Chapel with D.A. Carson – 2019 Spurgeon Lectures – Day 2

John chapter 20 verses 24 to 31 John chapter 20 verses 24 to 31 here then what Holy Scripture says now Thomas also known as didymus one of the twelve was not with the disciples when Jesus came so the other disciples told him we have seen the Lord but he said to them unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side I will not believe a week later his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them though 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 see my hands reach out your hand and put it into my side stop doubting and believe Thomas said to him my Lord and my god then Jesus told him because you have seen me you have believed blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name this is the word of the Lord let us pray and now may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord our strength and our Redeemer through Jesus Christ amen doubt can have many causes and because it has many causes it has many solutions many ways of being confronted decades ago when I was pastor of a church in metropolitan Vancouver we had a college and careers group of oh I don't know 70 young people something like that and they were vivacious and interesting challenging but the most vivacious of all was a young woman called Peggy if you put Peggy at one end of a room and the other 70 at the other end of the room ninety percent of the energy was at Peggy's end she was one of those she was a student at the University of British Columbia vivacious a keen Christian a perpetual witness and one day she flounced up to me and she said pastor Don I I want to go out with a non-christian boy called Fred I said uh-huh she said no I'm not interested romantically i-i-i I just want to share my faith with him he's have been asking me some questions and I I'd like to have the opportunity to talk to him I said uh-huh no really really you you have to trust me on this I said ah huh so finally I said to her okay going with him share your faith and bring him to talk to me she said uh-huh next Saturday night I was late I was still single so I could work late in the church office 10:30 at night 11 final touches on the sermon for the next Sunday morning duck duck duck in came Peggy and Fred she said this is Fred he wants to meet you well I could see that wasn't true so we went out to an all-night coffee joint and I just tried to get him to relax Oh tell me about who he was I turned out that he came from a skeptical family never really been exposed to Christians at all didn't hold a Bible didn't know anything about the Christian faith at all and it was very low-key till about two o'clock in the morning next Saturday night duck duck Duck Duck off to the coffee shop and this time he had a list of questions so we talked through the questions and I listed for him some things he needed to read next Saturday night duck duck Duck Duck off to the coffee shop he had read them all and had another list of questions and it became pretty obvious that he was as doer and as straight and as logical and coherent as she was tangential viv Asia's creative and so on he was he was perfect engineer material or maybe accounting 13 weeks this went on till 2:00 or 2:30 and what this was doing to my sermons I have no idea but at the end of 13 weeks he looked to me and he said okay I'll become a Christian of the various people I've led to the Lord over the decades no one other than Fred came to be a Christian quite so logically in other words at the root of his doubt the doubt with which he began which is massive ignorance what he needed above all was information here is Thomas Naugle one of contemporary cultures most gifted intelligent atheists I speak from experience being strongly subject to this fear myself I want a theism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers it isn't just that I don't believe in God and actually I hope that I'm right and my belief is that I hope there is no God I don't want there to be a God I don't want the universe to be like that my guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time it is just as irrational to be influenced in one's beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist now here is doubt anchored in massive philosophical commitment and more information by itself will not be adequate for addressing it or consider someone who is keen apparently as a student at university involved with crew or inner varsity or one of the other groups and shares his faith her faith and gradually then as marriage comes along and children and climbing up the ladder at work and the sharp edge of interest fades a little dulls a little pretty soon there no there's no time for prayer meeting or things of that order if you show up once on Sunday you're doing well maybe once a month on Sunday and then he wakes up one morning sleeping next to somebody that he shouldn't be sleeping next to and he slips into the bathroom looks in the mirror and he says I don't believe all that rubbish anyway this is not because of massive ignorance nor is it massive philosophical commitment it's the product of ten thousand small decisions all of them bad doubt may be fostered by sleep deprivation by some terrible existential crisis the death of someone close to you you can talk casually about the problem of evil until you lose your own children to a terrible disease and you don't know