John 20:19-31
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, 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 from any, 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 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 hands; 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.”
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
He has risen, is risen indeed, hallelujah. So as always the reading we have on this first Sunday after Easter. And there at the end is poor Thomas. So often we call him Doubting Thomas. And we do, we do a little bit of a disservice really when we call him that. Because first none of the other disciples believed until they had encountered the risen Lord Jesus Christ. He just happened to not be in the room when Jesus appeared. And what's more, we do a disservice when an English we call him Doubting Thomas, because in our Gospel text, not once, not for a single second, this Thomas doubt. Of course, he doesn't actually believe either. But there's no doubt there's nothing in the middle. Thomas went further than doubting, he flat out rejected
that Jesus had resurrected, He said he couldn't believe it. He rejected he didn't believe at all. And I don't know if we can blame him. I don't know if we're any different than him. After all, the resurrection sounds preposterous, really. So many of us grew up in a world where it was just taken for a fact in our culture that of course, Jesus rose from the dead, of course, it was a real event.
Now that's less than less. The gospel has always been absurd and alien to our culture, it's just more apparent. After all, we all see with our own eyes, how this world works, you reap what you sow. You have to work. If you want to make your payments. If you want to get good grades, you have to study you do the work, you get the reward, if things work out well. So the very idea that some random Jewish carpenter 2000 years ago on the other side of the world, could have died because his death,
you escape eternal punishment when you think of it like that. It does, in fact, sound ridiculous. But that doesn't mean it's not true. After all, the things of God often sound like folly
to men. In fact, St. Paul writes about that in the first chapter of First Corinthians, He tells us that the things of God do, in fact, seem foolish, until you've been called by God, until God gives you faith until you're enlightened and your eyes are open. What a beautiful ceremony we just saw, with that chrismation, with the anointing, that your eyes may be open, that your lips may be open. Because without Christ, they're closed and we're blind. But then all of a sudden, when God works faith in us, St. Paul says in First Corinthians, that all of a sudden, the foolishness of God, we now know is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. And what's more, we've all experienced that in our lives, haven't we? When faith has been kindled in our hearts,
and all of a sudden, despite what the world says, despite their message, we instead cling to Christ. And we cling to the foolishness of God.
We see that happen in the life of Thomas in our gospel reading. And it's not as if one day you are I just all of a sudden reasoned it out we put the pieces together. And we believe that the gospel was true. It's not as if one day we chose to accept it. And why is that? It's because we are spiritually dead. Without Christ, that is, humanity is spiritually dead after the fall. We cannot light that little spark of faith in our spiritually dead hearts. In fact, we cannot choose Jesus we are all like Thomas saying, I cannot believe we cannot choose Jesus because Jesus Jesus always has to choose us. First. The Small Catechism says it this way. It says, I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my lord or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts sanctified and kept me in the true faith. Humanity, you and I, we can no more make ourselves believe that a lump of clay can just sit there and form itself into a cup or a bowl or something useful. And that's because we are not creators of faith. But instead, as Christians, we are creatures, we are creations of faith, who have been formed, and had faith in the love of God placed into our hearts. And if you need to see proof of that, just look to our gospel reading, if anybody should have been able to create faith in themselves, it would have been an apostle. And yet Thomas says in verse 25, Unless I see the marks of the nail in his hand, Unless I see the hole in his sight, and place my hand and in Greek, that's his fist wants to place his fist, and Jesus is Pierside. Unless I can do that, he says, I will never believe. And this is the same Thomas, who was in the inner circle with the disciples, right? Hit FOLLOW JESUS for three years. He was with the group that was sent out to cast out demons and heal in the name of Jesus. So think of all the things that Thomas had already seen and touched. He saw Jesus calm the raging sea of Galilee, with his word. He saw Jesus touch lepers, and then be healed, or even just say, you are healing, they're healed. He sees from this point, it would have been maybe 1415 days before this event, he would have seen Lazarus come out of the tomb, a man who stinks as much because he was dead for three days, when Jesus just says, come on out. This is the same man who had put his hand on people, and in the name of Jesus healed them and cast out demons, he has already seen and touched the proof. And yet, this is the man in verse 25, who says that without proof, he cannot leave. And what's more in the Greek text, it's even more drastic than our English. Thomas says EU may pursue. So it's important little phrase, ooh, May with those two Greek words, ooh, and may can't really explain them in English, but it's almost as if he is saying, I cannot. I will never, ever be able to believe it is absolutely impossible. We don't even have a way of saying it in English, but they do in Greek. Who may? I can't? It's impossible. And Thomas is right. Because he cannot believe without encountering the risen Christ, he cannot believe apart from the Holy Spirit working faith in him. None of us can. And why? Because we are creatures of faith. Because faith is in fact, a miracle worked by God. Our God is a God who creates with his word. In the beginning, he says, Let there be light and what happened? What happened? There was light. He said it and there was in St. Paul says, in Romans 1015, that faith comes by hearing. Jesus appears to the frightened disciples in that upper room. That's Easter day. And he says, Peace be with you. And what do they have all of a sudden, peace. Because of Jesus's performative and creative word, it does what he says it will do. And so he comes to Thomas on eight days later. And he commands him. He says, Do not disbelieve, but believe. And those disciples were seeing the same one who called creation into existence, speak a miracle. And faith was worked in Thomas's heart. Thomas doesn't go over and start touching his body. Instead, he immediately confesses My Lord and my God. Thomas and the other disciples, they were blessed. They got to see and they got to touch Jesus. And afterwards, yes, they touched Jesus, they ate with them, all of these things. But the truth is encounters with the risen Lord Jesus, are much more common now than they were even in the days of the apostles. And our Lord continues to create with His Word, His word continues to be powerful and efficacious and do exactly what he sends it forth to do. And the Bible is read when the gospel is preached. The Word of Christ comes to bearing the Holy Spirit. When Christ through his servant says to your sins are forgiven, we just heard it in John 20. They are in fact, forgiven as if Jesus himself said it because the pastor is just saying the words of Jesus. And when his servant baptized, you are breonna when soon you'll be baptized, and you hear these words from a very unassuming, you're from the Midwest, right? And unassuming Midwest man, I baptize you in name of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Right here with lukewarm tap water. The very triune name of the Most High God will be placed on you. You will be a daughter of the Lord. Why? Because God's Word does what it says it does. It's powerful. Sorry, I'm getting all teary eyed thinking about it.
