with him. You taste Thomas' personality there. He's a fellow who's doggedly loyal, but he has a real pessimistic temperament. This pessimism is reinforced in 14.5 of John. We're in the upper room. Jesus says there, let not your hearts be troubled. I go to prepare a place for you in the Father's house. But Thomas didn't have much imagination. He couldn't see the silver lining in what Jesus is saying. So Thomas complains there in 14.5, Lord, we don't know where you're going. So then how can we go? He's a fellow with kind of a gloomy mind. He's like in Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan talks about people like Mr. Much Afraid, and Mr. Fearing, and Mr. Despondency. That's Mr. Thomas the Doubter. You know there are certain bolts of fabric when it comes to Christian personalities? You're like a certain fabric, and I'm like one, and you're like one. Well, Thomas has this pessimistic fabric of a personality, this Enneagram profile shade. You know who Thomas is? We know who Thomas is, don't we? Thomas has the tendency to accept the bleakest possibilities as probabilities. You know the kind of a person Even the bleakest possibilities, there are certainties. I just know they're going to happen. And with that personality, there's a tandem trait of kind of being a loner, isolating oneself, especially in times of stress and difficulty. That's Thomas here. Look, the text says, Thomas was not with them when Jesus came. Why wasn't he with them? I don't know exactly. Maybe it was the crushing, Disappointment of Good Friday that caused him to be so overwhelmed that this Thomas, like the Thomas personality, creeps into the corners to be alone in their grief instead of finding comfort in fellowship with others. One is Thomas here was absent. So that when Christ came on that Sunday night, resurrection night, he visited them in the upper room, came through somehow the bolted door, he spoke peace to them, he breathed out the Holy Spirit, he resuscitated their souls when the others were gathered together. Old Matthew Henry comments this way and says, note, Those know not what they lose, who carelessly absent themselves from Christians assembling themselves together. I didn't write the statement that says, forsake not the assembling of ourselves together. The great physician, the Lord Jesus, says that we're to gather together one day a week. And that's a very important formula for spiritual health. I still remember how I was off at a Pastor's conference in New Jersey and your old pastor, Bill Hughes, preached a sermon from Jeremiah on the potter rebuilding what he broke. And maybe you even knew of that sermon, the God of the second chance. And the next day, there were two ladies talking in the hallway and says, were you here yesterday? Did you hear that sermon yesterday? And the woman said, no, I didn't. I'll just listen to it on tape. Oh, it won't be the same. You missed it. You missed it. Like when the word was preached, it caught lightning in a bottle. You can't keep lightning in a bottle when we gather together and worship. There's unforgettable encouragement that comes together. There's a tattoo-like impression made on our soul that we can't brush away for good. McLaren says this, the worst thing a man can do When unbelief and doubt and coldness shrouds his sky and blots out his stars, the worst thing to do in such circumstances is to go away and shut yourself up on your own into those perhaps morbid, disturbing thoughts. We can kind of do that, can't we? But instead, the best thing that we can do is to be among the brothers and the sisters. And if the sermon doesn't do you any good, then the singing will do you good. If not the singing, then the praying will do you good. If not the praying, the fellowship will do you good. The great physician had a kidney problem. The great physician says, dialysis once a week. And if you don't get your dialysis once a week, there's a toxic buildup that makes you heavy and sluggish and maybe even fevered. But after the dialysis section, you feel so much better and there's a surge of energy, right? I didn't say once a week. Meet, and I'll meet with you in upper room. The Lord Jesus says it as a prescription for our health. So we see that Thomas here missed the joy in the presence of Jesus. Missed the peace speaking words of Jesus. Missed the spirit breathing of Jesus. Missed the wind which brings the uplift for the wings that comes from the Lord Jesus when he meets with us. So it's no wonder that he spent the next week in despondency those seven days. instead of rejoicing in the truth of the resurrection. So that's an unfortunate absence. I hope we leave here rejoicing in the truth of the resurrection for the next seven days. But secondly, come out with me, a stubborn skepticism, a stubborn skepticism in verse 25. Now, humanly speaking, Thomas' unbelieving pessimism was a tough canyon to bridge. As he returned from his unknown retreat to the upper room, it had been up there, kind of like a morgue. I used to work in a hospital when I was in seminary, and the worst place is morgue. I'd open it up for a mortician. But the best place was the