which way to turn the problem of evil now is no longer philosophical but existential and you cry out in bitterness of heart or like Joe want a lawyer you're in a pretty bad way if you want a lawyer to talk to God so the question to ask ourselves as we approach the narrative in front of us is what kind of doubt do we have here because this passage certainly does not attempt to answer the question of doubt on some universal scale if anybody has any doubts this is the text that will answer it no no it's addressing a certain kind of doubt in a certain man with a certain background at a certain time and as such it speaks profoundly to us not only about doubt and about Thomas but about Jesus but it's important to think clearly what kind of doubt we're dealing with and so we begin will divide the passage into three parts number one the cry of a disappointed skeptic verses 24 to 25 remember the context Jesus has been crucified none of the Apostles had a category for that even though Jesus had predicted his own death they expected the Messiah to be a conquering hero and once he was crucified they did not say yes I can hardly wait till Sunday they hid in an upstairs room for fear the authorities would descend on them then on that first Easter Sunday the reports began to trickle in the women the two on the road to Emmaus the race to the tomb reported in the first part of chapter 20 and eventually Jesus appearing to the 12-2 Judas had committed suicide and Thomas wasn't there that's the background and now we hear the cry of a disappointed sceptic Thomas was not with the disciples so the other disciples told him we have seen the Lord but he said to them unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side I will not believe so this is not the skepticism of a philosophical materialist like Naugle it's not the skepticism of a own ignorant young person like fred is not the skepticism of a moral degenerate but kind of skepticism is it it's the skepticism of one who wishes to distinguish between faith and gullibility he did believe in Jesus he understood Jesus to be the Messiah and now he's been disappointed he almost feels betrayed I was just too gullible and I'm not going to get snookered again if he's going to believe that Jesus really did rise from the dead he wants the most unequivocal proof that the body that went into the tomb is none other than the body that came out of the tomb that's what he says unless I put my finger in the nail marks and my hand into his side I will not believe you you're not gonna pull any sort of twin routine on me any body switch after all there were some people who were crucified who actually were taken down from the cross before they died maybe Jesus was one of those no no no no Jesus had an exceptional wound in his side piercing the pericardium blood and water coming out he was dead alright and I need to see the marks I need to see the wound or I will not believe now in all fairness there's something right about that there's something wrong too as we'll see but there's something right about distinguishing faith and gullibility two or three decades ago there was a faith healer in California by the name of Popoff he had a particular routine he invited people to his vast auditorium and right in the middle of his proceedings he would say there is a woman row 14 seat three she has severe back pain come forward God commands you to come forward and be healed and sure enough there was a woman in 1413 or whatever it was 14 see and and she'd come forward and he'd lay hands on her and she thrash around on the floor and her eyes healed well this was so spectacular that the cynics all agreed this had to be rigged and so people were interviewed and tracked down and no one could find any evidence of rigging ABC American Broadcasting Corporation however continued in their gullibility and went in there with a hidden camera and a rangefinder checking over the various radio frequencies to fax fastened in on on the strongest signal because it was noted that mrs. Popoff was amongst the hostesses that was inviting people in and passing out prayer cards and and little slips of paper saying if you write down what you want prayed for my husband will pray for you and so on and somebody tracked her down and she shuffled the card so that if somebody said I've been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and have six weeks to live that would get thrown in the rubbish but if she put down or if the the the the the visitor put down something that that had a good chance of being at least in part psychosomatic and so on then mrs. Popoff noted carefully what row and seat she sat in and then radio down to Popoff who was wearing a hearing aid now what a faith healer is doing what a hearing aid is another question that I won't address but it turned out that the hearing aid was a radio receiver and she'd say dear we got another 114 C issue she's a a woman a middle-aged apparently has a back pain of some sort and so in the middle of the in the middle of the proceedings he was receiving these signals so ABC on national television recorded what was going on and played it over the airwaves there was Popoff saying the Lord has told me the Lord has told me 14c there is a woman and then they played it again with the sound tract in dear we've got one the Lord has told me the Lord well I have to say it his ministry sort of popped off now sadly memories