Twenty-one days, three weeks, how long do you need to get to know somebody? See, after lunch, downtown on Friday, I was buckling my son in his car seat, and it was a little tight since we were in an angled parking space, so I was focused on the task at hand when a distinct scent hit my nose. It was a cigar. See, the driver of the car next to us was waiting patiently behind me, so I hurried since I was blocking him and hopped into the passenger seat. Now, our van has automatic side doors, so when he walked up, while the door was still closing, Hayes got a really good look at it. And our son hasn't been around people smoking that much or at all, and right about the time that thought hit me, we heard it from the back seat. He has a candle in his mouth. Well, yes, son. I guess he does. Now, I shared that thought with my family through email this week, and guess what? Surprise, surprise. It makes grandma want to get Tom with her grandson. So let me ask you again, how much time do you need to get to know somebody? See, since we've moved to Mississippi, a hard reality is hitting my mother. It may take three years for her to get three more weeks with her grandson, and that's just not going to be enough to make her happy. Actually, she's going to listen to this sermon online this week. Hi mom, and I guarantee you, she will not like that I verbalized that thought. Three weeks, that's it. 21 days, it just isn't that long. So how long do you need? What if it was somebody more important than your grandson? See, that's all we get in the Gospel of John. 21 days. John lets us know he's got vast quantities of information. He tells us at the end of the Gospel of John that all the books in the world couldn't hold all the information he knows. He's being purposefully selective. He only gives us 21 days, which lets you know he's chosen very carefully. You know what? Almost all the commentators agree that one story is clearly the climax of the Gospel of John. John 20's where we're going. That's page 1687 in your Pew Bible. Beginning at verse 24, let's hear the crescendo of John's symphony. Now, Thomas called Diedemus, 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 it. 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. And Jesus told him, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Jesus did many other miraculous 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 Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. Let's pray. Lord, we've got doubts. Show us how you turn doubters into believers. And your name, amen. Father and Son are driving past the cemetery when the boy looks over and notices a freshly dug grave. Dad! Dad! One of them got out. Exactly. That's what we celebrated last week. One of them did get out. So why isn't that the climax of John? Well, technically, I guess you could say it is. But there's been one lingering question. John has been addressing throughout. It's what makes this so important. What does this mean for me? We're going to get our outline from verse 31. Look at verse 31. But these are written that you might believe and that by believing, you might have life. See, believe, live. It's been the pattern John's used throughout his gospel. And chapter 4, tell the woman at the well, came to faith. Chapter 9 is how the blind man came to faith. And now, it's Thomas's turn. See, believe, live. What is it the resurrection does for us? First, see. Now it may not be all that obvious now, but in high school, I ran across country and track. And we had a really good coach. So even a no-talent guy like me did pretty well. Across country, those who you don't know, you run through the woods. Track, you run in circles. And always in both of those sports, it seemed like, particularly on one of the other teams, Mama had made some boy come out to get some exercise. Had decided that Johnny needed to go out there and get in shape. Now inevitably, in track, if Johnny didn't train very well, the coach put him in the event that was going to get in the most exercise, two miles, eight laps. My event. So here we are, run around the track. And almost always, we'd be on our eighth lap, chasing Johnny down as he's coming around past the stands, and we're coming in hard for the finish. And if you've ever been on a track, it's not like football, where there's people all the way around, they're just in one section. So three quarters of the time, you're running in silence. And then for one section, everybody's cheering. And there's nothing like running to get weird cheers out of people. But I can tell you, hands down. The cheer that we would always hear, the dumbest cheer I've ever heard, came from that kind of mama. You hear? We're blowing past. Johnny's huffing and puffing, doing all he can with what God's given him. Johnny! Johnny! Run faster, Johnny! Run faster! Is it Johnny's going to stop and