Our text this morning is John chapter 20, verses 19 through 32. And as we celebrate Resurrection Sunday, I want to revisit one of my favorite passages that really does help to remind us of the presence and power of Jesus in his church. and how he comes and he speaks to us through his word every single week, and that he has a purpose in doing so. So the text is John 20, beginning in verse 19, which says, so when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came. and stood in their midst and said to them, peace be with you. And when he had said this, he showed them both his hands and his side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them again, peace be with you. As the father has sent me, I also send 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, their sins have been forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they have been retained. But Thomas, one of the twelve called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see in his hands the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. After eight days, his disciples were again inside and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut and stood in their midst and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, reach here with your finger and see my hands. And reach here your hand and put it into my side. And do not be unbelieving, but believing. 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 open with prayer together. Father in heaven, as we turn now to your word and the preaching of your word, we ask of you that your loving kindness would comfort us. that your peace would be upon us, that according to your word given to your servants, we would receive the blessings that Christ offers to his church shown so clearly to us here in this passage, and that we would understand that this passage speaks even to us today, that as we gather on this day, the first day of the week, that Jesus is present with us in power to speak to us, to comfort, to guide, and to commission his church. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. I must really like this passage because I preached on it three times now for Easter, so I'm hoping third time's a charm, and I'll get it right this time, and we can move on to something else in the future. But I think the reason I come back to it is that when I think of the resurrection, this is where my mind automatically goes. It doesn't go necessarily to the tomb. It doesn't necessarily go to the graveclaws lying there and Peter and John seeing them and Mary Magdalene. For some reason, I always go here because we meet every single Sunday in anticipation of the presence of Jesus with his people to speak his peace to us. And so it becomes very applicable. I think every week as I consider that reality, I'm blown away by the truth that Jesus comes to meet with us, that the Bible assures us of this over and over, and we believe it by faith that when we assemble on the Lord's day, it's not to meet with each other necessarily, it's not just to kind of fulfill the obligation, but it's because Jesus invites us to be in his presence. And every week I come with my heart prepared to do that. I want to be in Jesus' presence and I want to hear from Him. I want to hear from His Word, and every week without fail, I've been a Christian now for 15 years, without fail I have been blessed in the assembly of God's people with Christ's presence. I love the church, and I love the church because the church is the body of Christ. And where the body of Christ is, there Christ is. And where Christ is, there are blessings for everyone who comes to him in faith. We've seen this as we've gone throughout Luke. Everyone who came to Jesus was blessed by him. And that's the point and purpose of his ministry, that he loved his neighbor as himself. He never refused help to anyone. And so when we gather as the church in faith, Jesus is here to bless us if we come to Him for that blessing. And so, because the Word of God on the Lord's Day, as it's read, as it's proclaimed, as it's preached, as it's sung, when the church is assembled and Jesus is present, we are to understand that as Jesus speaking to His people. we should be eager to give ourselves to the blessings that he provides in that assembly on the Lord's day. And so we'll ask a few questions of the text, and I want you to really see how it applies to us today. It's very important for our understanding of what we do each and every Sunday and why we should do it. What does Jesus? resurrected and glorified say to His church when we gather in His name? What does He have to say to us? And why do we need to continually, week after week, hear from Jesus this same message? So I have four points from the text. We're going to see that Jesus speaks peace to His church. Secondly, Jesus speaks his authority to the church. Third, Jesus speaks to the doubts of the church. And finally, Jesus speaks to his church that we would have eternal life. Let's begin in verse 19 as we see Jesus speaking peace to his church. So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut or the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, peace be with you. The events of the resurrection that we summarized in Matthew 28 include the angels at the empty tomb. We see Mary's meeting with Jesus. In other gospels we see the two disciples as they rush and they see the empty tomb themselves. And then really this is the unique