obstetrics maternity floor. There's all kinds of giddiness there. When Thomas had left the upper room, it was a morgue. He comes back now, it's the maternity ward. And there's giddiness. And he's met, probably, by Peter, who is the spokesman. Peter had been unconsolable in his sin, but now Jesus has visited with him, and he's ecstatic, and he says, Verse 25a, we've seen the Lord, Thomas. The doors were bolted behind, and he came in right among us, and he let us touch him. Luke 24 says, a ghost, you guys, doesn't have flesh and bones. Here, give me some fish. And he ate the fish right in front of us. He was real, Thomas. He spoke peace to us. He breathed the Holy Spirit in us. And Thomas saw that those cowering, fearing lambs, they now had the eye of the tiger. They had seen something. But Thomas standing there, he is so entrenched in his despondency that he had the stubborn audacity to accuse the whole crowd of people who were there. You have hallucinated this whole thing. It's just an optical illusion that you have, as a crowd, Imagine what Thomas said when he disbelieved the report of the many there in the upper room. You, you women, you're just telling me idle tales here. You, you other friends of mine, you brothers, you're so fevered with your hopeful optimism that you guys can't even think straight. No, I am not going to be drawn into this sanguine charade of yours. Leon Morris says he refused to be persuaded by the combined testimony. And no matter how stupid they had been, Thomas thought to himself, I'll not be deceived into it. No, no. No, there's a stubborn skepticism here. You see it in Thomas. Now consider a few noteworthy things about this. Note the skepticism. And note how, you know, some say there's this conspiracy theory that the 11 disciples hatched this idea. Hey, let's have a plot, steal the body, we can scam Jerusalem. They'll all think that Jesus rose from the dead and we can be celebrities on the spiritual stage for decades to come. Beloved, there is no such groupthink momentum that was in that upper room to manufacture such a fake news resurrection. No momentum there, psychologically speaking. Such a view would fly into the teeth of the pessimistic cynicism of that morgue upper room. Only a true resurrection. could resurrect the faith of these men. There's no conspiracy theory traction here. Skepticism had been in that room, and Thomas is the poster boy of it. But note also the provocation, the provocation in Thomas himself. It says in 25b, Thomas, listen to what he says. Unless, imagine how Bitter this must have sounded in the ears of the other disciples in the upper room who had seen Jesus. Unless I see in his hands the imprint of the nails, unless I put my finger into the place of the nails and my hand into his side, I will not believe. That's not a good look. That's a bad look in Thomas saying, my way or the highway. It's the same look that we get back in Matthew 16, when the Pharisees and the Sadducees had their hands on their hips and they said, the Pharisees and Sadducees were testing Jesus saying, oh, you're the son of God? Show us a sign, show us, show me. Or the same is true in Matthew 27, 42, when Jesus was up on the cross hanging? And there they were, you see them wagging their heads, hands on their hips? If he, if he be the son of God, show me, let him come down. This is not a good look that we see from Thomas here. How do you dare as an impudent grasshopper dictate to Jesus what he must do or you won't believe? There's also a note of contagion here. Contagious pessimism. We can have an effect on one another. He says, I will not believe. You just wonder what a quenching effect this cynical attitude had on the happy band in the upper room. Matthew Henry says, surely this was a discouraging stumbling block to the others. We can psychologically affect one another, can't we? In Deuteronomy 20, it says, if men are going out to war, let the faint-hearted one go home, so the hearts of the others don't melt. We can, by the way that we act, melt each other's heart for the bad. We can, like there's a commercial, I've seen it, for COPD. It's when you can't breathe, your lungs get older, and it says, it's like there's an elephant sitting on your chest, can't breathe. It's for Spiriva, this drug. Well, likewise, you realize that we can be like, Giving COPD to someone else gets contagious by our pessimism. People feel an elephant's rump on their chest when we're around them. Could that be that we could be like that? I was in panhandle of Florida the last few days, so I heard a lot of Alabama accent. So let me just read. little dialogue between two southern women just after slaves were freed in the South. Just listen to these two women, these two personalities. One was a cynical pessimist who looked at things bleak. The other was a spiritually minded optimist. Landlord, wealthy lady said to her newly freed slave helper in the house, oh, Nancy, how is that you're always so happy when your future is so precarious? Nancy, you have no wealth. You have no inheritance. Suppose, Nancy, you get sick and you can't work. Suppose, Nancy, you lose your job. Suppose. Now