Turn with me, if you will, to
John's Gospel, the Gospel of John chapter 20. I want to read to you from verse
19 down through verse 31, the end
of the chapter. John chapter 20 is about the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. But specifically, it has to do
with the Lord Jesus revealing Himself after His resurrection
to His disciples, and in particular, Thomas. So
let's pick it up in verse 19. Then the same day at evening,
being the first day of the week, When the doors were shut where
the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus
and stood in the midst and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he showed
unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad
when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again,
Peace be unto you. As my Father hath sent me, even
so send I you. And when he hath said this, he
breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins you remit, they
are remitted unto them. And whosoever sins you retain,
they are retained. But Thomas, one of the twelve,
called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other
disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But
he said to them, Except I see in his hands the print of the
nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust
my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight
days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus, the doors being
shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach
hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach hither thy
hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said
unto him, My Lord and my God, Jesus saith unto him, Thomas,
because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they
that have not seen, and yet have believed. And many other signs
truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not
written in this book. But these are written, that you
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that
believing you might have life through his name. Thomas, if you go back to chapter
14 of John, you'll see something about Thomas there. Actually,
go back to chapter 11 even further. Lazarus had fallen sick, and
it was told Jesus that he was sick. And he waited to go. And we pick it up in chapter 11. Verse 14, Jesus said to them
plainly, John 11, 14. He said to them plainly, Lazarus
is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there to
the intent you may believe. Nevertheless, let us go unto
him. Then listen to this. Then Thomas,
which is called Didymus, and the word just means twin. When he said, Thomas, which is
called Didymus, said unto his fellow disciples, let us also
go, that we may die with him. So that's one thing I want you
to see about Thomas. And then look at chapter 14. Jesus said
to them in John 14, let not your heart be troubled. You believe
in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many
mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare
a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself,
that where I am, there you may be also. And whither I go, you
know, and the way you know. Thomas saith to him, Lord, we
know not whither thou goest. How can we know the way? Jesus
said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh
unto the father but by me. If you had known me, you should
have known my father also. And from henceforth, you know
him and have seen him." So I want you to have that background of
Thomas. Thomas was in chapter 20 of John,
He was resolved not to believe that Jesus had risen from the
dead. But in John 11, you see that Thomas loved, evidently
loved, the Lord Jesus Christ. Clearly, he thought a lot of
Christ. He was willing to go to Jerusalem
and die with Him. He said, let us go with Him,
that we may die also. But Thomas' personality was such that he
had a high opinion of himself. Because he thought, if the Lord
Jesus is going to Jerusalem to die, let's just go die with him. He was confident that he could
go and die with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's called a high
opinion of yourself. Because later on, he can't even
believe. And then we see in John 14, he is talking to the Lord
and Jesus says, I'm going to prepare to my father's house
to prepare mansions for you. And he says, you know the way. You know where I'm going, you
know the way. And Thomas says, we don't know where you're going.
How can we know the way? And I would have thought the
same thing. It seems like a mystery when Jesus speaks in scripture
so many times to me. I would have, what do you mean
by that? And Jesus said, I'm the way. If you had known me,
you would have known the Father also. So Thomas evidently had
a low opinion of the Lord Jesus Christ. A lower opinion than
he would have after the resurrection. He loved Him. He was willing
to die for Him. And yet, When the women came
from the sepulcher and told the disciples that he had risen from
the dead, we saw him. We saw angels. Mary said, gave
her account how that Jesus came from behind her and spoke to
her. She thought it was the gardener
and then she turns around and she understands when he speaks
her name. This is the Lord and she says, Rabboni. And she goes and runs and tells
Peter and John. And they run to the sepulcher
and they look in. And John looks in and Peter runs
in and they see the cloth that had been over his face and about
his body. And they believe. And they go
back and tell the other disciples. And then Jesus comes to this
room, right in the midst of the ten apostles. And makes himself
known to them. He says, Peace be to you. And
he shows them his hands and his side. and speaks to them. And
they tell Thomas, because Thomas wasn't there. They said, we've
seen the Lord. They were glad. The women said this. And Thomas
resolved in his heart, I will not believe. I won't do it. Thomas
implies that the evidence was insufficient to believe that
Christ had risen from the dead. You guys believed impetuously. You just jumped to the conclusion.
But I require real substantive evidence and I will not believe.