part where on that very same day that all those events took place, and as we read even from Matthew 28, Jesus tells the disciples, go to Galilee, that's where I'm going to meet with you, where do we find them? We find them huddled up in a room together on the first day of the week, anticipating, I think, Jesus coming and speaking to them in some way, shape, or form. They had heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus had arisen, that Mary had seen, that she had even touched Jesus, and here they are hiding out from the Jews, and there must have been some anticipation that Jesus would come to them as well. That's why they're all sticking together, they're remaining in the same place. I find just in that very idea one of the great applications for the Christian life. We gather together as Christ has commanded us to do, not forsaking the assembly of the saints, doing so in the anticipation that where two or three are gathered together in Jesus' name, he is there in our midst. Now, here's one of the problems that we as Christians don't expect enough out of our assembling together. We think often that church is kind of the drudgery, the thing we've got to come and do. We've got to fulfill this obligation. We forget that we have an open invitation from Jesus to come and to meet with him. Now, I've used this before. A president, let's say a president you like. You may not care for a president. If someone you liked, a high-ranking official or general or president invited you over for dinner, there's not many of us that would say, you know, I'm just not feeling it today, not feeling like going. we would all go in great anticipation of meeting with this great person. And when we come to the church, we have to get past the naturalism that has so infected our minds that we think we're just kind of here gathered, singing songs, doing things, and by faith believe that Jesus is here present to meet with us. that He's here to speak with us. And in doing so, we need to anticipate by faith great blessings from God. Where Christ is, we should expect blessings. You notice the evening on that day, and then he clarifies it, the first day of the week. There's this emphasis in the resurrection over and over again about the first day of the week. Spelled out in church history, we don't gather on the last day of the week, the Old Testament Sabbath. We gather on the first day of the week, which we call the Christian Sabbath. Now, why do we do that? And this emphasis for us may be missed, but for the Jews, it made perfect sense. And I want to read from you a kind of a lengthy quote to help you better understand what we often call the eighth day. the idea that we worship on the first day of the week. David Van Drunen writes about this. He writes a really good section in his book on living in God's two kingdoms. But he says, Leviticus 25 speaks about a Sabbath year, the year of Jubilee, a time when people were released from their debts and restored to their inheritance. He says this year of Jubilee took place on the 50th year, the year after seven times seven years, that is seven squared, the perfect number of ordinary cycles of years. Liberty was to be proclaimed throughout the land. This was the year for showcasing the grace of God that conquers all evil. This practice of celebrating a Sabbath on the 50th day or year must have been wonderful for the Old Testament Israelites, but a little confusing nonetheless. The ordinary weekly Sabbath was about working first and then taking rest. But here, they were instructed to rest at the beginning of the cycle of time before that period of rest. He says, what was the meaning of this different kind of Old Testament Sabbath? Goes on and says, it pointed ahead to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. During his earthly ministry, Jesus announced on a Sabbath day, a Saturday, the fulfillment of the proclamation of liberty, the year of the Lord's favor. We just saw that in Luke 4.19. Jesus pointed Israel to himself as the one who brings the true and ultimate jubilee for his people. How? He says Jesus rose after the Sabbath on the first day of the week, Sunday. The timing is truly amazing. The day that Jesus laid dead in the tomb turned out to be the last Sabbath of the Old Testament era. He goes on to say, the resurrection now announces that Jesus, as the last Adam, has completed the task of the first Adam, and he has attained his reward of rest for the world to come. This is why we gather on Sunday. We gather because we rest first in Christ and his completed work. And then we go out and we labor in gratitude for Jesus' accomplishment of our salvation, as we realize that we are now co-heirs with Christ of that eternal kingdom. Now, there's a difference between being one of four heirs and a co-heir. And again, as we're expecting blessing, we need to think in these terms. You can be a, let's say you're one of four siblings and you receive an inheritance, that inheritance is divided up between four of you. A co-heir is different. A co-heir receives everything that the other heirs receive. And one of the things that we have to realize about Jesus is that his completed work earns for us everything that belongs to Jesus. That kingdom that Jesus earned through his life, death, burial and resurrection and ascension is our kingdom. We are co-heirs with Christ. This is the day that Jesus meets with his co-heirs to build us