Nancy's going to speak. Stop! I never suppose. The Lord is my shepherd, and I know that I shall not... And honey, it's all them supposes that's making you so miserable. You'd better give them all up and just trust the Lord. You see, one of those personalities is like an elephant's rump. suffocating spiritually those around, but the other is like, like eagle's wings, giving lift to those around. Let us resolve that we won't be unnecessarily like doubting Thomas's one to another. That's a stubborn skepticism. But come out with me now, thirdly, to a purposeful delay. A purposeful delay. It says in verse 26, eight days after his disciples were again inside, and Thomas was with them, and Jesus came, and the doors had been shut, and Jesus stood in their midst. Peace be with you. It's a reenactment of what happened the last Sunday night. By the way, it is Sunday night again. You say, wait, it says eight days afterwards. Yeah. But that's a Jewish idiom, which means it's the eighth day, which we would say seven days later. F.F. Bruce says, eight days to be reckoned inclusively. It was, says F.F. Bruce, according to Jewish idiom, the first day of the week. What day are we meeting here? The first day of the week. In Acts 20 in verse six, Paul stayed in Troas until seven days he waited, until the first day of the week. Why did he wait seven days in Troas? Because he wanted to meet with the church who was gathering on what day? The first day of the week. Also in Revelation 1, John got this wonderful revelation and visit of Jesus who spoke to him, it says, on the Lord's day. Jesus visited him on the first day. Jesus was taking a big yellow marker and then maybe putting a pink marker around that. Said, the first day of the week is the day that I visit with y'all here. For the eighth day is the day of the new creation, the first day of the week. When two or three of us gather here, what does it say? Jesus is in our midst. He comes through the doors, if not bodily, by his Spirit. So we see here, eight days waiting on the Lord. The other disciples hadn't seen him now for a whole week. It's a key factor in the Christian life, isn't it? Waiting sometimes and wondering. and trusting that the Lord's wise timing is always in effect. It was true for those other disciples. They were waiting and he was here, but he hasn't come back. What's going on here? What is he doing? Or even for Thomas, Thomas is considering, what am I supposed to do with the witness of these other people in the upper room? You have to think about, what am I supposed to do with this for a full week? In fact, you know what? We've been kind of waiting too, haven't we? He's been gone like almost 2,000 years now and we're waiting on the Lord, waiting on his timing. Aaron read from Daniel 12, we're waiting for the resurrection, the reappearing of the Lord Jesus. Waiting is a part of just dealing with Jesus for all disciples of all time. Matthew Henry says this, Jesus tests them with his absence to wean them off his bodily presence. For they had grown dependent for years to depend on Him being there, right there. He's maturing with the waiting process, and the wondering, and the thinking. Even just this last week, Dan and I out on the beach with little 18-month-old Marcus waddling around in the sand. Sand's not bad, because if a boy falls on the sand, it's kind of like a cushion. He can fall. So I said, just let him walk. Let him walk. We'll go way ahead. We'll go way. He may even lose sight of us. That's OK. He'll learn something. Well, the Lord has had us walk and toddle around outside of his sight. We're learning something. We're learning how to live. Even those in the upper room, we're learning how to live without Jesus being right there. And isn't that the way a mother does? A mother goes and stands on the other side of the corner and looks, and always within view, the little 18-month-old, we're always in view of him. Jesus was watching Thomas. He was watching those in the upper room, always from a distance. And there is that purposeful delay. He's maturing us. Come on, fourthly, a gracious condescension, verse 27, a gracious condescension. By condescension, I mean stooping down and bending low to retrieve one straggler. Jesus was a good shepherd. Like it says in Luke 15, he leaves 99 and he comes after the one. That one is Thomas. He's coming back for Thomas. And it's a reenacting of what took place the previous night, the Sunday night. The door was shut. Jesus, it says in verse 26, appeared in their midst. The door was locked. How did he get here? This is deja vu for the other 10 apostles. And Jesus says, peace be with you in verse 26. Now, Thomas. who had that bad look and that skeptical, bitter talk. Now he is blown away. His hair is blown back by this appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think he's probably also struck with the good shepherd's personal love to him because in verse 27a, it says that Jesus said to Thomas, Maybe his gaze was a group gaze, but now it's an individual gaze. He locks in on Thomas here, and Jesus basically says, and now you, my straggling friend. Imagine what he senses