say, oh, that's what I need to do. I should run faster! But that's what we do with our spiritual life. Try harder. Run faster. You walk in any bookstore, the self-help section is huge! Why? Because we believe we can manage our problems. Just run harder. Just go faster at it. Seven steps to success. Here's the secret formula. You can do it. If you just believe in yourself. As Oprah said, the most important thing is that we have faith in ourselves. See, the disciples are not under that delusion. Because they've been with somebody who can really run. They've seen real problems. And they've seen only one person they know of who could raise people from the dead. Who could do things nobody else could do. A real champion. But now he's dead. He went to the battle and he lost. This problem is too big for us to fix. They're in a worse situation than they ever imagined before. Jesus had exposed how deep their need was. More than they wanted to admit before they met him. And now they realized, oh no! What do we do now? That's why verse 25 is so important. When they come and say we have seen the Lord, this is the difference between Christianity and every other religion. The problem is even folks who claim Christianity still do this. Try harder. Work yourself up. Go with all your energy. Let's get real emotional and fired up and go out of here in 90 minutes later. Uh-oh. See if religion is our attempt to climb the ladder to God, it's about us. It's inherently human-centered, anthropocentric. It's really pretty egotistical. But Christianity comes and says it's not teaching. It's not a program. It's an encounter with the champion. It's an encounter with the living God. It's not see what you can do. It's see what he has done. We don't climb ladder to God. He comes down to us. This is fundamental. This is a problem I've got with. I want to be careful here because there's some truth in it. But what would Jesus do bracelets? It's dangerous. WWJD. What would Jesus do? Well, let's ask ourselves. What would Jesus do? He'd live the perfect life. How's that working for you? Did you make it through breakfast? It was a good morning this morning. Didn't have any fight. I know everybody had him fight this morning. All the kids got up and, can we go to church? We're so excited. We had a bed at 6 a.m. Let's go worship Jesus. No. What would Jesus do just kills me? I mean, if I had to chop the bracelet off every time I messed up and throw it away, say, I wish we could go back and instead of it being WWJD it'd be W-H-J-D. What has Jesus done? It's not about us and our efforts. It's what God has accomplished. They come saying, we have seen. We have seen. Do you see? It's even dangerous for me to ask that because it sounds like something you need to do. Have you seen what God has done? Our champion went mono-emano with death. We thought he lost and he's back. He's been resurrected. He hasn't just been resurrected. He resurrected himself. There's nobody like this. Have you seen what he has done? All right. That's what's been written. That's the miracles, the signs that they've seen. We've been given that you might believe. So let's get into the mess with Thomas. Belief. You know, whenever you bring up doubting Thomas, what does the people always say? You always hear it. Well, if I'd just seen what Thomas had seen, if I'd got what he got, it's the skeptic nature that comes out of all of us. Well, of course if I saw that, really. Did you catch it for eight days? Thomas has to relate to all the other apostles like you and I do. He has to believe just based on their testimony. He has to believe what they've said, what they've seen, not what he's seen. And when Jesus shows up, he rebukes him for not having believed it. Now, hold on a minute. Let's get this because it really easily, it sounds almost like Jesus is rebuking him, but then he turns around and says, no, I'll go ahead and give it to you. Why is he rebuking him? Something different is going on here. I want you to catch this. We need to understand what the meaning of an apostle is. This is about Thomas being an apostle. If you were to flip over to Acts 1, verses 21 and 22, we find out what the definition of an apostle is. See, Judas is dead and they've got to replace him. So they talk about qualifications for being an apostle. They've got two guys who they find as candidates because both of them were there for Jesus' ministry, and they saw him raised from the dead. That's what it means to be an apostle. The word literally means to sin, but in context it's somebody sent by the risen Christ. Jesus isn't contradicting himself. He's rebuking Thomas for not having believed the apostles' testimony and then he's making him an apostle. I want you to catch that because what is the testimony of the apostles? It's scripture. It's what you're holding in your hand right now. Jesus rebukes him