up, to strengthen us as we rest in him first and his finished work in anticipation of receiving that whole heavenly kingdom for ourselves. So now the disciples are here. They're gathered together, they're behind these locked doors on the resurrection day for fear of the Jews. And the reason is they figured they were next. They figured that they're going to get killed next. And yet, in spite of their fear, you notice that they didn't all scatter. They didn't all just run away and hide and try to get away from each other. They didn't split up. They didn't go their separate ways. It's not like in the movies where the bad guys are trying to get away and they say, let's all split up. They can't follow us all. Although they're facing death and persecution, they don't apostatize. They don't abandon fellowship. They stay together. And we also note something else. Thomas wasn't here. Perhaps Thomas, in his grief, perhaps in his sorrow, perhaps in his unbelief at Jesus' resurrection, he decides to spurn the disciples. He spurns the saints. And because he does this, Thomas is deprived of all the blessings that Christ brought to the disciples on this resurrection day. But worse, Thomas, because he spurns the assembly, he launches himself into a path of unbelief and apostasy. He missed it. when Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, peace be with you. Prior to Jesus' death, he would often speak this peace to his disciples. In fact, there's a few texts. I'll just read them for you. John 14, verse 27. Jesus says, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. He's speaking peace to his disciples. This is a peace that he brings, a peace between God and man, a peace that culminates in this eternal kingdom where there will be peace in all spheres of life. In John 16 and verse 33, one of my favorite verses, he says, these things I have spoken to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation. but take courage, I have overcome the world. And so here he stands in their midst at the culmination of the times where he has been crucified on the cross, he has been handed over to sinful men, he has died, they have seen their Lord and Savior Jesus die, and then Jesus shows up on the day he said he was going to show up and be resurrected, and he speaks his peace. And what he's doing is he's proclaiming it in their midst, displaying the proof that he had won that peace that he promised them beforehand, the peace for his church that's now demonstrated in the wounds in his hand and the wound in his side and the wounds in his feet, that they can see it, that they can touch it, that they can feel it, that they can know these things are certain, that he has paid the price for our sins. and that we now have peace with God for all of eternity. You notice verse 20, and when he had said this, he showed them both his hands and his side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. These visible wounds of the Lord Jesus. As the book of Revelation tells us, there behind the throne was the Lamb standing as if slain, bearing the marks of his crucifixion for all of eternity. Forever these wounds will be the signs of the peace that Jesus won for us on the cross. where the sins of his people were paid for in full, where they were put as far as the East is from the West, where God will remember them no more, we now have peace with God because of him, because of the resurrection of the Lamb who was slain. And the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Each and every Lord's Day when we gather, and we hear that gospel of peace. As it's preached to us, we hear it in the assurance of pardon. Each and every Lord's Day, the Lord gives us signs and seals of that covenant. As we take communion, look at the bread, look at the wine, and in it, behold the body of Jesus. The body of Jesus bearing the marks of the crucifixion that are the sure sign of your peace with God. We do this, right, as Jesus said, so that we would remember Jesus who died and who rose again for our justification. And in this, we greatly rejoice. We respond just like the disciples respond. What's happening here in John 20 is you're seeing this little picture of what's going to happen in the church every Lord's Day for about 2000 years now. Jesus shows up in the midst of the assembly. He shows his wounded hands inside. We taste, we touch, we feel, we know of Jesus. We're given these tangible signs of the covenant, and we rejoice in the redemption that he has given to us. We hear his peace. We see the signs. And the sacrament, always accompanied by the word, speaks powerfully, right? For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Verse 21, so Jesus said to them again, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you. The Lutheran commentator Lenski says, this peace is not merely to fortify the hearts of the disciples amid all the enmity and hatred of the world. They are to be possessors of the Lord's peace because as his witnesses and messengers, they are to dispense this very gift of peace in a peaceless world. He says, those who bring peace must have peace. Now, in every way, this requires of us to be good ambassadors of Christ, to have a grasp, a felt knowledge of Christ and the peace that he has brought to us. You can't impart the peace of Christ when your own soul is troubled and you're worried and you're lacking the assurance that God would have us have that's found here in