in being addressed personally by the Lord Jesus. Isn't there something in the military that says, no man left behind? Pretty sacred. Policy. No man left behind. I remember back there was this Mogadishu, Africa, 1993 Black Hawk Down rescue. That took place of some guys who were left behind. The Special Ops 75th Ranger Delta Force. They had just returned from a hellish firefight where the bullets had been flying and blood had been flowing. And once they got back to the base, they counted off and they said, We got a handful of men who are left behind. And though all of them still were in shell shock, they said, the captain spoke, let's go back. We got to get him. And they all said, hoo-ah. There was a guy named Sizemore. And Sizemore, in the movie anyway, is climbing into the Humvee. He's got a cast freshly put on because he broke his arm in the last firefight. He says, Sizemore, what you doing? You got that cast on. You know what regulations say. You can't fight with a cast. So Sizemore took a knife and starts cutting it off. He says, OK, OK, OK. Because the philosophy was, whatever it takes, we're not going to leave any man behind. That's the captain of our salvation, the Lord Jesus. That is his motto and his battle cry, whatever it takes. The Father says, of all those that you have given to me, you've given to me some, Father, of all those, I'm gonna lose, how many is he gonna lose? None of us! Oh, my straggling soul feels so secure with the thought of having such a captain of my salvation. So he said to Thomas, reach here your finger. Thomas, see my hands? Put your hand into my side, Thomas. Now to whom was he speaking? This darling, sweet friend? Thomas had really been quite annoying and quite arrogant. But look at Jesus' words here, they echo. Really, they echo Thomas' words. Didn't Thomas say, unless I put my hands in his hand, unless I put my hand in his side, and Jesus echoes it back. What is Jesus saying? Jesus is saying, Thomas, I heard every word you said. Bitter and arrogant and proud as your words were, you sounded like the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Note how there is, beloved, straying sheep like Thomas, like me. There is no disloyal word on our tongues, disloyal thought in our minds that Jesus doesn't hear or Jesus doesn't see. But look, he keeps coming back for the likes of us, doesn't he? Even though he knows, he saw it. You heard it, what you said, what you did, what loving condescension to our exasperating weakness. Thomas, pessimistic temperament suddenly balked, wouldn't believe. Instead of Jesus abandoning him, Jesus stoops down to him. And look at this, he patiently exposes himself And if I were going to expose myself to someone, it might be like some proud moment, some proud thing. You know, if I had gotten a wristwatch from my dad, I might want to show him that. But Jesus exposes his most humiliating moment. He exposed the most agonizing, arguably shameful thing because he had become sin in the cross. These are the marks of his becoming sin. But we see as Matthew Henry says this, he allows his wounds to be raked into, even lets Thomas poke his side, if in doing that, Thomas will at last believe. Whatever it takes, Jesus will humiliate himself. Whatever it takes that we not be left behind. A bruised reed he won't break. A smoldering wick he won't snuff out. He'll blow on it. He blows on me so often, I'm shamefully confessing to you. because I must be blown on. I must have my brick splinted. He blows and splints us all. And though his death sunk him to the lowest shameful indignity. You imagine what he has allowed us. What often we are to handle with our fingers that most shameful dimension. What the bread and the wine. We handle the bread and the wine. And what do these commemorate? His most humiliating moment when he was sin. And he has us handle it often, if that will resuscitate. and revive our faith in Him so that we won't be left behind, so that we'll get up again from our sin and run the race in such a way as to win the prize. What a gracious condescension we see here in the Lord Jesus Christ. It says in 27C, Thomas, be not unbelieving, but believing. Literally it says, stop being unbelieving, Thomas. Remember the father whose son tossed himself into the fire? He says, Jesus, I believe, but help my unbelief. That's what Jesus is doing here. Jesus despises not Thomas' little thread of faith. You should be a rope by now. You should be a cable by now. No, no, no, no, no. Look, he pulls through the string into a rope, into a cable to get Thomas home. And if you're here with a little thread of faith, just a little bit of faith, and you say, it's Christ's fault. He doesn't give me what I need. Listen, listen. It's not Jesus' fault. It's your fault. It's my fault. There's adequate testimony. There's adequate testimony. declaration and witness of who Jesus is and what Jesus did for us to believe. It's us who are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. But look at Jesus. All those the Father has given Him, He's going to pull them home. What a Savior. And I just say this, we should bask in this. You fellow stragglers