Witnesses to the World; Acts 1:1-11

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More Blessed Than We Know; John 20:24-29

 

There’s one of our regular customers at the restaurant, that every time I ask him how he is doing, even when hard things are going on, will say, “I’m blessed.”  Most of the time it’s said with a smile.  In the challenging times, it’s said with a quiet confidence even in the midst of a struggle, like health challenges or major stress at work.  As a believer in Jesus Christ, this man lives with a spirit of gratitude towards God, and a recognition that he is indeed blessed.  Some people think it’s a trite response to say, “You are so blessed,” or “I’m blessed.”  But the truth is, we are indeed blessed.  We are blessed in many ways, every day, all the time.  Even when everything seems to be going wrong, we have Jesus with us.  In this passage today, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”  Those of us who are in that category are indeed blessed.

            When we read gospels, we think about how awesome it would have been to be a disciple of Jesus.  What would it have been like to see Him everyday and interact with Him?  What would it have been like to see Him after He rose from the dead?  Those that got to see the post resurrected Jesus were especially blessed!  But Jesus tells us that those of us who have not seen Him and yet believe are the blessed ones. 

            Ned told me that Thomas is his favorite disciple.  Thomas wanted evidence for the resurrection.  We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with the other disciples on Easter evening.  Perhaps he was too distraught.  Perhaps he thought it would be wiser for them not to be in one place.  Thomas was the one who understood Jesus was going die.  When Jesus was headed back toward Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead and then go to Jerusalem, it was Thomas who said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  Perhaps Thomas was already seeking a martyr’s death or thought there was no longer any reason to hide now that Jesus was dead.  Whatever the reason, he was not present.  We don’t know when Thomas reconnected with the other disciples, but by now, he has heard multiple accounts that Jesus is alive.  He is called “Doubting Thomas”, but he’s no more a doubter than the others.  Remember that when the disciples from Emmaus returned on Easter night and shared their story with the other disciples and Jesus pops in the room, they think He is a ghost, even though Peter had seen Jesus by this time, the women had seen Jesus and the two from Emmaus had seen Jesus.  The first thing Jesus does is show them His wounds, the very wounds Thomas says he needs to see and touch.  And then Jesus eats to show them He is not a ghost.  And the disciples weren’t the only ones who had doubts.  Thomas asks nothing more than what the other disciples have already gotten to experience.  When we are excited to see someone who has been away, we want to touch them, to give them a hug.  Mary Magdalene wanted to that when she saw Jesus in the garden and was not permitted to do so at that time.  Even John the Baptist, whom Jesus said was the greatest of men, doubted when he was in prison.  He sent his own disciples to Jesus for them to ask if Jesus really was the Messiah after all.  Jesus told John’s disciples, “Tell them what you hear and see--blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. ⁶ And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”  We all have doubts at times.  Doubt is not the opposite of faith.  Doubt is often the precursor to faith.  It drives us to further seek out truth.  In a line from his song “These Days,” Christopher Williams sings, “Without doubt, we cannot grow.”  The opposite of faith is unbelief.  Doubt and disbelief or incredulity are similar, but unbelief is the refusal to believe.  In Henry Blackaby’s famous Bible study Experiencing God, Blackaby describes that it is as we go through crises of belief that we come to know God more deeply.  It is through crises that God reveals something more of Godself to us, God’s purposes, or God’s ways.  And in light of the new or reaffirming revelation, we are challenged to respond in a way that requires us to adjust our lives.  We can accept truth or deny it.  We can believe or we can refuse to believe. Doubt can give us opportunity to seek God, to bask in God’s presence, to trust in God’s promises, to find out if what God says is true.  And then when we realize that God is trustworthy, to step out in faith, even if we can’t see where we are going, because we know that God is good, no matter what, that God is love, no matter what, that God has our best interests at heart no matter what, and that step by step, God will continue to guide us.  There is a stubbornness to unbelief that has no desire to seek other alternatives or dig deeper or give a listening ear to differing explanations.  We have a lot of unbelief in our world today, but there is also a lot of doubt.  We should put our efforts towards those who ask the hard questions, not to those who shut their ears. 

            When Jesus invites Thomas to touch Him and put his fingers on Jesus’s wounds, I don’t think he is condemning Thomas, but is compassionately inviting Thomas to believe.  What Jesus wants most of all is for Thomas to believe and have a relationship with Him.  It’s what Jesus wants for us as well.  Also, note that Jesus knows what Thomas has said even though Jesus was never physically present when Thomas shared his skepticism with the other disciples.  Jesus already knew.  From this, we can know that Jesus hears all that we say, even though we cannot see Jesus.  We are blessed because Jesus hears our prayers and our thoughts.  Jesus already knows what we want. 

            Once Thomas sees Jesus and hears Him speak, Thomas no longer has the need to touch.  Instead, Thomas declares, “My Lord and my God!”  This is an exclamation of worship, which Jesus receives, showing that He is indeed Lord and God.  Thomas declares my Lord—Jesus has authority over my life.  And my God—Jesus is worthy of my worship.  Thomas has come through his crisis of belief and his life will forever be changed by this truth that Jesus is Lord and God.  Church history tells us that at some point Thomas became a missionary to India and founded the first Christian church there, that he was martyred there, killed by a spear.  Today, the Mar Thoma believers claim the apostle Thomas as their founder.  Doubt is not bad if we don’t stay there. 

            In the same way that Abraham was blessed for believing in a promise he didn’t get to see, we are blessed for believing in the promise we have not seen.  Like Abraham, we see by faith.  At the Wilberforce Weekend speaker Rachel Gilson shared how faith deepens our understanding of God and our relationship with God.  If God always asks us to do things that automatically make sense to us, then we simply have rational obedience.  The one command in the garden wasn’t something like, “Don’t walk up that volcano or you will die!”  It was, “Don’t eat that fruit or you will die.”  It was a weird instruction that didn’t seem to have a good reason.  But it was the opportunity for Adam and Eve to take God at God’s word—to trust that God loved them and had their best interests at heart, that God was good.  It took faith to keep that commandment.  When we believe in Jesus without ever having interacted with Him physically, we demonstrate that trust that Jesus is who He has said He is.  And it is often after placing our faith in Jesus that we get to see Jesus prove Himself.  We are blessed as our relationship deepens with Jesus. 

            When we looked at the account of the disciples encountering Jesus on the way to Emmaus, we noted that although some people today still get the opportunity to see Jesus physically, the primary ways that we see Jesus are through prayer and the Scriptures.  We are blessed because we have the fullness of Scriptures.  While some of those who witnessed this week after Easter event would go on to be New Testament writers, they didn’t know “the rest of the story” like we do.  Paul wasn’t a believer yet, so they had none of His letters.  Peter and some of the others would have access to some of Paul’s letters later.  John was the only one left by the time he wrote the Revelation.  We have the complete Bible that tells one single story with Jesus at the center.  We can see the big picture.  We know the end of the story already.  The Old and New Testaments help to explain each other. 

            I’m still looking forward to seeing Jesus face to face one day.  And that is a promise that I can trust to be true, but even as we await that day, we are already blessed when we follow Jesus and take Jesus at His word.  Jesus will show Himself to us in other ways.  And as we look back at our lives, we can see the work that Jesus has been doing, showing Himself that He is our Lord and our God. 

Transformative Resurrection Power; Luke 24:36-43, Isaiah 65:17-25

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