the assembly of the saints in the means of grace. You don't convince anyone to come to Jesus when you're living in doubt. And Jesus doesn't want us to live in doubt and in fear. Don't be afraid. Peace be with you. That's what he's doing for us here. And as he commissions us, he is reassuring us of that peace. Now that Jesus has overcome the world, Now that His peace is upon us and we have a felt realization of that peace, then we can carry the fragrance of Christ into the world effectually. There we can proclaim the gospel. We can carry out the message in the full confidence of the power of the message because we've experienced the power of the gospel in our lives. Christ is victorious and everyone who comes to him shall have eternal life. Until we really experience that and are revived in that weekly, we can't be good ambassadors of the Lord Jesus. This is where we recognize something. As human people, we never outgrow the need to be told that everything is okay. I'm always amazed at this with my children, not to tease them, because this is what all children do. They come in every day, mid-afternoon, and ask, what's for dinner? They have never missed a meal in their lives. There's always food for them, and yet there's this childlike faith that says, I know there's going to be food, but I just wanna make sure. I wanna make sure everything's going to be okay and that I'm going to be fed. And this is the same kind of childlike faith that we have with the Lord Jesus. We need to come back every week and have Jesus say to us, it's gonna be okay. My peace is upon you. Everything's going to be alright. If you think you've outgrown that need for that peace or that reassurance, the reality is you haven't outgrown it. You've just started relying on your own strength. We need to hear this over and over again. And Jesus is faithful to continually speak his peace to us every single week as we gather together. And so even today, hear him say, these things I have spoken to you so that in me, you may have peace. In the world, you have tribulation, but take courage. I have overcome the world. Those are Jesus' words given to us for our blessing, for our peace, where He is saying to you and to me, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. Now, because He's overcome the world, He has also been given all authority in heaven and on earth, as we read in Matthew 28. So He speaks His peace by virtue of His victory and His authority by virtue of His power. So when he does this, now we move on to the point that Jesus comes to speak once again his authority to the church. So our hearts have been settled. Jesus has reassured us that it's going to be okay. He has commissioned us to go forward with that assurance in our hearts. And now he reminds us of the power that he has given to the church. Notice verses 22 and 23. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they have been retained. First of all, as the Holy Spirit empowers the ministry of Jesus, so also the Holy Spirit is given to the church to empower all of our work for the kingdom. We don't do this alone. We're not by ourselves. It's not in our own strength or in our own power. Jesus reminds us each week that it is by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit of God in you that you can go out and have the authority to do what he has commissioned us to do. The church filled with the Holy Spirit has immense power. far more power than I think we can even conceive of. The power to proclaim the forgiveness of sins and the power to, what Jesus says here, to retain sins, right? This is, verse 23 is almost a scary verse. If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they have been retained. Now what does this mean? Does it mean that if I just get upset at somebody, I can decide, you know, you made me mad. I'm retaining your sins. Now you have to go to hell and pay for them. That's, of course, not at all what it means. What Jesus is telling us is that we as a church have a delegated authority, an authority to act within the will of Christ, to proclaim forgiveness of sins to all of those who come to Jesus in faith. When we started doing an assurance of pardon in the service years ago, somebody came to me and said, what gives you the right to tell people that their sins are forgiven when you don't know if they really have faith or not? What gives you that right? And this is where I had to turn. Frankly, if I don't have that right, then you're dismissed and we can all go home because that's what the church is all about. Every week, when I give that assurance of pardon, the formal one and then in preaching, all of that, that is an exercise of the power of Christ's authority in the church. I declare to you, based on the holy and inspired word of God, that everyone who has Jesus Christ as the sole object of their faith, you may be absolutely, 100% guaranteed, assured that all of your sins are forgiven. That's exactly what Jesus is saying here. That's the power that the church has. The flip side of that. is this, if Jesus Christ is not the sole object of your faith, you may be 100% assured, guaranteed, no questions asked, that your sins are not forgiven. They are retained. This is what we call the keys of the kingdom of heaven. In Matthew chapter 16 you have Jesus lay this out again to Peter after he makes the great confession. In verse 19 he says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. This