And yet I think, as we think about this, actually Thomas had
to be the most miserable of the apostles. Because he loved the
Lord Jesus Christ. I am sure that he wanted that
evidence more than anything. I want to see. I want to believe. But he couldn't believe. even
though he had the testimony of 10 apostles, the very men that
Christ sent to the world to preach His gospel. And he had the testimony
of the women, which he must not have considered to be worth anything
at all. And you wonder at the apostles.
He met together with them the second time. He was with them.
He wasn't with them the first time they met, when Jesus first
showed Himself to them. But He was with them the second
time. Why did He get together with them if He didn't believe?
And they did. Because He loved His Master. But He thought of
the Lord Jesus Christ simply at this point as His Master. as a man. And he would have loved
to see him risen from the dead. Like he had raised Lazarus. He
knew he had raised Lazarus from the dead. And he would have loved
to see him again. But he didn't understand yet, who yet the Lord
Jesus was. Even though I think he really
wanted to believe his resurrection. And I believe he was miserable.
And this teaches us several things. First of all, Thomas did not
believe. That's called unbelief. And Jesus
tells him, after he does believe, well he tells him, be not faithless.
That means unbelief. He was in unbelief. In Romans
10.16 it says, they have not all obeyed the gospel. Who hath believed, I'll report.
Unbelief is disobedience. It's the disobedience to believing
the gospel. And the gospel in Romans 10.16
clearly is Isaiah 53 expounded. Thomas was in unbelief. He was
in disobedience. He was miserable, I'm sure, because
of it. It was his fault. He was to blame. And yet, he
was helpless. Helpless to believe what he wanted
to believe. And I think you see this here.
You see, even though Thomas wanted to believe, the Lord sets him
aside from the other eleven and waits to make himself known to
Thomas to teach us many things. There's a time where he waits
to reveal himself to Thomas in order to teach us something.
And the things that he teaches us through Thomas He really shows us throughout
scripture using weak people to teach us His grace. Do you know
what He said to Paul, the Apostle? When Paul prayed three times,
the thorn would be removed. He said, My strength is made
perfect in weakness. Remember that? How many times
in scripture do you see the Lord taking the most unlikely person
in their weakness and turning it around in order to demonstrate
the truth that He's trying to teach us? And Thomas is that
example. First of all, Thomas teaches us that faith is not
a decision you can make. Faith is not even a decision
at all. How many times have we thought
of faith as, well, I need to believe in order for the Lord
to save me. Or that if I believe, then the
Lord would save me. Making our salvation contingent
or conditioned upon our faith. But this is a wrong view of salvation. Because salvation is what God
does. Faith is God's gift. The Lord
Jesus Christ was raised and risen and seated on heaven's throne
in order to give repentance to Israel and the forgiveness of
sins. Faith is by Him, says in Acts 3.16, and it's in Him. Faith is not something we can
decide to have. We choose not to believe. He
says in John 5.40, you will not come to me that you might have
life. And then in John 6.44 he says, you cannot, no man can
come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him. So
these things are hanging together. We see in Thomas our utter dependency. upon the grace of God giving
us a sight of Christ that we might believe. Thomas relied
on himself to believe. If I see, if I have the right
evidence, I can believe. How often have you thought that?
If it was just the right, everything was presented to me correctly,
then I could believe. I know someone very dear to me.
who basically says the same thing. How can you believe the Bible
is God's Word? How can you believe what God
says in the Bible? In other words, if I just had
the right evidence, I could believe. You cannot. You are utterly dependent
upon the grace of God. Utterly dependent on a spiritual
resurrection. And this is the first thing we
learn from Thomas. Unbelief is my fault. It's disobedience.
But faith is the gift of God. Salvation is God's gift to us. Faith is part of that salvation.
God's work from eternity, His redemption in Christ, and His
gift of faith are all His purpose of salvation. And so we're utterly
dependent upon it. And we see that in Thomas. Many
times Jesus had told them what was going to happen. How he was
going to go to Jerusalem. The Jews were going to condemn
him to death. Deliver him to the Gentiles.
They were actually going to put him to death. He would rise the
third day. They all heard that, but they
didn't understand it. Because it was withheld from
them until the right time. And even in John chapter 20,
in verse 9, it says, for they knew not the scripture that he
must rise again from the dead. It hadn't been revealed to them.
