Do We Have a Greater Blessing than Thomas?

Tom: We’re continuing with the gospel. We’re in the Gospel of John. John:20:26-29 [26] 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. [27] 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. [28] And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God. [29] Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
See All...: “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 thither 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. And Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Wow, some really heavy things being said here Dave. Thomas as we mentioned last week, he was just adamant he wasn’t going to buy it. No matter what the others said. He just wasn’t going to believe.

Dave: Yeah, we mentioned that that of course is a bad attitude for a number of reasons. But the major reason is because the scriptures said that Jesus, the Messiah would be crucified and He would rise the third day. And this is how Paul preached the gospel. He talks about the gospel. He defines the gospel in 1 Corinthians:15:1Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
See All.... He says, “…this is the gospel that I preached unto you, that you believe, by which you are saved, wherein you stand…how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried, rose again the third day according to the scriptures. And Jesus takes the two on the road to Emmaus to task and “You fools! You didn’t believe what the prophets said. You should pay attention to what the prophets said. They explained it all, and if you had paid attention to the prophets, you would have known.” So if Thomas has paid attention to the prophets, he would have known. Of course! He had to be crucified. He must have risen from the dead, and he wouldn’t have doubted at all.

Tom:  Mm-hmm. Dave, doesn’t Peter pretty much say the same thing with regard to the Scriptures? I mean here he is, he has this experience. He sees things with his eyes on the Mount of Transfiguration, but he says that “he has a more sure word,” looking to the Scriptures.

Dave:  Oh, you’re talking about 2 Peter 1?

Tom:  Right.

Dave:  Right. But on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter didn’t understand what was going on. He would have had he known the Scriptures. But now, yes he does—that’s a terrific scripture, Tom. You would never have a greater experience than that—than seeing Jesus transfigured before you. His raiment is shining white, you know, and here comes Moses and Elijah to talk about the death that He would accomplish. Tom, you couldn’t top that.

And yet Peter says we don’t just go by experience, but “we have a more sure word of prophecy,” and that is the scriptures.

Well, then, Thomas, you’re wanting an experience as being more sure than the Scriptures. So why does Jesus tolerate this? He was pretty tough on other sign seekers. Because, Tom, I think this was a special time. The forty days—remember?—after His resurrection, and He was with His disciples, and He showed Himself alive, the Book of Acts tells us, Luke writing it: “After his passion, by many infallible proofs.”

So this is one of the infallible proofs. When He appeared, in fact, earlier in Luke 24 tells us when He—we don’t get that account here in John—“But when he appeared to the disciples,” and this is the appearance we’re talking about now, when Thomas wasn’t there, “they thought he was a ghost, and he said, Handle me and see.” So He did allow the other disciples to handle Him. So it’s not too big a step beyond that to say to Thomas, “Okay put your fingers in the nail holes and your hand in the side.” I think it was a special time of infallible proofs that the Lord gave.

Tom:  But He still brings Thomas to a more important point. Even though Thomas says, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus says, “Yes, but because thou hast seen me thou hast believed. Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Dave:  Now how would you believe if you hadn’t seen? Because of the Scriptures. And we don’t have Jesus appearing today, so Tom it takes us back to what we mentioned. I think we mentioned Richard Foster and Celebration of Discipline, Calvin Miller….

Tom:  Visualization.

Dave:  ….and so forth. Visualizing and the real experience then would be” visualize Jesus, and he will literally come to you and talk to you,” and so forth. No! We walk by faith, not by sight. And the scriptures as you pointed out, 2 Peter 1, Peter says, “That is the more sure word.” You can be deceived by an experience, but we’ve got this in black and white. We have prophecy after prophecy after prophecy. You can compare it. You can go back, you can check it archaeologically, and so forth. And we preach Christ crucified. Well, we don’t try to illustrate it with films, and we don’t try to say, “Well, we can transubstantiate this wafer and turn it into the body and blood of Christ. Look what we’re doing.” But we preach the Word. This is what Paul said to Timothy, 2 Timothy 4: “Preach the word,” okay?

Tom:  Dave, this is what concerns me greatly. And I know it concerns you as well. As we see the church moving into more visual things to communicate—I’m not talking about using overheads, or you know, using a form of communication like Power Point. That’s not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about taking God’s Word and trying to reproduce it on the screen with regard to acting and drama and all of these kinds of things. Dave, it’s one thing for that to be false images. It can be nothing else. It’s got to be false because it’s something somebody makes up in their own mind, but you were talking about visualization. This is another form of visualizing. Visualizing…where somebody can’t handle visualization, here now we have an image that’s somebody else’s vision being presented to people and it’s a false image.

Dave:  Yeah. Well, Tom, I think we have a powerful expression of that right here from the Lord. “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.” And yet people say, “Oh no, the greatest blessing would be if you could just see it. And we don’t have Jesus here, so we’ll visualize him.” Or ‘We don’t have Jesus here, but we’ll have some actor pretend to be Jesus, and then you’ll really get it.”

Tom, I think it’s pretty clear from the Word of God, it’s not good, it’s not biblical, and it is not helpful. But now, I think we just started to talk about it very briefly. Obviously there’s no blood in the veins, in Christ’s veins. Otherwise He would be bleeding from five wounds. I mean you could stick your finger in the nail holes and you could put your whole hand in the spear wound in His side. What kind of a body does He have? Now He did…He could eat something, although I don’t think he got hungry and needed to eat anything, and I don’t believe that he got energy from the food, I don’t know. Atomic energy? Some other kind, I don’t know. But we know that the life of the flesh is in the blood. And the Adamic race—well, death came upon the whole race of Adam. That’s gone. There must be a new creation, a new race of men. And Christ is the progenitor of a new race. He’s the last Adam, and so the life of the flesh is in the blood, that’s gone; poured out at the Cross for our sins. He didn’t take it back into His body. The body that was laid in the grave had no blood in it. That is the body that was resurrected. And we will have bodies like that, I believe, as well. So that’s an important point to recognize here.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, they’ve got Christ—He’s still bleeding. You know, He’s still bleeding, right? You were Catholic.

Tom: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dave:  “This is the body and blood of Jesus on the altar; we’re offering Him, He’s still suffering, still being immolated for sin.” No! That is finished, Christ said. And now He lives in the power of an endless life, a resurrected, glorified body that can walk through walls. We don’t understand it, but praise God, the scripture says, 1 John 3, “When we see him, we will be like him.”