is what's going on. As Jesus comes, and he speaks peace to trembling, fearful hearts, right? And then he commissions those hearts that have been raised up and strengthened. He gives us the Holy Spirit to go carry out the mission, not in our own power, but with his very power and authority. All power, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ, and he delegates that power to us. to where we can say to people, if Jesus is the sole object of your faith, eternal life is yours. If he is not, be assured your sins are not forgiven. With bold authority, we speak this by the power given to us in Christ. We call people to come to him and know that if they receive Christ, their sins are forgiven. And we warn people that if they do not come to Christ, they will experience eternal judgment in hell. So with the true church, you understand there is none of this wishy-washy kind of, you know, the interview with Joel Osteen, right, where they asked him, well, what about Muslims and people who have never heard of Jesus? And he says, well, I don't know about them. We don't know what's gonna happen to them. That's not the true church. That's not the keys of the kingdom. We know exactly what's going to happen to them. If Jesus is not the sole object of their faith, they will perish in their sins for all of eternity. We have to go forward with the gospel to plead with men to come to Christ with full authority, with full power given to us and delegated by Jesus, with hearts that are filled with a desire to see people rescued as we have been rescued, and we can't play along with the lines and say, yeah, I don't really know how this will turn out in the end. We know exactly how it's going to turn out. We have the keys to bind and to loose. Come to Christ in faith, you will be saved. Refuse to come to Christ in faith, you will perish. And thus we plead with men. We plead with them with that kind of power, with that kind of authority. And every week, Jesus is recommissioning us and reminding us of that power and that authority. So when I give the assurance of pardon, you need to hear it for your own self first, but then you need to hear it in the sense that as I go out into the world, this is the kind of statements I am commissioned and empowered by Christ to make to the lost world. I can say these things with great certainty. But the question is, what about our doubts? This is all well and good until we have doubts. What does Jesus do for our doubts? What about the times of unbelief? What does Jesus have to say to people who are like doubting Thomas? Last verse, section rather, verse 24 and 25, but Thomas, one of the 12 called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see in his hands the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. Thomas, Thomas is one of God's elect, we'll put it that way. He's one of Jesus' people, one of his disciples. Jesus is crucified, and the event traumatizes Thomas so much, grief, fear, whatever it may have been, Thomas forsakes the disciples. He walks away. He walks away, and in doing so, he misses out on Jesus. And missing out on Jesus compounds on itself. This compiles in his life. Thomas, in the week that goes between these two meetings, he slides into total unbelief and apostasy. This is the reality of the danger of apostasy. I've said this a lot. Hebrews 10.25 tells us not to forsake the gathering together of the saints. Hebrews 10.26 to the end of the chapter is a warning against apostasy. And the point of the chapter is this, when you begin to forsake the assembly, you slide into unbelief and apostasy. All the disciples are there, they're telling Thomas, they're saying, we have seen Jesus. Listen to the story, he showed up, he showed us his hands, he showed us his side, we touched him, we watched him eat the fish, we did all of these things, we saw Jesus. And Thomas, even knowing these men for all of these years, knowing Jesus himself, he decides to not believe. He makes a determination in his mind, I'm not going to believe you guys, and I'm not going to believe Jesus. Remember, I think I read it last week, in Matthew 20, what Jesus said to the disciples before they went into Jerusalem. It says, as Jesus was about to go up to Jerusalem, he took the 12 disciples aside by themselves, and on the way he said to them, behold, we're going up to Jerusalem. and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and will hand him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify him. And on the third day, he will be raised up." All of it's laid out right there. Thomas was there, Thomas heard it all, and he decides, I'm not going to believe the word of the disciples, and I'm not going to believe Jesus. Prove it. Prove it to me. This is, right, this is the voice of the unbeliever. You know, you say there's a God and a Jesus, prove it. We tend to say things like this in our own lives. You know, what does it matter if I just miss a Sunday? Is it really that big of a deal? And of course, people get sick, there's travel arrangements that go awry, things happen. And I don't want you to think I'm saying that if you have a legitimate reason for missing church that you're sliding into apostasy. I think there's a lesson for us who dare to forsake the assembly, which is a different understanding. To forsake is to not attend with no legitimate reason. You just decide you want to watch football or you want to do something else. And