are so short that I was in California some years later and lo and behold he was back on the air wasn't quite as enthusiastically supported but he still hasn't disappeared there's a failure to recognize the danger of gullibility there is a difference between faith and gullibility we'll come back to that and Thomas did not want to be gullible that's why he asks for hands-on evidence to guarantee that the body that went into the tomb is none of the body that came out here's a cry of a disappointed skeptic number two the adoration of an astonished skeptic verses 26 to 28 a week later so it's Sunday again his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with him though the doors were locked so Jesus it turns out could materialize and dematerialize things that he had never done apparently during the days of his pre death flesh though the doors were locked Jesus came and stood among them and said peace be with you which is what he had said the week before now probably what he said was some variation of Shalom which can mean peace be with you or it can refer to the final consummated blessing of God or it can mean hi there depends a bit on the context then he said to Thomas put your finger here see my hands reach out your hand and put it into my side stop doubting oh its doubt all right it's doubt stop doubting what you're doing is wrong and to believe Thomas said to him my Lord and my god now we need to pause and think of this confession first the expression my Lord and my God has been treated differently in the history of the church depending on the party doing the interpretation the Arians for example including contemporary Aryans like Chavez witnesses have offered two explanations for this because on the face of it it's a pretty all face confession of the deity of Jesus which they cannot allow they offer two dominant explanations in 1 Thomas is understood to be saying something like my lord my god which presupposes that Thomas responds to seeing the resurrected Jesus is blasphemy worse Jesus seems to approve him in the next verse moreover it's silly because of the little word and even if you can imagine that a first century conservative Jew like Thomas could utter that particular form of blasphemy singularly unlikely what are you doing with the word end even if you could imagine by some great stretch of the imagination that he could say my lord my god how do you turn that into my Lord and my god the alternative explanation offered by Aryans is that this was not addressed to Jesus at all was addressed to the Father so he sees the resurrected Jesus and he turns heavenward and says my Lord and my god this is pretty cool my Lord and my my God which is not completely impossible but it's contextually singularly unlikely especially when you see that the next verse is bound up with Jesus identity no no this is the confession of Jesus deity the real question we have to ask it seems to me to understand this passage you're right is why did John confess so much why didn't he simply say oh you are alive or boy was I wrong or oh it's wonderful you're here how does he get all the way to the conclusion that Jesus is his Lord and God what warrants is confessing so much after all Lazarus came back from the dead and nobody called him Lord and God the only way you can answer that it seems to me is by casting your mind back to the rest of John's Gospel after all it's only been a few days since Jesus said to the twelve in the upstairs room have I been with you such a long time Philip and yet you have not known me he who has seen me has seen the father and I can imagine the Apostle saying deep here we go again more stuff I don't understand we'll get there someday deep or casting back a little farther to what's reported in John 8 Jesus saying before Abraham was I am using the very words that God takes on his own lips and passages like isaiah 43:10 and elsewhere and i'm sure then - well some took up stones to throw at him and kill him by stoning him the apostles were most likely saying deep deep don't understand that quite either but it must be important but it's not as if the Apostles that understood all of Jesus sayings and we're already convinced that he was God and now God has come back they they weren't there yet but if he's had time over a whole week what's he been thinking about he's heard from his fellow apostles that they have seen the risen Lord they're convinced that he is the same Jesus who went into the tomb oh it can't be it can't be I don't want to get snookered again and hurt I thought to distinguish between faith and gullibility I need evidence not like some people I need evidence but but but never no it can't be yeah but they were so convinced supposing it's true no no I can't you can imagine and wrestling with these things and then playing into his wrestling his mental wrestling such passages as the two that I've just cited in John 14 and 15 and in John 8 and it's not just those passages as well but the experience of the Lord Jesus over the last three years think of what's reported in Mark's Gospel Jesus is preaching in a house that's packed out probably not with tidy rows of chairs but people squashed in there and as Jesus is preaching away up come five men for carrying the fifth who's paralyzed they're carrying him on some sort of makeshift bed makeshift caught we want to get in to see Jesus he could feel our friend might jump business