God has to make himself known. That's the first thing we see
here. And then, there are several things else about Thomas that
are an example of why the Lord used him in order to teach us. John wrote this gospel, he says
in verse 31, these things were written that you might believe. That Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God, and that believing you might have life through his
name. In the very first words of John's
Gospel, what does he say? In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He's speaking
very plainly, undeniably, that Jesus is God. The eternal Word
of God. He's with God, and He is God. That's what he says. But his
purpose in writing this Gospel is that we would believe unto
eternal life. And so He doesn't write like
I would write. If I were to write and try to
convince you, I would take all these scriptures and I would
lay them side by side and I would draw conclusions and force you
into the corner and make you admit, see it's true, it's true,
isn't it? That's not what John does. Expertly, by the Spirit
of God, John puts us in the middle of conversations between Jesus
and lost people. People he's going to save. The
woman at Samaria's well, or the woman taken in adultery, or the
blind man, or the man, lame, waiting for the pool of water
to be stirred up, or the calling of Nathaniel, or whoever it is.
He puts us right there, one-on-one with Christ and these people.
And He builds it up in His Gospel. He shows us fantastic things. He lets us in the most intimate
prayers between the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father. And He
brings His Gospel to a climax right here. Right here in John
20. with Thomas, of all people, you
would think, if he wanted to prove, if he wanted to do something
to convince me to believe, why did he use this skeptic, this
total unbelieving apostle, who was blameworthy for his unbelief,
who seemed helpless to do anything about it? That's the very reason. If I wanted to convince you of
the truth of something, And you were a total skeptic. And other
people knew you were opposed, resolved in your opinion, I am
not going to believe. And then you understand the truth
and you actually come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't
you think that people are going to hear what you have to say
a little bit more? Don't you think that you would
be a more valid witness since you were already objectively
opposed to it? And you might ask, well, how
did Thomas believe? How did he come to this settled
conviction? That's what we want to look at
tonight. So that's the second thing I
see here is that John wrote this gospel in order to bring us to
life in Christ. Believing Him. And he does it
in an expert way by taking us into this intimate discourse
between the Lord Himself and Thomas. In his total unbelief. His weakness and his helplessness.
In Thomas we see something that should attract you to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Because how often have you wanted
to believe? What did Thomas say? What was
his confession? Did He say, Thee Lord and Thee
God, when He saw Jesus' handprints? When Jesus spoke to Him, did
He say that? Thee Lord and Thee God. That would have silenced
all skeptics of Christ's deity, wouldn't it? How often have you
met with somebody who denies the deity of Christ, and you
thought, if I could just pummel that into their head, I could
prove that Jesus is God. And that would settle it for
them. But it never settles it, does it? How did Thomas come
to this conviction? He didn't just say, the Lord
and the God, which would have been correct. But he said, my
Lord, my God. And this is where I say I think
it should interest us extremely that Christ chose Thomas here
to hold him up to us. Because here's a man, I believe,
who was in the misery of his sin, of unbelief, loving his
master as a man, and still not able to accept the testimony
of these ten men and these women of Christ's resurrection, even
forgetting the words of the Lord Himself. I want more than anything
for myself to be able to say from my heart to the Lord Jesus
Christ, my Lord, my God. And yet, I find so much of myself
incapable of doing the very one thing I'd like to do. And that's
why I think the Lord has held out Thomas here to us. This other
reason is that he shows us his mercy to this lost sheep, as
it were. Here he's got the ten, and they're
confident. They're convinced of Christ.
And yet there's this one, and you would think that the other
disciples might have sidelined him, put him aside. But they
don't. They welcome him. They say, the
Lord. He's risen. We've seen the Lord. And they
don't cut him off. And the Lord Jesus Christ, when
he comes the second time to them, a week after he had first appeared,
he doesn't come to them with a whip and, you know, coming
and, you stupid apostle, I've told you over and over again,
these men I sent told you, the women, what's wrong with you,
you idiot? He didn't say that, did he? What
were his words? What did he say to him? It says
in verse 26 of John 20, the first thing he said, he stood in the
midst, and the ten with Thomas are there, and he says, Peace
be unto you. Isn't that the mercy of the great
shepherd of the sheep, who doesn't leave even one of his redeemed
sheep? He says in John 17, I think it's
around verse 9 or 12. He says, in fact, look at this
with me, John 17, it's just a couple pages back. He says in verse
12, while I was with them in the world, my disciples, I kept
them in thy name. Those that thou gavest me, I
have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition,
that the scripture might be fulfilled." You see, the Lord Jesus Christ
was not going to lose one of those that the Father had given
Him. He says in John 6, 37, All that the Father giveth me shall
come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast
out. I didn't come down from heaven
to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me. And this
is the will of Him that sent me, that of all which He hath
given me I should lose nothing. but should raise it up again
at the last day." That means if God the Father gave his people
to the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no possibility that those
people will be raised up at the last day. That's what he says
in John 6.39. And so he was not going to leave
Thomas. But it wasn't just a cold, Calvinistic fact that he's, well,
I can't leave this one. I'm going to go and get him.