for not believing in the word. This is why we do K-groups, y'all. I hope it's not just about Sunday. We come, we worship, we get spoon-fed because we're rusted some study in. No, are you digging in the word? Is it yours? That's when we meet the middle of the week, we get together, we dig in the word together, we do some fellowship, but we dig. You believe this stuff? And if anything, the fact that Thomas doubts tells us we're supposed to wrestle with this, I'm glad doubting Thomas is in here. It's not just that Christians put on a big smile and say, well, of course, I believe in all of this. You know, that's what Israel means. The name Israel means to wrestle with God. That's how it's real to us. Scripture is sufficient. It's so sufficient, you can even doubt it if it leads you to dig in. Let's talk about doubt a little bit. Some of you say, well, Russ, that's real nice. You made a nice exogetical maneuver with the whole apostle thing, but I still got doubts. All right. Two men are running from a bear chasing them down a hill and they come to a cliff. There's a tattered rope bridge going across the cliff. And the first man says, I know what it'll hold. I'm supremely confident it will hold. I'm going across that bridge. And he runs out on the bridge and it snaps. He's gone. The second man is paralyzed. He's petrified. He didn't have the guts to run out there first. What's he going to do now? But the bear is still coming. He looks down. There's a little branch sticking out below on the cliff. There's nowhere else to go. He's not sure that branch will hold. What are you going to do? He gets up just enough courage to jump. And it holds. See, in America today, it's really popular to say, it really doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you believe it with all your heart. No, it really matters. Especially if you're on a rope bridge that snaps. See, it's not about the intensity with which we hold on to something. It's about the intensity with which it holds us up. It's not about how hard you believe it's about the object that you believe in. Is it sturdy? Is it real? Did the resurrection really happen? That's what it comes down to. And you can wrestle with that. But let's be honest, it's not a choice between faith and no faith. It's really popular in America today to be a skeptic. I'm enlightened. I'm an area-dite, perspicacious individual. And when I think about stuff, I'm just not going to bite off anything somebody hands me. Okay? But as most skeptics will tell you if they're really, really honest, what's scary is all that questioning that's done in public. The lens gets turned on themselves in private. You know if you're a skeptic. You doubt yourself? Are you skeptical of your skepticism? You doubt your doubts. If you've never done that, then man, that really is a blind faith. I'm inviting you, God's inviting you, to wrestle with Him, to be honest about your inability. That's what happens when we encounter God, the floor drops out, and we realize, oh man, why was that ever so confident in my own competence? Mark Waters was an orange-beach Alabama. He was on vacation in his condo, and he locked himself out. So he figured, all right, here's what I'm going to get back in. My neighbor is here. I'll go through my neighbor's condo. The balcony's really close. I'll just go over the rail, step over, and go in through the door, unlock my door. Problem is, he was on the 14th floor. He gets out there, steps over the railing, and slips. The man is falling. He is confident that death is imminent, when he lands in the pool. He broke some ribs, had some hard bruises, but he came out and he said, I am very confident that there is a God. See, when you hit the wall against your own confidence, when you see your inability and the floor drops out, then we reconsider. What is this really about? Can I hold all these conditions? God will only believe in you if you write fire in the sky. If my grandma comes back from the dead, if tomorrow I levitate off my bed. What are the conditions if you get a woman to love me? I'm so lonely. If the cancer goes away. If whatever's after the if, that's what your real God's about. That's where your real faith is. See, Thomas has got all these conditions, and God is helping him understand. A fly shouldn't be under the delusion that the elephant is his pet. What's really going on here? See, if you look carefully at this text, Jesus comes and says, put your hand here. It doesn't look like Thomas ever touches Jesus before he hits his knees. He drops his condition. He encounters God and he hits his knees and says, my Lord and my God. Now, catch that. Here is a first century Jew calling another first century Jew God. That might not have been a very big deal. If it was somebody in the east at that time, they believed avatars came down and appeared in the flesh. It might not have