the Masters busy now he's he's talking he's preaching let him preach let him finish his sermon take your turn there I just want to see him - they're not going to be dissuaded so they climb up the outside stairs onto the flat roof that was common in those days the way you cool down at the end of the day was to cool off on the flat roof let the breezes blow over you so they get up on the flat roof and they listen carefully to find out where it is in the house that Jesus is parked as he's teaching they hear it and they start taking up the tiles pretty soon their friend is being lowered on ropes on his bed if the crowd won't give way when they asked nicely they'll give way because a bed is coming down on their heads and finally now the chappie is there in front of Jesus and Jesus says son your sins are forgiven and the theological experts who are present are deeply affronted who can forgive sins but God alone you know that question is a very good one it's very astute after World War two there was a book written called the sunflower it was written by a Jew who survived Auschwitz all of his family was killed at Auschwitz but in the closing weeks of the war before the Russians arrived and freed the prisoners at Auschwitz he was in a work party and was pulled out by the Nazis and shoved into a room where there was a young German soldier just a boy 18 or 19 dying clearly not going to make it and he had asked to talk to a Jew this young Nazi said we we have done such evil things to you I have done such evil things to Jews will you please forgive me before I die I have to face God III need to clear my conscience will you please forgive me in an agony and pain and tears he begged for forgiveness the Jewish man reports his rapid-fire thinking in his book the sunflower and in what feels like an hour's conversation but could have only been a minute or two it the book is only about 80 pages long he he reasons this way so far I have survived so all of the sins of the Nazis in killing the Jews have not yet been thrust upon me only those who have been abused can forgive the abusers I have not been killed by them how can I forgive them for killing others I don't have the right to forgive and he thought he looked at the young Nazi and he thought and after two or three minutes he turned and walked out of the room without saying a word at the end of the decade years after the war was over he wrote the little book the sunflower and he sent it around to ethicists around the world both Christian and Jews and he asked the question was I right I would say he was almost right you see he did recognize that only the one who's been offended against can forgive the offender suppose God forbid that after this Chapel is over some of you go home somewhere and on the way one of you gets a gang raped thoroughly beaten up bones broken in your body and for some reason I have to stay an extra two or three days and I make sure I visit you in the hospital I see you in the hospital and I I come up to your bed and put my hand on your broken arm and say be of good cheer I have forgiven them what would you say wouldn't you be outraged you don't have the right you weren't the one that was gang-raped you weren't the one that was beaten up your bones aren't broken you don't you don't have the right do did you see in that sense that Jewish man at Auschwitz was right only those who have been sinned against have the right to forgive the sin but we already saw yesterday and it's presupposed in mark's gospel again that the one who is most sinned against is always God that's what makes sin sin you cheat on your income taxes the most offended party is not Uncle Sam it's God Almighty you cheat on your spouse the most offended party is not your spouse it's God Almighty oh you need the forgiveness of this both snowed out but you need the forgiveness of God that's the most offended party against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight and the authorities watching Jesus pronouncing forgiveness of sin over this paralytic they understood that who can forgive sin but God alone indeed that's the question God alone can't forgive sin there was a recognition that either Jesus is some creep some megalomaniac oh not some blasphemer assuming the characteristics and authority of God Almighty or he is God himself and Thomas was there for that so during this week he's wrestling with these things he's Wessling with these things and then Jesus appears again and says Shalom Thomas stop doubting and believe and Thomas Christ my Lord and my god indeed it may have been more than that it may be that now the penny is beginning to drop on the broader front regarding why Jesus died just as the Apostle Paul had to come to terms with a changed view of who the Christ was not simply the Messianic conquering king but the bleeding sacrifice the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world it was the resurrection that made the meaning of the Cross cohere and / perhaps also the penny is dropping now in Thomas's mind one cannot fail to note to the repeated personal pronoun my lord and my god this is not some late liturgical confession our Lord and our God it is a personal faith this is more than simply believing the public truth that Jesus rose from the dead this is a confession that Jesus is Lord so here's the adoration of anise con astonished skeptic and finally the service of a converted skeptic 