Stupid apostle. Won't believe. No, this is the
heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to know the heart
of God, look at how Christ dealt with his people. He wasn't going
to leave this one apostle in his unbelief. This is the mercy.
of God. And I, as a sinner, I am so thankful
that God has set Thomas aside to show us this great mercy.
He does this all the time. Paul the Apostle was the greatest
self-righteous Pharisee, and he took that proclivity of Paul,
and he turned it inside out, and like a slingshot, shot him
out of that to depend on Christ so much so, that he says in Philippians
3 and verses 4 through 7, he says, though I was blameless
before the law, absolutely had every reason to think I could
come to God because of who I was and what I had done. He says,
it's all dung. It's worthless that I may win
Christ, that I may trust, that I may be found in Him, not having
anything of my own, but His righteousness. That's it. And so Paul was like
that, just like Thomas is held out to us here. There's many
things that we can see the grace of God In every part of our weakness,
we see a corresponding salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. So,
Thomas is held out here to us. Where Thomas had no faith, the
Lord Jesus Christ brought faith. Where Thomas needed to turn from
his unbelief, but he couldn't, the Lord Jesus Christ brought
repentance. All these things teach us about why the Lord reserved
Thomas in this way for us. And I think that that's a great
comfort. To me, that is a great comfort, isn't it? It's a great
comfort. But I want you to think with
me now just for a moment about how could Thomas say these words,
my Lord, my God, because I want to say these words. How did he
do this? And there's three things that
Jesus did here. Which when we look at them, I think we're going
to see how Thomas came to this confession. Look at it with me
here in verse 26. After eight days again, in chapter
20, his disciples were within and Thomas with them. Then came
Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said,
Peace be unto you. You see that? What did the Lord
Jesus Christ do to overcome Thomas' unbelief? What did he do? He
said, Peace be unto you. Peace. What is peace? Why would He say peace? It's
like, you know, you would greet someone or somebody. Hi, how
are you doing? I hope you're doing fine. Things
are well. Good. That's a salutation. That wasn't
what He was doing. Jesus didn't waste words. He
didn't say, Peace be unto you. Peace be unto you. Shalom, shalom.
You know, that's not what He was doing here. He chose these
words specifically because of what they conveyed. The Lord
Jesus Christ spoke peace to the disciples. You know how Paul
opens almost every epistle? Grace and peace from God the
Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1-2 is just
an example. peace from God the Father and
from the Lord Jesus Christ." How could the Lord Jesus Christ
speak peace to Thomas? He's an unbelieving apostle.
Did he say, if you would believe, then I could speak peace to you?
He didn't do that, did he? He spoke peace to him. The unbelieving
Thomas. That's quite amazing. But what
does this peace mean? Why is it so important? Well,
you see, This is the whole problem. Is that the carnal mind, what
we are naturally, is hostility, enmity against God. We are not
at peace with God. In our minds we are alienated. We are alienated and enemies
of God in our minds. And we think, well yeah, I used
to be that way and I'm glad I'm not that way anymore. And that's
true to a certain extent. But the fact of the matter is,
is there something in us naturally, that part of us that we are never
rid of, that we constantly find is in opposition to God. And
God tells us in His Word that the natural man, he can't understand
the things of God. The carnal mind is enmity. It's
not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can be. That's
what we are by nature. And so, that enmity that's in
us is the problem, but it's not the whole problem. Because there's
a greater problem than that. That's the enmity that our enmity
created in God towards us. You see, because of our hatred
of God, because of our opposition to Him, In His justice, in His
law, God is at war with us in His justice. That's why it says
in Ephesians chapter 2, we were by nature the children of wrath,
even as others. That's what we were, by nature.