The beautiful thing. See the very God who brought our universe into being by speaking and so he now comes to us, and He speaks and he creates and He sustains faith in us. He creates and sustains good works in us in a Christian life. And this is assurance beyond all measure because it means that faith we believe faith saves right faith alone, we confess this as Lutherans, but it means that faith is not our work. But it is the work of our perfect God. And he never fails. There's a term we use as theologians often to describe this and it's kind of a fancy word, but it's it's monetarism. I know I use it in Bible studies here all the time monetarism right mono like mono rail or like you know, a monocle means one. So monetarism means one party does all of the work absolutely all of the work. In this case, it's the Holy Spirit of Christ creating faith, strengthening us unto salvation. Right? It's monotheism that is truly Christ alone, that saves you that you and I have no part none of our works matter. It's all the completed work of Christ. Right monetarism, that our salvation rests solely in the merits of Jesus given to us. And these actions, this gift of righteousness and salvation, it is alien to us it is from outside of us, right? It's foreign when it comes inside and dwells. And so now all of a sudden, you don't have to rely upon yourself. But instead you can easily rest in the mercy of God, you can rest in the Sabbath that is the Lord Jesus. Because he is doing it all for you creating and sustaining your faith. As you hear the word preached, working in preparing good works in you and for you. But just as the gospel is foreign to this world, so is this idea of monetarism, the God does everything. It's alien to our culture, even the church's culture. It's true anywhere in the world. Whether you're in East County, or you're in Transylvania where I'm at, it's true. We have a culture that wants to make faith a good work, a good work that man has to do. Right? They want you to make a decision for Jesus, they want you to give your heart. How many of you have a clean, wonderful heart, raise your hand? What a horrible gift to give to Jesus. He gives you a new heart. In the Eastern Orthodox, they want you to live a perfect life so that you can become more godlike to then be saved. They got that backwards. montages and this idea that Christ truly is it's Christ alone, faith alone. It's alien to the church, but we have it in the Lutheran church. Thanks be to God. You know, after the emotions, and that mountaintop experience leave you how many of us have had that time where we made a decision for Jesus? And then when the emotions go and the sin and the temptation comes back, we doubt that we really meant that's ever been you if that's you right now, I do not doubt that you're a Christian. But we've been misled by that culture that rejects Christ alone and monetarism. So of course, you're going to doubt your salvation when any of it rests on you and not the Lord Jesus. A creature must be created. And we are creatures of faith, a true faith that comes from outside of ourselves. That's beautiful. Because it means you never need to worry if your faith is strong enough, or if you believe hard enough. Because the work of the Crucified Lord Jesus is more than enough for you and all of the sins in your life.
What a beautiful thing that is. After all, when you were baptized, were you baptized into your own good works? Or were you baptized into the works of Jesus?
Who are you baptized into? You are Jesus, Jesus? That's a simple one, right? When you were baptized, were you baptized into your death? Or were you baptized into the death of Jesus,
Jesus? And on that last day, when you're before the throne of God,
whose good works and merits Do you want before him? Yours are Jesus's. Yeah, it's a Sunday School question right? The answer is Jesus, Jesus. And last one who creates faith in your heart and who created it in the heart of Thomas?
Jesus through the Holy Spirit that precedes from him. So don't doubt. Don't disbelieve that you are saved that's lies of the culture. That's the lies of the devil.
Stand in your salvation. Stand in your baptism in Christ standard, his good works, his merits firmly because you can know that your salvation is the work of God. Don't doubt it. Don't disbelieve. In the words of Jesus believe. Amen. And now may the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding, keeping guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai