039 - So That You May Believe

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. How would you like to be remembered in history as doubting Thomas? Oh, that's not fair.

That's a really bum rap. Yeah, well, we're going to hit that today and I think we can correct the history about Thomas and find out exactly what's going on. Jesus will correct it. Good way to put it.

So today on More Than Ink. Well, wonderful. Good morning to you.

I'm Jim and I'm Dorothy. And we are, it looks like we're solidly into spring. We're happy about that. We're sitting here at our dining room table. We got our coffee and stuff and looking out and it's just gorgeous outside.

It's beautiful. So God renews life out of death of winter and here we are. Well, we're still in John and we're in the second half of John 20. And in fact, we are going to take a look in the second half of what John writes to us, which is an expanded version of what Luke writes about in the beginning of Acts. In Acts 1-3 where he says that Jesus presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And in that little phrase right there, Luke, that's our teaser for today.

That's exactly what's going to happen. Jesus will appear to them. And this passage is largely concerned with the events of Thomas, poor doubting Thomas. Poor doubting Thomas.

Got such a bum rap with tradition. But there's something else going on in this passage that fascinates me about breathing the Holy Spirit in them. So we'll get into that. And so remember where we are in John 20. We are on the first day of the week after the Passover, after the Sabbath weekend and stuff like that. In the previous part of John 20, Mary Magdalene has come to the tomb.

She finds that it's empty. She tells the apostles, Peter, John, come running back. They check it out, but John himself admits in the passage that they didn't quite understand what was going on in the scriptures. And then we have that wonderfully touching interchange between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. But still, at the end of what we were in last week, Jesus has not appeared to the apostles.

So that entire day, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall that entire day. The word went around. Even you hear a little fly on the wall action with the guys walking to Emmaus.

Because they relate to sort of the hidden Jesus. We thought he was the guy. And then, believe it or not, the women told us they'd seen him. So that's where we're at here. And now it's in the evening.

It's around dinner time or something like that. And we come back and Jesus finally appears to the disciples after that long, frustrating day. And you wonder if they had all been together all day.

Probably evening is when they finally all got back together, maybe. Except Thomas wasn't there at the beginning. Could very well be, but Thomas is absent.

What was Thomas doing? Let's read us into this. We're in chapter 20, verse 19. Let's have Jesus meet the apostles. So here we go. So on the evening of that day, that's the first day of the week.

Oh, that's what it says, the first day of the week. The door is 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.

And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. And 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. And if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.

Stop right there. So here's the first appearance of Jesus with the disciples after they probably gave the women a hard time all day long. We don't know, but probably because after all, they were the apostles of Jesus. And at this point, Jesus had not appeared to them, but he had appeared to the women.

How frustrating for them. So here he is. So he comes and his first words are, peace be with you. Well, okay, they're in the room and the door's locked. And the door's locked.

How does that work? So the other gospels, I think it's Luke, it says they thought he was a ghost. And he says, well, have you got anything to eat? I want to show you I'm not a ghost. Here, touch me.

Watch me eat dinner. I have a body. And he shows them his hands and his side. So peace. So, you know, there's a lot of heresy that worked up about Jesus being just a spiritual being and not a physical one.

And no, if you can see the marks in his hands and his side, he's physical. Three times in this chapter, John says, he said, peace be with you. Remember just a couple nights before he had said, I'm giving you peace, not like the world gives. I'm giving you a peace that can't be taken away. This kind of peace is a fundamental confidence that all is right with God.

Yeah, everything's going according to permanent. God has it all. You can settle down in God's sovereignty. I also chuckle because I think about the fact that when Jesus enters that room, what he's not seeing is peace. Oh, no. In fact, he's probably seeing a crazy mixture of fear and, I don't know, just a – Uncertainty? Uncertainty, yeah. Disbelief? Yeah, I mean, it's just probably – the whole room is like a little tornado of emotions. Maybe even arguing.

Not arguing out of anger, but playing it back and forth. Could this be true? Could it not be true? Did they really say it? Did they really see it? What really happened?