But you say, but I thought that God loved us from everlasting,
because He says in Jeremiah 31 3, I have loved thee with an
everlasting love. And that's true. And God says
in Ephesians 1.4 that He chose us in Christ from before the
foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless
before Him in love. So we know that the Lord loves
His people from everlasting. How do you reconcile those two
things together? Because God, in His justice,
His law cries out for justice against our sin. So that God,
in His justice, is at enmity with us. And this is why it says
what it says in Romans chapter 5. Look at this with me. Romans
chapter 5. Hold your place there in John
20. We'll come back to it. This is a fundamental thing,
but it needs repetition to us over and over. So look at Romans
chapter 5. God, it says in verse 8, commended
His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. You see how God's love, overarching
love for us, even though we were sinners, Christ died for us in
that condition? Look at verse 10. For if when
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God, how? By the death of
His Son. Now, if the whole problem was
that my mind was at enmity with God and all we needed to do was
clear up things between us and God was to just change the way
I am, then why would God have to kill His Son? Why wouldn't
He just scrub my mind? If all I needed was an influence
of grace in my life in order to set me right with God, then
Christ didn't have to die, did He? If it was just a matter of
getting me right with God by changing the way I think about
things, that would have been enough. But it wasn't enough.
Because God in His justice was at enmity with us. We had to be
reconciled to God in our minds. But first something more fundamental
had to happen. God had to take an action. And God Himself, He hadn't done
anything wrong. It was us who had offended. But
God Himself takes the initiative and sets aside His own wrath.
And He does it in a way that He lays that wrath upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's what the atonement is
about. That's what reconciliation is about. It's on the basis of
what Christ has done. Now look at Ezekiel chapter 16
with me. I want to show you something
about reconciliation. Because when the Lord Jesus comes
to Thomas and says, Peace be unto you and with their other
disciples, He's doing there what He does throughout the gospel.
How did God reconcile in His justice that He could be at peace
with sinners? How could God set himself in
his character to be at peace with sinners. We just read it
in Romans 5.10. For with, when we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. When did
Jesus die? Before I was born. He didn't
change my mind when Jesus died, and yet we were reconciled to
God by His death. We were reconciled to God when
the Lord Jesus Christ died. It says in verse 9 of Romans
5, we're justified by His blood. And that's the reason God can
speak peace to us. And look at this in Ezekiel chapter
16 verse 62. The Lord says, I will establish
my covenant with thee. He's speaking about all of God's
people. Because we know, how do we know
it's about God's people here? My name's not there. Because
he says in Galatians 3, he says that because we are, because
we believe the Lord Jesus Christ, we're heirs according to promise. All the promises of God in Christ
are yes and amen. So every promise God made in
the Old Testament concerning His covenant people, the true
Israel of God, are to every believer. And so He says here, "...I will
establish My covenant with thee, and thou shalt know that I am
the Lord, that thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never
open thy mouth any more because of thy shame." when I am pacified
toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord." Do
you see what he's saying here? Sin, what does it do to us? It
makes us, well, first of all, guilty. But it also brings great
shame, doesn't it? Before God. Great shame. Remember the publican? He wouldn't
even raise his head. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Shame. That's what sin does.
And the Lord says, You will not even remember your shame. Why? Because I am going to be
pacified toward thee. To be pacified means God has
satisfied His justice, appeased His wrath. And He tells us that
in His most holy, inscrutable justice, that God looks upon
us on the basis of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. And He
says, I'm pacified. I'm happy with you. I'm at peace
with you." And he tells us, because we're justified by his blood,
peace be unto you. Reconciled by the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he says. Look at
Colossians chapter 1. This is the only way we in our
minds can be reconciled to God, would we see that in His mind,
He has reconciled us to Himself. By the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Colossians 1, he says this. It pleased the Father,
verse 19. It pleased the Father that in
Him, the Lord Jesus, should all fullness dwell. And having made
peace through the blood of His cross, Who did that? The Father. He made peace through the blood
of His cross. We just read in Romans 5.10,
God reconciled us by the death of His Son. Those words should
stagger us. We should not have to go further.
God reconciled us by the death of His Son, and He speaks peace
to us. He says, by Him, He made peace
through the blood of His cross. I'm going to skip over the rest
of it. Verse 21, And you who were sometimes
alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now
hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh. He didn't do it
in your reform. He did it in the body of His
flesh through death in order to present you holy. and unblameable,
and unreprovable in His sight? How did God make us holy through
the, it says right there, through the body of His flesh? How did
He make us unreprovable and unblameable? Through the body of His flesh.