with me, surely we have been irksome and tiresome to Jesus, the good shepherd. And surely there are times you do like I do. You fear that we are doomed to be cast off, but we can be comforted with the fact that look at Thomas. Thomas, who arrogantly blew off the testimony of his 10 brothers. And Jesus heard all his wild words, and you have wild words that you've spoken, and wild thoughts that you've thought. And look, Jesus loved Thomas still, and he loves us still. And look at Thomas here. Instead of being excommunicated, Thomas gets loved on. And that's the way it is with us as well. It should be for our comfort. You know, it should also be for our imitation. And I say that because we need to have that same mindset too. You know what the mindset is? No man left behind. Among us. Look around. Look around. Look around, we are a little band of soldiers for the Lord Jesus Christ. We get in firefights, don't we? And we have certain people with certain bolts of personalities, maybe the pessimistic, maybe the Mr. or Mrs. fearing and trembling. And what are we gonna do? Hey, she can't keep up with us. He can't keep up with us. We're gonna continue on. No, no, we not only are comforted by the no man left behind of Jesus, but we seek to imitate it. We go back for her, don't we? We go back for him. It may cost us scars, but we are patient and gracious like our Lord Jesus Christ. We're willing to take hellfire again to, as Jude 23 says, snatch brothers or sisters from the fire. That means bear attitude. So come on with me then, having seen gracious condescension to a believing confession. A believing confession in verse 28. Thomas answered and said, my Lord and my God. It seems that Thomas made sure that he had banked his life on the resurrection claim rightly. It's interesting how even this pessimistic skepticism, which I think I'm right in saying it was a bad look, even this Jesus harnessed for his glory. Because in it we see, you wonder here, you're sitting here in 2019, did Jesus really rise from the dead? You know, you talked, Pastor Mark, about a conspiracy. Was that just a conspiracy that took place back then? Listen, look at this account, how boldly honest it is. These men were not, they may have had a bad look, but there's something about their bad look that helps us. These weren't gullible men. These were cautious. These were suspicious men. They all suspended their belief in the resurrection until they saw compelling, Evidence, Peter there scratching his head with those grave clothes, John Thomas examining things here. The resurrection was historical. And that's so important because Jesus hung his entire ministry, his entire mission on whether or not he rose from the dead. He promised as Jonah was three days in the belly of the earth, I'll be three days in the belly of the whale, three days in the belly of the earth. And if he didn't rise from the dead, don't believe anything that he says. But if he did, then he is who he said that he was. And Thomas was compelled on the basis of what he saw, this cynical, skeptical fellow, my Lord and my God. And what is this? Look at that, in that verse, my Lord and my God. You realize this is the climax of the gospel profoundly? How'd the gospel begin, John 1? In the beginning was the word, And the Word was with God. And what does it say? And the Word was God. And the Word God became flesh and dwelt among us. Really? Really? Yeah, Thomas is really. My Lord and my God. This is God. Jesus is God. It is essential that Jesus be God. Because if Jesus was just man dying and saying in John 19, 30, it is finished, what does that mean? One man dying. One man dying for one other man. What does that do to us? We're 100 plus people here. What does that do to us? We need one man who can die for all. We need one man whose shoulders are broad enough to bear the sins of the world. And we need God, who has an infinite identity, to bear an infinite weight of sin because of an infinite crime, to pay an infinite price to bear the infinite wrath of God on the cross, so that when he breathes his last and says, it is finished, it's all of our sins are paid for. And because He is our Lord and our God, listen to me, it really is finished. We don't have our price paid for just a month or two out of hell to keep us from weeping and wailing for 60 days. Brethren, we've been there 10,000 years bright shining as a sun. No less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun because Jesus paid it all in eternal wrath, hate, because he was our Lord and our God. And that faith, where'd that faith come from in Thomas? Was it just a matter of scientific investigation? No, I tell you. It's like the blind man in John chapter nine was blind and then Christ healed him and he could see. The sun had always been shining, but the spirit of God healed his eyes so he could see. Jesus had always been the Son of God, but Jesus healed Thomas' eyes so that he could recognize the reality of the Son of God and who He really is. And I just look at this room and I wonder, who is shrouded in darkness and doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ? You know what? It's not just a matter of scientific investigation. If I could put you in a half-Nelson grip and pin your intellect and convince you that Jesus is the Son of God and you are saved, no, this is a spiritual matter. We have this on our stove, one burner. You can turn it on, it's gas, and it smells and it smells. The igniter doesn't work, but if I take a match and I put it, oh, would the God of the Spirit of God would ignite your soul and you would see my Lord and my God. Oh, that you would really see it like Thomas saw it by the work of the Spirit. Believe in the Lord Jesus. Stop on believing, as Jesus says. Just lastly, come on, lastly, an enduring blessing. Verse 29, an enduring blessing. Jesus says to Thomas, okay, that's great, Thomas, you believe. That's good, that's good. I'm thankful. You're coming along with us. Come here, you're gonna go with us. We're taking you home. He loves him. But Jesus says, Thomas, because you've seen me, you've believed. It's okay. But, or more so, more so, blessed are they who didn't see and yet believed. There are all kinds of characters in the Gospel of John. Did you realize you were in the Gospel of John? I'm there too, right there, right there, where it says, Blessed are they who didn't see and yet believe. That's you. A couple, three or four years ago, you believed. That's you. You're right here. You believed in Jesus, but you didn't see. Here we appear in John's narrative. The multitude of saints who believed, unlike Thomas, We've believed without touching and feeling and seeing, like it says in Romans 10, 9. How can they believe unless they've heard? We've heard and we now believe. Jesus says that is more blessed. You know, we may have these inferiority complexes, right? We think, oh, Thomas, the great faith that Thomas had. He was there, he could touch, he could handle. But Jesus says, no, listen to this. Our faith is of a greater quality than his faith. It says John the Baptist, none greater in the kingdom than John the Baptist up until this point. But we are greater than Thomas. Think with me now, think with me. More blessed are we because we haven't seen, yet we believe. Ours is a higher rank in the kingdom. The faith that comes to believe on easier terms than Thomas' terms is the better testimony, Jesus says, is the better faith. Hebrews 11.1, faith is what? The conviction of things not seen. That's what we have. We have a very elegant faith, a superior faith than Thomas' faith. Remember he says, the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians. Beloved, I don't mean to boast or brag, but I'm bragging on the spirit of God. Ours is more noble than Thomas. But if I was in the upper room, what a great giant in the kingdom. No, no, no. Ours is a superior faith, believing on report, on testimony. For the fact of the matter is our souls were conquered more impressively than Thomas' soul. Ours is a better testimony. Sometimes we think to ourselves, oh, if I had this, The Apostle Paul testimony where I was Saul and I was thrown down on the Damascus road and I saw Jesus in this flashing light, lightning strike, oh, that's a great testimony. You know what? That is quite a crude testimony, quite crude. Your faith is one that had to be bullied. Take someone like Acts 16, instead of Acts 9, Paul, Acts 16, Lydia's faith. It says of Lydia, it's a very elegant faith. The very superior faith. It says of hers, and sitting on the riverside, as Paul preached, it says, and the Lord opened her heart. Some of you say, that's kind of my testimony, and I just opened my heart. That is elegant. That is God-glorifying. Jesus says, that is more blessed. than Thomas' faith. So, beloved, don't despise your little faith as if it's just a weak testimony because you heard a witness and you believe maybe in Sunday school class. That's glorious! Thomas, Thomas should have built on that elegant thread of the testimony and made it a string and a rope and a cable and girders. Jesus says, blessed are those who believe and do not see. Are you in that category? You believe, you don't see, and sometimes it just seems like such a little faith, little faith. Just pull on that thread and pull into a string, into a rope, into a cable. It'll get you across, beloved. It's enough. It's enough faith. It'll get you across the chasm from earth to heaven. Treasure that little thread that you have. Treasure it as something very precious. Westcott tells about a man named Dr. Arnold, an old seminary professor. When Dr. Arnold was suddenly struck with a deadly sickness, he laid on his deathbed and repeated firmly and frequently, Jesus said to Thomas, because you've seen me and you've believed, Blessed are they who did not see and yet believe. You see his lips moving? Blessed is he who did not see and yet believe. Blessed is he who did not see and yet believe. He trusted that seeming thread was enough to get him home safely. For Dr. Arnold, it's true. And it's true for us too. Blessed are we. who we believe we haven't seen. What an elegant, glorious conquering of our souls. Believe in the Lord Jesus. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved. Let's sing a hymn.