What is going on here? They're just roiled, as we say. I mean, they just – yeah. So I've always found it funny that, boom, he shows up in the room and says – well, in our vernacular, he says, chill. Chill. Peace, you guys. Peace. Peace be with you.

And so when he said that, of course, they're wondering whether he is a ghost, and then he shows his hands in his sign. Well, he says it again. Yeah. Peace be with you.

Yeah. Calm down. Calm. Calm yourselves. Yeah, the atmosphere in the room must have been just sort of crazy for him to say it two times in a row, like in about 30 seconds.

I mean, it's just astonishing. But then after he says peace the second time, he adds something really interesting. So I'm sending you. And this is – As the Father sent me. Yeah, as the Father sent me.

I'm sending you. And that's really important. Yeah. So this is kind of what we mentioned last time about the fact that the appearance of Jesus doesn't mean that the old plan is reinstated. It means that we're turning the page to a new plan. Jesus is as intimately involved in the ministry as ever before, but in a different kind of way. You know, the Father had sent him in those last three years, and now he's saying, and this is the switch. Now I'm sending you just as the Father sent me. So he's really – he's trying to get them to understand in all this turmoil. A page has been turned here. Just because you see me does not mean we're going back to what we were doing last week.

It's going to be radically different. Well, and they had heard him pray a couple nights before when he said in John 17, as you sent me into the world, I've sent them into the world. Sanctify them in their truth.

Yeah. So it has to do with the truth about who God is. And that's going to be their mission. Who the Son is. And that's their message.

I'm sending you. Who is this one who came and what did he accomplish? Right. And his identity in terms of being God is key to that message. And so right here he's proving his identity. Paul says that in other places. He says, look, you know, if you want some proof about the divinity of Christ, you know, he did raise from the dead. He didn't just raise other people.

Exactly. He himself was raised. He himself conquered death himself. And if that's possible, we're talking about something really important about who this Jesus is. He's not just a nice prophet or a teaching guy, but there's something much more extraordinary going on here. And if you need proof, you only need the death and resurrection of Jesus.

That's the only proof you need. So he says, as the Father sent me, I am sending you. And then he breathes on them and says, receive the Holy Spirit.

What do you make of that? He breathes on them and says, receive the Holy Spirit. Which, by the way, again, through Peter's writings later and Paul's, we know, is the Holy Spirit is the essential element that makes their sending work. Well, and the Holy Spirit is the breath of God. That's very clear all the way through even the Old Testament.

Yeah, I think we mentioned this a little while ago in the broadcast, but I mean actually if you look at the etymology of the words for the Holy Spirit. Oh, the Ruach. The Ruach. It sounds like a breath, doesn't it? Yeah, well it actually has a dual purpose. It's the word breath. It can be breath. It can be wind. It's air in motion.

Right. So when they wanted to capture the idea of what this weird concept of the Holy Spirit is, this invisible force, they said, well, it's kind of like air. You can't see it, but it's definitely real.

There's no question about that. And Jesus even goes on at one point and says, you know, it's just like you look at a tree and you see its leaves moving. You'll see the effect of it. You see the effect of it, but you don't see it directly.

So that seemed like a really good parallel in terms of borrowing words from the culture. And I've always marveled at the fact that in the Old Testament and the New, this air that we live in, we live in a sea of this air, is something that not only completely surrounds us, it's pervasive around us, which is true of the Holy Spirit, but we also in-breathe in. And so we talk about being filled by the Holy Spirit as well. So air is no good to you if it's just outside of you. You have to take it in. So it's a great parallel.

Okay. And he had told them on that night, a couple nights before, we're going to come to you. My father and I will come to you and we'll make our abode in you. I'm going to send you another comforter and he will be in you and he'll never leave you. So, you know, this is, he's just, and he's making this direct link when he breathes on them. I am God in the flesh and I am breathing my life into you.

It's a very visual, even though you can't see the breath, it's a very visual idea. He's communicating to them, I am breathing the life of God into you. And in that action, he's referencing all mentions of the Old Testament.

I mean, he's doing it visually just to tell them, this is what was promised and this is what God was going to give and so I'm doing it right now. Okay, so then he makes the connection with sin and forgiveness. But the translation here is hard.