29 to 31 listen carefully to Jesus words in verse 29 Jesus told him because you have seen me you have believed blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed as far as I can see that verse is often been misunderstood it's been understood to mean something like okay okay you believe because you had the evidence shown you bully for you but it would have been a lot better if you'd believe without evidence you don't need evidence you just believe so your faith is genuine Thomas you now see but it's second class faith blessed are those who have not seen and yet I believed now we might not all put it quite so crudely but I think that many of us think that verse 29 reads something like that I am persuaded that's entirely mistaken for a start it doesn't explain how verse 29 relates two verses 30 and 31 moreover it doesn't treat the New Testament nature of faith even in John's Gospel Jesus does he warns against the assumption that you must have science but he also says that the signs are given that you may believe moreover what what is going on is a misconstrue love the nature of faith what does faith mean on the streets of Kansas City amongst the secularists does faith mean in the streets of New York or Chicago or Dallas what is faith mean to the average unbeliever doesn't faith mean one of two things dominantly it can be a synonym for religion there are many faiths there are many religions I don't think the New Testament ever uses the word faith quite that way more commonly it means something like a personal subjective religious commitment personal subjective religious commitment is not tied to the arena of public truth it's a personal subjective religious commitment you have your faith I have my faith we all have our own face we're all spiritual in our own ways that's the way it's understood and if that's the background of our thinking here you can see how you could detach faith from truth you believe that Jesus rose from the dead good that's that'll be a real benefit to you whether he did rise from the dead or not is really a very little importance but that's not the way faith works in the New Testament faith has a variety of overtones from passage to passage faith in the faith chapter of Hebrews 11 is not quite the same usage as faith and the Pauline corpus and so on but one of the things that is pretty obvious is that faith in the New Testament is trust in truths and persons who are real the Bible never encourages us to believe that which is not true or which may not be true the way faith is strengthened in the New Testament is by articulating and defending the truth so that even in the resurrection chapter first Corinthians chapter 15 do you remember what Jesus says supposing Jesus is not risen from the dead what what Paul says rather supposing Jesus is not risen from the dead what would follow well he says in the first place he says the witnesses 500 of them would all be liars or dupes because they claim that he did rise from the dead and they're not telling the truth moreover you'd still be in your trespasses and sins if Jesus didn't rise from the dead then there's no evidence whatsoever that Jesus death was accepted before the Living God as a sacrifice pay for since you're all damned 30 says your faith is in vain that is your faith is in vain you're believing something that is not true it's not a valid faith it's not a a living faith if you're believing something that is not true and then finally he says you're of all people most to be pitied if you believe something that isn't true your faith is not to be commended as personal subjective religious commitment your life is to be pitied because it's a joke you're believing rubbish do you see so when we exhort people to faith what we are really doing is commending the truth the truth that has actually happened that is real it's more than just believing that there's an element of trust in it as well but it's never less than believing that with that being true so it's singularly unlikely with that as the background of the use of faith in the New Testament it's singularly unlikely that verse 29 is saying it doesn't matter what the evidence is doesn't matter if I show up or not blessed are those who don't see and they'll believe that'll be a better faith I don't think that's what's being said at all rather what Jesus is saying is something what Jesus is saying is something like this at this point in redemptive history you have seen and believed that's excellent you have crossed over to join the rest of the Apostles you have seen and believed but you know the gospel is going forward across decades and centenares and cultures and language all around the world to people who will not have seen the resurrected Christ I'm here as Jesus is made clear in the preceding chapters I'm here for only a short time and then I'm going back to my heavenly father I'll come again at the end of the age I'll send my spirit meantime but but nobody can check up on me and touch me again and put their hands on my wounds but blessed are those who believe without seeing and how does that take place oh my dear Thomas that takes place because of you and the other apostles and the other eyewitnesses that's the connection with verses 30 and 31 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not recorded but these are written including this appearance to you my dear Thomas these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah you the readers you the readers who are reading after Jesus is resurrected and ascended to the Father's right hand and can no longer be sort of checked out so Thomas now in being converted in his faith to seeing that this is really true now becomes part of the mediatorial apostolic link the first Witnesses passing on their testimony to a new generation of men and women all around the world that they may see and believe there's a Brit who has written a remarkable him christopher idol if Christ had not been raised from death our faith would be in vain our preaching but a waste of breath our sin and guilt remain but now the Lord is risen indeed he rules in earth in heaven his gospel meets a world of need in Christ we are forgiven if Christ o lay within the tomb then death would be the end and we should face our final doom with neither guide nor friend but now the Savior is raised up so when a Christian dies we mourn yet looked to God and hope in Christ the Saints arise if Christ had not been truly raised the church would live a lie his name would Nevermore be praised his words deserved to die but now our great Redeemer lives through him we are restored his word and yours his church revives in Christ our risen Lord here's this service of a converted skeptic and the service is bound up with joining the Apostolic ranks to serve as mediators of this revelation of the resurrected and exalted Christ to us today that's why in John's first epistle in the introduction he says we're telling you these things he says we the Apostles we're telling you these things so that you may have fellowship with us you may join our enterprise and our Fellowship is with the father and the son that is the Apostles have this fellowship with the father and the son because they were the first witnesses of the death and the resurrection of Christ and now if we have fellowship with the Apostles who have fellowship with a father and the son then we join in this worldwide community of redeemed people who have fellowship with the father and the son because of a mediatorial work of the Apostles in this regard now if this were nothing but a sermon I would finish off and slightly differently but let me return to the list of seven observations I made yesterday about narrative preaching I'm going to read them again and show how some of them get tweaked by looking at what was done with this passage number one make sure you tell the story I think that once again we have done that this is a narrative passage in the narrative has to be told we have to face the privilege of seeing there are different literary jaws in Holy Scripture number two make sure you do more than tell the story in other words there is a burden there is a focus here we've been talking about faith in the truth of the resurrection the vitality of fundamental Christianity do you see so that it's not just a narrative but it's tied likewise to other things number three make sure you your narrative text gets tied to the surrounding text so in this case we have seen connections with Jesus words in John eight with Jesus words in the Upper Room discourse with the death and resurrection narrative and so on in other words this is nestled into the burden of the Gospel of John number four make sure people see what would be lost in the book if you never if the narrative text really weren't there this is the only resurrection appearance in John's Gospel that focuses on doubt and has such a strong confession my Lord and my God which thus brings the opening verse of John's Gospel to a suitable conclusion in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God later in the same chapter that word became flesh and now he is touched in his resurrected flesh and the confession is made again in direct address my Lord and my god so it's bringing the book to you see to completion number five the sermon outline may but does not have to follow the narrative of the text as long as the narrative of the text is clearly established yesterday in Genesis 39 the outline did not follow the flow it started with the middle this time we've simply followed the flow it seemed best to handle the flow that way number six introductions may simply introduce the narrative because narratives are themselves engaging but it may not be wrong to provide a clarifying explanation as an introduction so this time I had a small aside on the nature of doubt different kinds of doubt than to ask which kind of doubt this text is addressing and so on so it becomes part of a larger apologetic and finally never forget this is a sermon not an art form let us pray Grint Lord God that as we paused to think about the nature of preaching narrative texts we may also pause an adoration and wonder before this text and remember not only that the word became flesh but he died bearing our sins in his own body on the tree that we might be made the righteousness of God in him that he rose victorious over death death may be the last enemy it does not have the last word and therefore we live in hope we preach life eternal we anticipate the resurrection of the last day we cry yes even so come Lord Jesus grant that with not only our words but with our whole lives we may respond as dust Thomas my Lord and my god in Jesus name Amen

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Length: 46min 29sec (2789 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2019