been a big deal in the rest of the west because the gods came down and cavorted with humans. But for a Jew, they uniquely believed there was only one God. He said at this morning, affirmation of faith, the Shema, it's the cultural and ethnic identity of every Jew. They say it in the morning. Every morning, if they take their faith seriously, hero Israel, the Lord your God is one God and every Jew knew. Oh, he didn't come down and take on flesh. So how does a Jewish man suddenly look at another Jew that he spent several years with? Did he saw, die last week and say, that's my God. See if the resurrection didn't happen, there's no reason for Christianity to exist. The church wouldn't have gotten off the ground. A bunch of Jews believed that God came in the flesh. That's unthinkable for them. And they went and died for that belief. He believed that God Almighty had stepped into time and he was looking him in the eyes. It's deeper than just, he's God. I'm not though because he says, my Lord and my God, it is personal. It is personal. He realizes, you know what, it's not like Jesus appeared to the other disciples again in the middle of the week and they said, hey Jesus. Thomas is saying, he doesn't believe in you unless you show up and show him some stuff. And Jesus said, oh really? Okay. No. Thomas is realizing he's been listening. He's been here the whole time. He knew what I said. And he came right at me precisely where my doubts were. He's after me. You know what? Verse 29 is really, really interesting. Because Jesus makes it clear. He's not just after Thomas personally. One commentator said, it's almost as though John has got us in a theater. It's all dark. The stage is set up. And here Jesus is interacting with his disciples. On the stage, the whole play has gone out. And now all of a sudden everybody freezes. The house lights come on. And Jesus, still talking to disciples, turns and looks at us and says, blessed are those who haven't seen and believed. 2000 years ago, Jesus talked to a room full of people who were seeing and he had us in mind. It is personal. Those wounds are personal. Thomas looked in whatever he'd been doing, whether it was mocking or despair, whatever he was feeling, he saw. I didn't go to that cross with him. I didn't stick it aside. He died in my place. Those wounds were for me. It's personal. The reason this is so important for John is it's not a question if the resurrection happened. His question this morning for you is, do you know that the resurrection happened for you? In other words, has your resurrection happened yet? Have you seen? Drop your conditions and believe. Thirdly, live. Three men or had a funeral visitation, standing by the casket, conversation breaks out. What do you want him to say to your funeral? I want him to say, he was a good man. He would have given the neighbor a shirt off his back. Cut old Miss McGillicutty's grass every week even though she couldn't. Great man. Other guy says, no, no, I'd want him to say, you know, he loved his family. He loved passionately, great father, great husband. He loved while he was alive. What everyone says. I want him to say, look, he's moving. Hey, I want to be alive. Come on. At the point Jesus is making here, it's not. How do you want to be remembered? No. I want to live. What Jesus is doing means we live. John 10, 10, I came that you would have life and have it abundantly. It starts right now. It's not just pie in the sky. If we're going to live forever, it changes how we live right now. Do you know that you are going to live forever? The old Moody was on his deathbed. He called his family together around him. He said, pretty soon, the papers are going to scream. Moody is dead. Moody is dead. He said, don't you believe it? In that moment, I will be more alive than I have ever been. He wanted his family to know how to live life now. How he was living it now. All we were in Tennessee. 92-year-old woman is driving the car, stops it, a stop sign. Man jumps in with a gun. Give me your money. No. I said, give me your money. I'm going to shoot you. I know where I'm going. Where are you going? If I die, I'm going to heaven. What about you? A conversation erupts with a gun in her face. She shares with him why she's so confident she's going to heaven. It's a Jesus. He winds up putting that gun away, talking with her, praying. At the end of it, now his life haven't been changed by how her life was changed. She gives him the money anyway and ransoms him back from the devil to life. She believed this is not the end. There's still a problem here, though. We talked last week about Jesus walking through walls. It's just weird. They're in a locked room. He comes through the walls. Pat and now we're talking about it this week. Oh, my goodness. Is it that he's a fan film and then he shows up. And Zappie's got new physical