Well, let's read it again. So he says, you know, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they're forgiven them and if you withhold forgiveness from any, it's withheld.

This is the ESV translation. Yeah, I'm not happy with that translation in this particular place because that, on a surface reading, that would give the impression that it's going to be their responsibility to grant or withhold forgiveness. Yeah, like to be the judges of the earth. God is an error. That is not communicated anywhere in the scriptures. God is the one who forgives. However, a lot of modern day heresy comes out of this verse right here, you know, saying basically we have the power to pronounce judgment and the power to forgive.

No, actually, only God has the power to do that. Yeah, so I really prefer the New American Standard translation at this point, which says, if you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven. In other words, you have recognized that their sins have been forgiven. And if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.

Well, retaining is a little different than withholding. Right. Well, yeah, here it says we hold forgiveness, but the most literal translation is the retaining or the seizing of sin. Right. Like, if you don't let someone's sin go, you hold on to that sin.

No, don't wiggle out of this. You take hold of it and call them to account. Right, so that's something that the Holy Spirit does through them in terms of holding people to account. You don't let their sins go, you seize them.

And that's what he means by the second half. It's not withhold forgiveness. It's like, no, I'm not going to let your sin go. Well, and Jesus had said to them, now here's where we put this passage right alongside everything else Jesus said about the Spirit. He said in John 16, the first thing I'm going to tell you about the Holy Spirit when he comes is that he will convict the world of sin.

Convict the world of sin. He will, and the meaning of that conviction is to persuade of the truth. Yes, exactly. So, you know, there's something about this breathing of the Holy Spirit that gives insight into understanding the truth of sin and forgiveness.

Yes. And so that is something we can say for certain. Yeah, and that's the key first step when it comes to salvation. Step one of the two steps, step one is you have to come to confess and repent your sin. Yeah, acknowledge your sin and claim that there's nothing you can do about it.

And then secondly, call out to God to save you, and he does. Yeah, because the scripture says it's your sin that separates you from God. Exactly, it's not that the arm of the Lord is so short that he cannot save, it's your sin. So we're quoting Isaiah here.

You track those down using your concordance. Isaiah, it's not that the arm of the Lord is so short that he cannot save, but you have separated yourself from God. So clearly that's what's going on. And so as Jesus came into the world originally, if you look at the beginning of his ministry, he went around saying literally repent the kingdom of God is at hand or it's near. So repent is the first step. When it comes to repentance, the first thing these guys are going to have to do when they spread all around the world is convicted of sin, which the Holy Spirit in them allows them to do. And call them to turn and go another direction.

Tell them that you've got a problem. So that's all he's saying right here. He says up to this point, you've watched me for the last three years, I've called people out myself in ministry, but now that's going to be your job is to call people out on their sin. And as I was thinking about this, I was thinking a great example is in Acts 5, when you have Peter confronting Ananias and Sapphira. If you don't know that story, just flip over to Acts 5 and take a look at it.

But in a very supernatural way, Peter has insight into the heart's motivations of these two people. And that's the Holy Spirit working in them. It's a perfect example of what Jesus is talking about right here. Yeah, because he had said the Spirit is going to guide you into all truth. The Holy Spirit confirms the true nature of things.

Yeah, yeah. So Jesus is saying that's the new page in the ministry. We're turning that page today. Just because you see me today doesn't mean we're going to do next week what we did last week. What comes next week now is on you guys with the Holy Spirit. It's different.

It's radically different. Well, let's move on to Thomas. What do you say? You want to read for us at 24?

Sure. Now Thomas, one of the 12 called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we've seen the Lord. That's the same thing that Mary Magdalene had said, by the way. And they didn't say, we've seen the Lord.

They didn't say it like that. 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 sign, I'll 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, he says to Thomas, Jesus initiates this, put your finger here and see my hands and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. And Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you've seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Okay, let's stop there. Let's just stick with Thomas for a minute.

Yeah, yeah. Thomas is deliberately not there the first time. When I say deliberately, not because he's standing him up, but I think God wants to make a point.