How did He, how did He in justice, how did God's law and justice
stand up to us and say, peace be unto you? from the very heart
of God, not just, okay, I'm going to let this person in. No, this
is a joyous peace, a proclamation of joyful peace from the justice
of God. Peace be unto you through the
death of His Son, through the blood of His cross. Look at Hebrews
chapter 9, one more verse and we'll go back to John 20. He
says in verse 13 of Hebrews 9, "...if the blood of bulls and
goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifyeth
to the purifying of the flesh." That's a mouthful. It just means
in the Old Testament, when they killed the animals and they sprinkled
their blood, it allowed the priest to perform the service to the
ministry. It washed their bodies. It made them clean for the service
that God gave them to do there. Well, if animals' blood and that
purifying was okay for the outward performance of the things that
represented the gospel, verse 14, "...how much more shall the
blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself
without spot to God, do what? Purge your conscience." How does
it purge my conscience? Because I see in the blood of
Christ, offered Himself spotless to God, that He reconciled me
to God. He made peace within God's perfections. He saw me and He was totally
satisfied, completely pacified. His wrath was removed. And that's
what it says in Psalm 85. He says in that day, I'm sorry,
Psalm 85, He says, "...Lord, Thou hast forgiven the iniquity
of Thy people, Thou hast covered all their sins, Thou hast taken
away all Thy wrath, for Thou hast turned Thyself from the
fierceness of Thine anger." And then He says, "...turn us, O
God, of our salvation." And in Isaiah 12, the same thing. I
recommend that you look at those verses. Isaiah 12, what a beautiful
chapter. But there he says, How are we
not afraid? Because God is my salvation.
God is satisfied with His Son. And so Jesus, first of all, speaks
peace to us. And that's what He did there
in John chapter 20. But look back at John 20. What
else did He do? Well, it says in John 20, in
verse 27, Then, after He had spoken to them, Peace be unto
you. Then saith He to Thomas, He uses his own words. He says,
"...Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach
hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless,
but believing." What did he do? What was it that the Lord Jesus
did in order to help this miserable, disobedient, and helpless apostle? believe as John wrote his gospel. For us to believe. What did he
do? He spoke peace to him on the basis of justice satisfied
in his blood. And secondly, he showed his wounds. Thomas said, I'm going to stick
my finger into the nail prints and I'm going to take my hand
and I'm going to thrust it into his side. How crude. If I was
wounded, and you knew I was wounded, would you come up to me and say,
here let me stick my hand in your wounds? And the Lord had
been wounded, not just wounded like a criminal, but He was wounded
for a reason. It says in Zechariah 13, 6, someone
will say, what are these wounds that you have in your hands? And He says, and He will say,
Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."
Zechariah 13.6. That's what the Lord Jesus did.
He came to Thomas. He said, Thomas, reach your finger
here and put it into my hands. And take your hand and thrust
it into my side. He showed him his wounds. Why
did he show him his wounds? He had just spoken peace. Why
did he show him his wounds? Look at Isaiah 53. It's not a
verse you're unfamiliar with, but it's what we need to hear. This is the Lord Jesus speaking
to us. He says in Isaiah 53 verse 5, "...but he was wounded for
our transgressions." He was bruised for our iniquities. And listen
carefully to the next words. The chastisement. The beating. For our peace. was upon him,
and with his stripes were healed." What is the wages of sin? Death. The Lord Jesus Christ took the
beating that God's justice required for my sins, that my sins deserve. Has anyone ever taken your beating
for you? I'm undoubtedly grateful that
they had, and he probably felt small when that happened, if
it ever happened. But the Lord Jesus Christ speaks
to Thomas. He says, Peace be unto you, and
he shows him his wounds. The chastisement for your peace
was upon me. That's what he's saying, isn't
it? He shows him his wounds. He wants him to see his wounds,
because in seeing his wounds, he'll understand the fulfillment
of those words. There's another verse in Zechariah
13 that says... I'm going to have to turn to
it, because I don't remember it exactly, but it's the very
first verse. It says, in that day there shall
be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. How was that fountain
opened? Well, it was by the wounds. Now, the wounds the soldiers
gave, those were representative of a deeper wound that God gave
to the Lord Jesus Christ. The spear. The spear. was shoved
into the Lord Jesus Christ, into his heart, and water and blood
came out. But here in Zechariah 13 verse
7 it says, Awake, O sword, against my shepherd. Smite the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered. Because the spear was representative
of the fact that the Lord himself would wound our Savior for his
people. And he wants us to know that
that wound in his side, these are the wounds with which I was
wounded in the house of my friends, for my friends. The chastisement
of our peace was upon him. Thomas said, I will not believe
until I see the wounds. Thomas was fixated on something
that we become fixated on, evidence, experience. Have you ever experienced
that? I've experienced it all the time
in growing up, in my experience in religion. Everything I hear,
I heard, and hear, put the focus of all the attention on what
I experienced. And then I naturally put all
the focus of attention on what I experienced, or evidences.
And Thomas says, if I could just have the right evidence, I'd
believe. But the Lord Jesus takes him
completely away from the experience. And He speaks peace to him and
shows him his wounds. And what does He do? He's turning
Thomas away from his unbelief to himself. He's pointing him
to Christ. Pointing him to Christ and Him
crucified. Telling him, peace by my blood. And that's the only way that
you and I will ever be able, with Thomas, to say what Thomas
said. And notice next what he says in John 20. He says, "...be
not faithless, but believing." What is that? That's a command,
isn't it? Don't be faithless. Believing. It's a command to repent and
believe the gospel, isn't it? Repentance toward God and faith,
what? Toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Believe me. It's a command that was joined
with power. Because when the Lord Jesus spoke
these words, what did Thomas do? He cried out, my Lord, my
God. He believed, didn't he? He heard
the words of peace, he saw his wounds, and he received the grace
through the command of Christ to believe him. And he believed
him. That's the only way any of us
can... Remember the sacrifice that Elijah made In his prayer,
he asked, I mean, Elijah, he made the sacrifice. There were
450 prophets of Baal, and Jezebel is there, and all these guys
are there, and they're all offering up. You know the story. They
go first, and he goes second. He prays a simple prayer, and
he says, Lord, turn the heart of this people again. Remember? Let them know that you are God. And what happened? What did God
use to turn their hearts again? What was the basis of that? What was it that caused them
to know that the Lord was God? When they confessed, the Lord,
He is God. The Lord, He is God. It was the
accepted sacrifice, wasn't it? Elijah prayed, and God sent fire
down and consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the water,
and licked up the dust. Because the only reason for salvation,
the big issue, the only issue, is what did God think of the
sacrifice. And when he commands Thomas to
believe him, he's doing the same thing that Elijah did. Elijah
prayed, Lord, that their hearts might be turned, that they might
know that you're God. And Thomas looks at his wounds, hears his
proclamation of peace, receives the grace through his command
to believe, and he cries out, my Lord, my God. That's the only way we'll believe.
But there's one more thing I want you to consider with me, just
briefly. And this I think is very helpful
because you constantly get the skeptics of saying, well, how
can you say that Jesus is God at all, let alone my Lord and
my God? How can you say, how can I say?
Because I want to say this. I'm not just saying this to you.
I'm searching my own conscience. How can I say, without a pretense,
without some kind of a self-generated conviction? Because that's worth
nothing. How can I say, my Lord, my God
to the Lord Jesus Christ? How can I say that? I know He
has to speak peace. I know He has to show me through
the gospel that His wounds were for me. for sinners. And I know He has to command
me to believe and give me that grace. But how can I know that
I can safely, on the Word of God, say, My Lord and My God? Well, first of all, we don't
have to reinvent the wheel in answering that question. Because
faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, doesn't it?
But, specifically, I want you to consider this with me. In
answer to that question, how do I know that I can say, my
Lord, my God? Let me ask you some questions.
Who is your Savior? Who saves you? Because it says
in the scriptures that the Lord is the Savior. God our Savior. And you know that it says that
His name is Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.
There's no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must
be saved. Who's your Savior? Who is your
trust? Who is your trust? Look at Jeremiah. I have to take you to this one
verse, even though it will consume some time. It's worth your time.
Jeremiah 17, look at this with me. Jeremiah says in verse 17
to the Lord, he says, "...be not a terror unto me." I'm sorry,
Jeremiah 17, 17. Jeremiah prays and he says, "...be
not a terror unto me, thou art my hope in the day of evil."