powers. Maybe, maybe. But if you read scripture and get the theme with God, glory is waiting. It's more substantive. It's more solid. God's existence is more real than mine. I think CS Lewis does a great job describing this. Some of us are reading the great divorce right now together and talking about it. It's just kind of a fantasy he's made up. It's not meant to be real, but a busload of people from the outskirts of hell, from hell come to the outskirts of heaven. They come for a visit. And they're just like ghosts. And they get out and they're walking on the grass and it hurts their feet because it's piercing through because heaven is so much more real. What if it's like when you walked in the room today, how you walk through air? What if Jesus came through the wall like a pipe goes through water? It's because he's more substantial. Because he is more solid than what in the world are those wounds doing there. He's come up from the grave. He's been changed. Why are there holes in his hands and in his side and his feet? How can there be a wounded God? You realize a human being is going to sit on the throne for eternity. And there's still going to be holes in his hands and feet inside. Is it that evil won't disappear? No. He's going to eradicate evil. But there they'll be, not to our shame, but as a trophy of what God has accomplished, of what He's up to. I want you to get this. When I found Renee, she'd been up for 36 hours straight. And she'd be another 24 coming down off the cocaine. Evil things had been done to her. Awful men had abused her. She had over 50 scars on her arms from cutting herself. And still she refused to go to rehab. She said, no, no, I'll go tomorrow. I'm just not ready yet. She went in the bathroom, found a razor, and cut into her arm the words mess up. But the term she used was much more crass than that. It was her self-designation. You see this? This is who I am. When they finally convinced her to go to the rehab center, the center took one look at her cuts and said, oh no, she's too big of a risk. We got to let her go. And that's when these people, the ones who found her, the ones who had talked her into going and accompanied her there, they said, we are only a few, but we're going to be her hospital now. We're going to be her church. Our living room will be her place of healing, and we are going to write love on her arms. Love. And you can look them up online, because they've named that their ministry to write love on her arms. They go and find a broken girl like Renee, and they buy her coffee and cigarettes while she's coming down off the drugs. They tell of the truth when everybody else has lied to her. They show her love and freedom and forgiveness, and they tell her she was meant to dress and pretty white dresses. She was meant to dance. In other words, she was meant to be a princess. Now, where'd they get an idea like that? To write love over her wounds, to take her shame and make it her joy, pat reddit and call to worship this morning. God says in Isaiah, see, I have engraved you in the palms of my hands. My name. My name was cut through his hand. Instead of it being to my shame, it's his trophy to claim me as his son. There is no other love like this. This isn't a program. This is God coming and loving us when we were unlovable. Do you see the wounded God who's coming after you? Drop your conditions and believe. All you got to do is live in what he's already done. Live in light of who he's making you into. Stop running. Stop running. Watch him run. Our champion running in my place. Winning my victory. And that's when you'll say, my Lord, my God. Jesus, there are wounds in this room that are worthy of doubt. There are wounds in this room that make it much, much harder than it is for me to believe in you. Show them the cross, Lord. Show them your wounds. Show them what you're doing with those wounds. Transform us, Lord, that we would see how you've written love over our wounds and that we'd go into Brookhaven to write love over other people's wounds. Not because it's a program, not because it's something we can do to show you how much we love you, but because it's our joy, just to live in the reality of how you've already loved us and what you're doing in our lives. Thank you for proving to us that you're not ignoring us, but you're healing this broken place in your soul and your name we pray. Amen. Take out your heavenly laws we sing our closing hymn in response. It's hymn number 234. Crown him with many crowns, we'll sing stanzas one and two. Let's stand and sing together. It's not my hands that are meant to hold out over you and send you out with peace. It's to represent what he did when he came in the room with Thomas. See his pierced hands. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and forevermore and send us out with his peace and love and his name. Amen.