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Dissolving our Doubts
John 20:24-29
If you have your Bible (and I hope that you do) you can go ahead and open it to John 20.
Several of the disciples are well known.
Books could be, and have been, written about Peter, John, and Judas.
But, of some of the rest, we seem to know very little.
I want to look at what the Bible has to say about one of the lesser known disciples.
I want us to look at the life of the disciple named Thomas.
We know next to nothing of this man’s early life or of his call to follow Jesus.
From the fact that he went fishing with Peter and the others in John 21, it might be that he was a fisherman before he became a disciple.
The name Thomas is Aramaic for “twin.”
His other name is “Didymus” which also means “twin” in Greek.
Thomas had a twin but they are not identified in the Bible.
Some people think that Thomas and Matthew were twin brothers, because they are always mentioned together in the lists of the disciples, but we don’t know for sure.
Thomas only appears in twelve verses in the Gospels.
In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Thomas is only mentioned three times when he is listed with the other disciples of Jesus.
He is also mentioned in Acts 1:3 as one of the disciples present in the upper room on the day of Pentecost.
Eight of the verses that mention Thomas are here in the Gospel of John.
He is mentioned in John 11:16 and John 14:5.
In both of those verses, the words of Thomas are quoted by John.
In John 21:2, Thomas is listed as one of the seven disciples that went fishing after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
The other five verses that mention Thomas are in our passage for today.
For 2,000 years, Tommy has gotten a lot of bad press.
He was prone to ask hard questions and demand proof.
For that he has earned the unfortunate nickname, “doubting Thomas.”
He has been portrayed as a man filled with doubt and fear.
I want to try and set the record straight today because the Bible reveals another side of him.
His primary problem was not his doubting.
Thomas was a pessimist!
He was a “glass half-empty” kind of person.
He was the kind of person who was always on the lookout for the negative side of every situation first.
As we look at what Scripture has to say about Thomas, I want you to see that he possessed some really good qualities.
Among them: He was loyal to and loved Jesus.
He possessed an inquiring spirit.
He was skeptical, but his skepticism was the right kind.
It was a skepticism that was open to belief.
Let’s see how the Lord worked in his life to move him from doubt to a shout.
So, let’s pray and we’ll jump right into our text.
Pray!
Let’s look first at:
Thomas the Pouter
We’re told that Thomas was not with the other disciples the first time that Jesus appeared to them after His resurrection.
In verses 19-23, the disciples were afraid and hiding in an upper room.
Jesus was dead.
They had heard the rumors that He was alive and wanted to believe but didn’t.
Jesus walked through a wall, and the disciples went from fear to faith.
There was one disciple missing though, Thomas.
He was probably off by himself at his own private pity party.
The other disciples probably wanted him to hide with them but Tommy just wanted to be left alone to pout.
His Lord was dead and he was filled with grief.
We don’t know where he was that day, but a look at the two examples given in the Bible that reveal the heart of Tommy may hold the answer.
Jesus loved people and invested in individuals from a wide range of social, political, and economic standing.
One of the families He befriended over the course of His ministry were two sisters, Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus.
Jesus and Lazarus were close friends.
The news was bad.
Lazarus was very ill.
But Jesus does a curious thing.
He waited for two days and then decided to go back to Judea.
The disciples didn’t want to go back.
The Jewish leaders wanted to kill Jesus.
There was a bounty on his head.
The disciples thought it best not to tempt fate.
Jesus told them that He had to go back.
He wasn’t going to sneak around in the dark but go in broad daylight.
He had a mission.
He had to give a friend a “wake up call” that would provide the disciples an opportunity to believe.
They just stared at each other.
Going back meant the possibility of arrest and execution.
Verse 16 tells us Tommy’s reaction:
The rest of the disciples followed Tommy’s courageous leadership and went back to Bethany where they witnessed one of Jesus’s most spectacular miracles, the raising of Lazarus from the grave.
Thomas loved Jesus enough to be willing to die for Him.
We see the next picture of Thomas in John 14:
Jesus’s ministry was in full swing.
The disciples have witnessed the raising of the dead, the healing of the deaf and blind, and the feeding of the five thousand.
They’re on a roll and Rome better be worried.
But then Jesus shifts gears and begins talking about leaving.
He tells the disciples that He is going to go and prepare a place for them.
“Where could he be going?”
they quietly whispered to each other.
Finally, Thomas asked the question that everyone wanted to:
Basically, he said,
“Everything was going great but now you are talking about leaving.
Why in the world would you leave?
Where are You going?
I don’t understand.
If you don’t give us a map, how can we know the way?
I am confused.
I have left everything to follow you.
Please tell us the way.”
Jesus didn’t rebuke him or make light of his confusion.
Because Thomas asked for an explanation, Jesus gave one of the most memorable responses in all of Scripture:
Maybe you have some questions this morning.
Maybe they’re hard questions.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doubting God.
Tommy just needed more information, clarity, and light shed on his fuzzy understanding.
These two passages reveal a man who wasn’t afraid.
Thomas seems to be extraordinarily brave.
He is loyal to Jesus even unto death.
He loves Jesus more than his own life.
He would rather die than have to live without his Lord.
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