You see that? Jeremiah is afraid. He's afraid
for his life. And he knows that the fear coming
upon him, it has to be under God's control. He says, Lord, don't you be a
terror unto me. You are my hope. But who is our
hope? Who is your Savior? Who is your
trust? Who is your hope? It says in Matthew 12.21, in
His name the Gentiles will trust. In 2 Corinthians 1.10, we trust
God who has delivered us from so great a death and will yet
deliver us. We know that the object of our
faith and trust is the Lord Jesus Christ, don't we? Is your faith,
is the object of your faith the one you trust, the Lord Jesus
Christ? Do you have another that you can trust? Scripture tells us that faith,
if it's true faith, is in the Lord Jesus Christ. In John chapter
3, 15, 18, 36, he tells us, He that believeth in Him, He that
believeth on Him, He that believeth Him. It keeps saying that over
and over. Christ is the object of our faith.
In Acts 20, 21, he says, repentance toward God, faith toward our
Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is in Him. If faith is
in Him, if the one we trust, the one we hope, the one we believe
is the Lord Jesus Christ, what does that say? Scripture in the
Old Testament makes God, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the
only hope and trust of His people. Isn't it? And yet we can say,
and we say it by the grace of God given to us, Christ is my
only answer to God. If Christ doesn't answer for
me, I do not have an answer. If his death didn't answer and
was not sufficient to answer every obligation and every sin
for me, I just don't have any hope, no trust, no confidence. I will not be able to stand before
God now in my conscience or on the day of judgment. The Lord
Jesus Christ is the object of our faith, is he not? Not only
that, on whom do you call? Joel 2.32, it says in that day,
"...whosoever shall call on the Lord shall be saved." Who do
you call on? 1 Corinthians 2.1.2, it says
that the Corinthians are those who call on the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Who do you call on? I call on
the Lord Jesus Christ. Who do you serve? Remember Jesus,
when He was tempted by the devil, He says, Thou shalt worship the
Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. But what did Paul
say in Romans 1.1? Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ. I serve Him. Why? You're not
supposed to serve anyone but the Lord. He's the Lord. He's
my Lord. He's my God. He's my hope. Who
is your Redeemer? Who is your righteousness? Is
it not the Lord our righteousness? And yet we find in Romans 10,
4 and throughout the New Testament, Christ is our righteousness. Who's our King? It's the Lord
of Glory. Look at Isaiah chapter 45. I'll end it with this. I want you to see this. Isaiah
45. Words spoken in the Old Testament from the Lord Jesus Christ to
sinners. in order that we might know and
be able to say with Thomas, my Lord, my God. Look at this, Isaiah
45. He says, verse His unique and only ability to
save. Tell ye, and bring them near,
yea, let them take counsel together, who hath declared this from ancient
time, all the way from the beginning of the world, who said anything
like this, who hath told it from that time. Have not I the Lord
And this is the message that has been spoken from the beginning.
There is no God else beside me, a just God and a Savior. How can God be just and save
a sinner? By the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And he says, there is none beside me, no Savior beside
me. This is the words, this is our
Lord Jesus speaking here. In the Old Testament, the Son
of God Jehovah, the Son of God, the Son, the Father, the Spirit,
all Jehovah God. And here's the Lord Jesus Christ
in His office as our Redeemer speaking to us. And listen to
these next words. A command, just like He's commanded Thomas,
look unto me and be ye saved. all the ends of the earth. There's
my warrant. I'm a sinner. I have no hope
in myself. I know, like Thomas, I would
be fixated first on my own ability, then a limited view of Christ,
then looking for experience and evidence, and all the time missing
the fact that the whole problem was that I was looking at myself
and thinking about what I could produce, or how I could come
up to the right level of Christianity, and always missing the only one
thing I needed to do. was see that God had provided
and received from His Son all that He requires of me. And that
is the only hope of a sinner. And I can say, my Lord, my God,
because He's all that I have. And if, and what I learned from
this is that all that, not only this, but from scripture, all
that God is, He is to us in Christ. God was in Christ reconciling
the world to Himself. Not imputing their trespasses
unto them. And if their trespasses weren't imputed, guess what?
They have no trespasses. Those to whom He did not impute
trespasses have no trespasses. If they still have them after
He didn't impute them, then there's something fundamentally broken
in God. But He cannot not impute trespasses
and then later impute trespasses. He doesn't change. He's the Lord.
He's immutable. And on the basis of that, He
says to us, peace. All your shame will be forgotten. Why? Because I have been pacified. I have removed my wrath in my
Son. I have buried the sword of my
justice in the heart of my Son. And there's a fountain open for
sinners, for uncleanness, and for sin in Him. And sinners see
that and they hear these words, from the court of heaven, just
as crying out, justified on the basis of His blood alone. And every sinner is lost and
overcome with wonder and cries out, my Lord, my God. Let's pray.