Oh, it's God's purpose. Yeah, so he keeps Thomas out of this original viewing. And then you see his heart. He says, unless I have the same advantage you guys have had, unless I see his hands and the marks of the nails and this sign, I'm not going to believe.

I'm not going to believe. And a lot of people look at that and they put Thomas down for that. But come on, the other apostles had that advantage. Right, and this raises the question from Jesus' response to him, we see that there is a difference between honest doubt and willful refusal to believe. And actually the book of Hebrews gets into that in some detail.

Yeah, and then with some people, regardless of how much evidence you give them, they will not believe. But Thomas says, I know myself. If you take your concordance and look for Thomas in the Gospels and see who he was, what he was like, we have a few other places where he is recorded as saying things, right? Saying, let's go along with the Lord so we can die with him. We will die with him. Because he's doing something we think is foolish, right? And he said just a couple nights before, Lord, we don't know where you're going.

How do we know the way? So Thomas was a very concrete kind of guy. Yeah, we know a lot about him, not as much as we know Peter and John. But for Thomas, he's probably, I don't know, number three on the list. I don't know.

Maybe. We know a lot about him. Yeah, so he's an interesting guy.

He's worth taking a look at. He says, I know myself. Unless I have the same evidence you guys had, I'm going to struggle with this all my life. Yeah, yeah. In modern day parlance, we many times say when someone makes an extraordinary claim, it demands extraordinary evidence. And in a way, that's sort of what Thomas is saying here. He says, look, let's be fair about this. This is an extraordinary thing. If this is this extraordinary, I want the same extraordinary evidence. Because am I one of you?

Or am I a second class guy? Right, right. Jesus lets him struggle with this for an entire week. For a week. So that makes me think of those three or four days that Lazarus was in the tomb. Yeah, right. Jesus let that family grieve and wrestle and struggle for those days, knowing full well that he was going to raise him. And in that delay, there's great gold being made in these guys' lives. So eight days later, which by the way, is at the end of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, so we're outside of that.

Yeah, but it's a whole cycle of the week from Sabbath to Sabbath and then the next day. And it's like deja vu all over again. They're inside the room with the doors locked, but now Thomas is there.

Jesus comes in, deja vu, peace be with you. And then he turns directly to Thomas and said, put your finger here. It's as though he came to say, I'm just here for Thomas. I'm here for you.

I'm here for you. He respects Thomas' desire to have that same extraordinary evidence. And he says, don't disbelieve, but believe.

I really love that line. I don't want you to disbelieve. And if you ever wonder about it, does God want you to believe the truth? He does. And he'll do whatever it takes to bring you in the world of believing.

He will meet you in your honest doubt. Yeah, I think that's an extraordinary thing. That's an extraordinary thing. And a lot of people say, no, that's kind of second class spirituality. The people who believe without any evidence at all, they're the ones that are really something. Well, there's something to that, but what Jesus is saying here. But we don't ever believe without evidence. Right, and I think that's the misunderstanding. He had the evidence of the verbal eyewitness of the other 11.

Or the other 10 at this point. And I think we need to make the point, we don't have enough time to really delve into it here, but faith is really an evidence-based belief. It's not a blind faith. And here you see Jesus saying, I want you to believe.

By the way, the word believe and faith are almost synonymous in the Greek. So I want you to believe. I just want you to believe.

However, if you willfully will not believe, there's no amount of evidence, even if someone comes alive from the grave, Jesus told them they're still not going to believe, if they willfully not going to believe. But Thomas wants to believe. He does want to believe. He wants to believe.

You've got to believe he's had a really difficult week. Yeah, exactly. He wants to believe. And then his statement after he does that is astonishing. He says, my Lord and my God, is he calling Jesus God?

Yes. And a lot of people try and dance around and say, well, I don't think he's really saying that. Well, no, he is saying that. Absolutely, he is. He is saying that. So he believes.

He's right there. And then Jesus says that marvelous thing, have you believed just because you've seen me? Well, that's a piece of it. But he says, look, there's people who are never going to be able to see me and have this advantage, but they're still going to believe.

How about that? And so that's Jesus speaking to us 2,000 years later saying, I'm talking about you guys. During that week, he had given Thomas the opportunity to believe without seeing in the same way.

