Well, this afternoon, briefly turning together back to John's Gospel, chapter number 20, and picking up there where we left off this morning, I want to read there with you verses 19 down to verse 29. Jesus is alive and he begins to show himself to his disciples. And by faith, we see how they're transformed from doubters to believers. And so here in John's gospel, chapter 20, 19 through 29, here is the very gospel of the Lord himself. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you as the father has sent me. So even so, I am sending you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. them. If you withhold forgiveness for many, it is withheld. 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, Thomas, said to them, Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe 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 hand 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. So far, God's wonderful gospel story, and we write it upon our hearts this afternoon, this day. I think the way that we read and process the biblical stories can oftentimes lead us to doubt and even to despair. Even as Christians, let me explain. We talk about the patriarchs. the patriarchs, the matriarchs, the forefathers, our foremothers. We think of them as holy men and women. We even call them heroes of the faith. We have a chapter for that in our Bibles, don't we? The Hall of Faith, right? We have the Hall of Fame. We have the Hall of Faith. These great believers with great faith, with great strength of faith. And so we look up to them. We want to emulate them. We want to be like them. But then we can oftentimes have a sense of discontent, disconnect even, because we think, well, they were holy. They're called saints, after all. That's what a saint is, a holy one. They were holy. I'm not. They had faith. Abraham foresaw, and they, by faith, grasped the promises, we're told, so many times in Hebrews 11, for example. They had faith, but I'm struggling. How can I relate to these heroes who have their golden bus, as it were, in the hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11? How can I relate to them? How can I be saved? How can I have such faith? You ever had those kind of thoughts? If we're honest, most likely we have. I have, myself, speaking for myself. But I want to turn to John 20. and the account of the resurrection once again. Just to follow up with a very important detail that we see here in the chapter, especially with Thomas, we'll come to him in just a moment, but we see this very important detail that we proclaim the Lord is risen indeed, but we have to also be realistic with our faith and recognize as John 20 teaches us that even disciples doubt. that even disciples doubt. And so, again, the first witness at that empty tomb was Mary Magdalene. In verse 1 of chapter 20 told us that when she saw that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, She went, she left the tomb, she goes and she finds Peter and John, and together with them and the other women, they go back to the tomb, and she reasons, of course, we saw that in verse two, that she wasn't sure what had happened. They've taken the Lord out of the tomb, they've placed His body somewhere, I can't find Him. And I alluded to this, but we saw her doubt. Her ignorance. She doesn't recall her Old Testament stories that she should know so well. They would have sung in synagogue, Psalm 16. They would have read passages from the Old Testament every single Sabbath day. She didn't even remember Jesus' very own words, the one to whom she's going to the tomb to finalize that anointing process, that burial process. She doesn't even remember His words. And so she only thinks of theft. Peter, John, the other women, they come, they go, and she's there lingering, weeping, we saw, loudly outside the tomb. And even when two angels, clad in white, that's to remind us of Old Testament stories. And when God appears by angels, Isaiah in the temple is, he sees the Lord high and lifted up, and he looks up into heaven, and he hears the angelic choirs, holy, holy, holy, falls on his face. The angels appear to Abraham and to Sarah, and they fall on their face and call them Lord, and so forth. Yet angels appear, she sees them sitting in glorious white robes, and not even then does she grasp the greatness of the miracle. Her mind is still lingering about the fact, the fact of the body. And so she turns around, she sees the Lord, but doesn't recognize it's the Lord, she thinks it's the gardener. Again, not recognizing what's going on. And she asked the gardener, supposedly, for the body to finish up her burial process. Even disciples doubt. Even the first witness. Ignorant. Misunderstanding. Doubts. It's not so fast to think of these holy patriarchs and matriarchs as completely on fire and sold out at every single moment of every single day. They have doubts. They struggle. Even when they saw the empty tomb, and they saw the cloves lying there, they saw the angels there, they heard the very voice of the Lord. And then we read about John and Peter. Again, John stooped down to look into the tomb, but doesn't go in. Peter follows him up, actually goes in. John then follows Peter into the tomb. And they look, what do they see? They see the stone where he would have been laid, and they see nothing but the burial cloves there. And we read in that verse there, verse number eight, John 20, verse eight, John, it's singular, John believed. Singular, John believed. Not both, but John believed. But then there's that weird verse, verse number nine that I just alluded to earlier. For as yet they, plural, did not yet understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. So what did John believe? What did Peter and John misunderstand? Not yet understanding the scripture. Well, John saw what John saw. He clearly saw with his very own eyes. They both did. They saw the stone rolled away. They saw the empty tomb. They saw the stone table. They saw the burial clothes there. They saw no body. And Jesus had spoken though over and over again. in the very Gospel of John itself, let alone the other Gospels. In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks over and over and over again by using these cryptic, but not so cryptic, sayings that he's going to the Father, he's ascending, he's going to be lifted up. But they don't grasp, they even have a disconnect between what Jesus has been saying to them for three long years and what the Old