the warning is very clear to us in this passage. In a week, Thomas is an unbeliever. That's all it took. He missed one week and he is determining to not believe Jesus and determining not to believe the word of the apostles. Calvin says, the same thing happens to all who are so devoted to themselves that they leave no room for the Word of God. If we think we're in no danger, like I'm better than that, I can overcome that. Remember, there's no temptation that has overcome you such as is common to man, right? Where you think you stand, take heed lest you fall. It's a very important warning for us. In the danger of total apostasy though, here's what I think is wonderful. Jesus comes to reel Thomas back. Jesus won't let his sheep apostatize. He won't let them slide away. Notice verse 26, after eight days his disciples were again inside and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, peace be with you. I love how he just opens with the same thing. Shows up in their midst, peace be with you. They're fearful again, they're worried, they don't know what's going on, and we ask the question, why did Jesus wait a whole week? Why didn't he come and say hi to Thomas beforehand and get this over with? I think it's to teach us. that we are to expect the presence of Jesus on the Lord's day in the assembly of the saints. This is the time that we expect Jesus to come and reel us back from the unbelief, reel us back from the apostasy, pull us back in as we start wandering away, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Each week Jesus comes and through word and sacrament, he speaks peace to the fearful. He commissions and empowers us to do our work and he speaks to our doubts to build and to strengthen our faith that was weakened through a whole week of work and being in the world and being in the midst of an evil generation. Verse 27, then he said to Thomas, reach here with your finger. reach here with your finger and see my hands, and reach here with your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believing." And in a moment, right, Thomas's doubts are gone. He doesn't have doubts anymore. He sees the hands. He puts his finger in the hole that's in Jesus' hands. And it's not just, you know, put your finger in the side. Put your whole, you notice even the grammar, put your whole hand into my side. The wound in Jesus' side where the spear went through and the blood mixed with the water right? The double cure, save from wrath and make me pure. That poured out of the side of Jesus, Thomas sticks his whole hand into the side of Jesus. And his response in verse 28, Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God. He makes that great confession. So Jesus coming there on the Lord's day to meet with his disciples once again builds up and strengthens the faith of Thomas who was floating away into unbelief and apostasy and now he makes probably one of the greatest confessions. He goes from like veering towards apostasy to my Lord and my God. And he begins to worship. Now why did Jesus do this? Because why allow sight and touch to sit where faith should have prevailed? Why did Jesus allow this? It's so that you and I would not expect such a thing to happen to us. Notice verse 28, 29, excuse me. Jesus said to him, because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed. That's not a mild rebuke. That's a very forward and firm rebuke to Thomas. Thomas saw and believed, but the blessings that Christ promises are for those who have not seen. and yet believed. Calvin says he therefore includes in a short definition the power and nature of faith, namely that it does not rest satisfied with the immediate exercise of sight, but penetrates even to heaven so as to believe those things which are hidden from the human senses. And so the question is, well, what if I do have doubts? What if my faith is weak? What if it is faltering? How does Jesus speak to my doubts today? And Paul tells us in Romans 10, 17, that faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. It is the ministry of the word and the ministry of sacrament. that God has ordained in the meeting of His church on the Lord's day that is given to us to build faith, to strengthen faith, to speak to our doubts. Notice verse 30 and 31. Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these have been written. so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. Jesus comes every single Sunday. Every single true church across the world, Jesus shows up there and he proclaims in our midst the favorable year of the Lord. The work is done. He completed the work. You're not back under a covenant of works. The creation mandate is over. Jesus fulfilled it. You are to go and make disciples of all the nations. He speaks His peace to us. He recommissions us in our task. He reminds us of the authority that we have that is given to Him and then transferred to us. And He tells us, you hold the keys to the kingdom. And He speaks to our doubts. Because there can be a lot of doubts in this world. As we gather every Sunday and we worship the only man who has ever risen from the dead to eternal life. And yet we have not seen Him. and yet we love Him and we rejoice in Christ every week. And every week we assume again all these tasks, all of these things so that through them faith is formed and it is strengthened and that we persevere to the end knowing that we have eternal life in Christ. Let's pray.