Right, for that week. As all of those that they were entrusted to take the gospel to would be asked to believe without seeing the corporeal body of Jesus. So Thomas had been granted a very unique kind of blessing in order to believe without the concrete personal evidence. He had been given the opportunity to believe on the basis of an eyewitness account. And he still couldn't do it.

He still couldn't do it. And so the Lord met him in that honest doubt. Yeah, and that's just a wonderful thing that God honors that desire to believe.

That is so gracious. And I think it was important too for later on when Thomas goes out traveling across the world, he could stand in front of people and say, I have seen him myself. I have touched him myself. It is true. So in terms of being credible witnesses, we're not talking about secondhand evidence. He says, I've seen him myself.

I put my fingers in his wounds. So yeah, that's the cool thing. And I wonder if this incredible cry, my Lord and my God, comes out of his wrestling all week. I think it does. Who is God? Who is this man I've been following for these years? Yeah, I think it is.

I think it definitely is. It comes out of that pressure cooker that week that God put him through. And he's cemented in. He can go with a solid witness and say, I've seen him.

I know who he is. Well, we need to finish up because this last phrase we alluded to weeks ago. Oh, it's so important. Now, Jesus did many other signs, this is John telling us, 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 Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. This is John telling us why he wrote the book. And it sounds like he's finishing the book. There's a little more to come. There's a little more to come.

And it's an interesting, the 21st chapter is an interesting thing. But this is John saying, look, there's a lot I've left out. But this should be enough. This should be sufficient for you to understand that Jesus is who he says he is and that by believing that you might have life in his name. So what is needed in order to have life? Well, belief in who Jesus is as the Messiah, the Son of God.

The sent one. And to believe that. And then we confess our sins to him and repent and cry out to him and he saves us. Because if you remember, Jesus had said to them that night at the Last Supper, don't you get it yet, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

You've seen the Father. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the question then is, when you finish reading the Gospel of John and you come to this point, is this enough? Yeah. What more would you require?

What would you need? To persuade you. Yeah.

I'd like to have a lot more information, but this is enough. Really? This is enough. What more could he have done to communicate to you that he is the one and only sent one, the only begotten of the Father? Yep.

Yep. And I've always loved the fact that later on John writes some little letters and in 1 John 5.11 he says, and this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life and that life is in his Son. In his Son.

And this is it right here. And so whoever has the Son has life. It's all about believing who Jesus is. That's why we say often it's really all about who Jesus is. It's all about Jesus.

It's all about who he is. And here John has given us a sufficient documentation for us to believe. In the same way that Jesus gave Thomas sufficient information to believe, in this account he's given us sufficient information to believe. Now it's not because you haven't been informed. It's not because you're ignorant. It's because you won't believe. It's a whole different thing.

He's drawn that line now. So that's an astonishing thing. And even Paul says in early Romans, he says there's enough evidence in all of creation for people to believe. So there really is no excuse. If you don't believe it's because you don't want to.

It's not because you don't have the info. Yeah. And that hearkens back to what we talked about last week with Mary Magdalene not seeing Jesus standing there because she was looking for a dead body. Yeah. Right. And if you refuse to believe that he is who he claims to be, well, what kind of sent one are you looking for? Because this is the one who demonstrates who God genuinely is, the one who loves so much that he gives himself completely.

Yeah. And isn't it interesting that people cannot see the true Jesus because they have an expectation that they're looking for something else for the wrong thing. You need to kind of let that go and read it with fresh eyes and say, but this is who he really is. Well, we're out of time. And next week we'll read chapter 21, which is in a way John's postscript to this. And it's a fascinating. So, so, so wonderful closing comment in a very personal thing that you only see in John's Gospel. So you're not going to want to miss this.

So you can read ahead. It's John 21. You can see just a touching scene right there. So I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're just glad you're with us. We hope that you're finding God in these pages because I am, I just, I could read this again starting from scratch. This is just incredible stuff.

So good. So thanks for being with us and we hope you join us next week on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Take it away. Well, we'll see how that goes. In three, two, one.