Testament says. He knows that there must have been a resurrection, but not connecting it yet to the fact that this is what God had promised for thousands of years. For as yet, they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. They thought about ascending and going back. No doubt he's reasoning that he's back in heaven. Nothing is going to be raised from the dead to be back to life on this earth, as the Old Testament said. Didn't Job say that in his flesh he would see God? On this earth? On his very own feet, as it were? That's what John and Peter are missing. That they didn't see it yet as fulfillment of Scripture. And John's writing this after the fact. So he's reflecting back and saying, at that time, they didn't quite yet understand the Scriptures. Of course, now they know. The Spirit's been poured out. They go out and they preach after Pentecost, knowing all these things have been fulfilled. Even disciples like Peter and John doubt. And then here in our passage, beginning at verse 19, you have this whole group of disciples. They're locked behind closed doors. They're afraid. They're afraid of persecution. They're afraid of arrest. They're afraid of themselves being crucified and killed. Even disciples doubt. Their Lord has just been raised from the dead. He's the Lord of heaven and earth. All authority belongs to Him. But they're afraid of some men who are going to come and knock down their door and arrest them. And so he appears to them, and he shows them his hands, he shows them his side, and the response in verse 20 is gladness. We begin to see the transformation. They have doubts, but yet they begin to be transformed by the Lord himself. And then we come to Thomas. He's called one of the Twelve, that is, one of Jesus' apostles. He was not with them, verse 24 says, when Jesus first came. They were all there, they all saw, they all responded with gladness, but yet Thomas for some reason, we're not told why, he wasn't there. Everyone else is in joy. The Lord is alive. And they go and when Thomas comes, they find him and they tell him, we have seen the Lord. Why do we call him Doubting Thomas? Because of what he says. Doubting Thomas. all the disciples are now with one accord saying the same thing we've seen the lord himself and doubting commas says 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 in fact into his side i will never believe i want you to circle those that that little phrase or i will never believe There are certain ways of saying things, we can say it in English, I will never believe, but there are certain ways of saying things in the Greek New Testament that emphasize something. In fact, the way Thomas, the way John records Thomas' phrase here, it's an emphatic double negative with a future tense verb. It's the strongest way of denying something. There's only a few examples of this, but it's the strongest way of denying it. He's saying, I will not believe. Never! That's what he's saying. He's not just saying, I won't believe. Unless I see his hands on his side, I'm not going to believe. I won't believe that never, ever, ever, ever. It's a double negative with a future tense. He's so certain. He's so absolute. You've come to me and you say, we've seen the Lord with such confidence? Well, I have such confidence too. I will never believe, never, unless I see him, place my fingers into his hands and my hand into his side. Even disciples, notice again, even disciples doubt. And so what do we read next? It's interesting that we read there this phrase in verse 26, eight days later, eight days later. I mentioned in the first sermon that, you know, one of the things that we hear from skeptics is how the chronologies and so forth, they don't seem to line up and people say, aha, the Bible has contradicted itself, it's not inspired and so forth, it's just a bunch of myths. They don't have the same sense of chronology and detail that we have. In the same way, they don't count the same way. We think eight days later, well, he rose again on a Sunday. We think eight days later, that's going to be what? That's going to be like the next Monday. He's including that resurrection Sunday. It's an inclusive counting, it's called. What he's saying is that this is the very next Lord's Day. This is the next Sunday. This is the next first day of the week. But why does he say eight days later? Because John in his, and even in the book of Revelation too, he has this sort of theological idea of eight. That God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. That's the first creation. Now there's an eighth day that has arisen. The light of the world has come in the darkness. There's a new creation, that's what he's saying. The Sabbath has passed. The Lord's Day has come. The seventh has ended. The eighth has come. This is the new creation. This is a resurrection day. And so Sunday, the first day of the week, is not merely a commemoration of the resurrection that happened historically, but it's a pointing forward to eternity. It's a new creation day. They're gathered again eight days later. This post-resurrection new creation of the Lord Himself is working and establishing and creating. And on that day, Jesus' disciples again were inside. The doors locked again. And what do you know? This time, who's there? Thomas was with them. And what do you think he's doing? Doubting. You can imagine him in a corner, just, they're happy, we've seen the Lord. I know we're afraid, we're locked on this door, but we've seen the Lord. We know that something miraculous has happened. He's kept his word. He's gonna do something. And there's Thomas, as it were, by himself, brooding in doubt. Unless, I see, I will not believe, never. Jesus appears again. Just like before, he speaks to them, peace. Gives them a benediction. But notice how John crafts the narrative to say he makes a beeline for Thomas. His focus is on the one. He leaves the 99, as Jesus says, and finds the one straying lamb. He goes to the one doubting disciple. And notice, what did Thomas say? He said, again, 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 the side, I will never believe him. What does Jesus say? He says the exact same thing to him. Put your finger here. See my hands. Put out your hand. Place it in my side. You want evidence? Here it is. See. Touch. Feel. Believe. Thomas said it so incredulously, Jesus now commands him to do that which he said He would only believe if He could do it. Here He is. It shows us. Here's the Lord of heaven and earth. He's created. John 1. He's the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. All things came about through Him. Nothing was made that was not made by Him. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God and human flesh. And now He's raised back up. He's the Lord of glory. The Lord of eternity. The Lord of all things. And He stoops so low to this doubting disciple. He doesn't just come there and like Zeus with a lightning bolt and take him out. He doesn't chastise him. He doesn't crush him. He doesn't throw him out and find a replacement disciple, an apostle for him to take his 12 spots. The Lord of eternity stoops down to him and says, if that's what it takes for you to believe, then believe. See, touch. Why does he do this? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Jesus strikes right at the heart, at the root of Thomas' unbelief, when Jesus says, do not disbelieve, but believe. Do not disbelieve, but believe. And it sort of has the same kind of alliterative flow in English as it does in the Greek text. Do not disbelieve, but believe. That's the command, isn't it? Believe. And just like with Mary, Thomas replies in faith, My Lord, my God. Even disciples doubt, but even doubters become disciples. Jesus wouldn't have it any other way, would he? Who does he welcome into his kingdom? Sinners. Unbelievers. Rebels. And he even made those same kinds of unbelievers, sinners, rebels, disciples, and apostles. Disciples, doubters. Doubters become disciples. Now don't overlook verse 29. Don't overlook that. It's not only a story about Thomas, about his unbelief being overcome by Jesus. Jesus says to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen. and yet happily. Because we reason, notice that John goes on to say in verse 30, 31, John does this a lot, I mentioned this in John three, that John has a lot of these quotations from Jesus, and then he'll pause and explain it. Notice, there's this dialogue going back and forth, Jesus, Mary, Peter, John, Thomas, and then John inserts this little explanation. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you might believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Because we reason the same way. Unless I see God himself stooping out of the hiddenness of eternity, I won't believe. And we can even, we see people stand in public place and say, you know, God, if you exist, strike me dead right now. And he doesn't do it and he says, well, you see, God doesn't exist. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. And so here it is, this John 20, it's all laid out for us. The tomb was empty. It's interesting that Mary doesn't show up, and then Peter, and then John, and everyone else, and see Jesus. What do they see? They see an empty tomb. The tomb was empty. Mary's there. Peter's there. John's there. Other women are there. What they saw were the burial cloths. Mary sees them as well. And she speaks with angels. And even when the Lord is right there before her face, she doesn't recognize Him. They don't know the Scripture and the power of the Scripture. The Old Testament had prophesied this was going to happen. Jesus said it was going to happen just like this. And Thomas doesn't even believe. And he has this incredulous tone to him. I would never believe. Never. When do they believe? Notice this, when do they believe? Mary recognizes and believes only when Jesus first speaks to her and says, Mary. And then she recognizes and then she cries out, Rabboni, my dear teacher. It's only when Jesus sends His Spirit on the day of Pentecost that John can say they didn't yet understand the Scripture that He was going to rise from the dead. After Pentecost, they're preaching this stuff. Read the book of Acts. They're pointing the Old Testament out and showing how it all points to Christ, death and resurrection. But it takes Christ ascending and sending His Spirit. It takes Christ doing something for them to realize that. And it's only when Jesus stoops so low Again, we have to imagine this. He's just been resurrected. Matthew's Gospel says when this happened, the tombs were emptied. People saw the dead risen from the dead. Not just him, but others. The temple curtain was torn in two. The sun was turned black. It was stupendous. but he goes to a hidden room where it's locked in the dark, finding a doubting disciple. He takes initiative, shows himself doing the very thing that Thomas said he needed in order to believe. In other words, I can give you all the evidence in the world, the veracity of the New Testament manuscripts in comparison to manuscripts for even Julius Caesar's existence, I can show you quotations from Jewish unbelievers and Roman poets and philosophers and other texts that show that Jesus of Nazareth, no one ever doubted that he lived and died. Of course, there are even those who said he rose again, but yet they didn't believe that it was so significant. I can show you from the scripture itself, promises like Psalm 16 and others, all the evidence in the world, but you still wouldn't believe it. It takes hearing the voice of Jesus in order for all that stuff to make sense. That's how it was for Mary, that's how it was for Peter and John, that's how it was for Thomas, that's how it was for all the disciples. It takes Jesus coming, taking initiative, speaking to the heart of a sinner who then humbly receives and believes. And little by little, he then begins to transform us by his Holy Spirit from the inside out. And all these things begin to make sense. Jesus invites doubters. He invites sinners. He invites skeptics. He invites those who would never believe, no matter how much evidence, he says, come to me, come to me. I will open your eyes, open your heart, open your mind to receive and to understand these wonderful truths of who I am, that I've made you, I was sent to redeem you. Let's pray. Gracious God, we thank you once again this Lord's Day, this new creation day, this eighth day, as it were, where we gather in your presence to remember what happens, but we also, by faith, look forward to what is awaiting us, the resurrection of our bodies, to be made like our glorious Lord's body, freed from sin, freed from all the bondage of decay that is found in this life, to be like Him, to see Him face to face, Until then, Lord, would you give us confidence to be witnesses, to go, and to tell, and that others might believe. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.