Believe and Live

 

[The following is a manuscript of my message delivered at Pilgrim Reformed Church on Sunday morning, the 7th of April, 2024.  A recording of our service should be available on our YouTube streaming channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/@pilgrimreformedchurch1992/streams.]

Last Sunday, some of the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee went to His tomb and found it empty.  As they returned to tell the others that Jesus had risen from the dead, just as He said He would, He appeared before them in the flesh.

Later that day, two of the disciples were on the road to Emmaus when Jesus joined them, but they did not recognize Him until later, when they had stopped for the night and He blessed and broke the bread.  The two ran back to Jerusalem to tell the others what had happened, when He…

Well, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.  Let’s just say the risen Jesus had a busy day that first day of the week, that third day from His death, that first ever Resurrection Day.

According to scripture, Jesus and His disciples had come to Jerusalem to observe the Festival of Unleavened Bread, to celebrate the Passover.  They came in on Sunday, but then on Thursday He was arrested and persecuted throughout the night.  On Friday He was executed, crucified on the cross, the sacrifice of the Spotless Lamb for the atonement of our sin.  And as the sun set, the Passover Sabbath began.  Then Sunday came, and we found the tomb empty.

Last Sunday, Easter Sunday, we celebrated just what that empty tomb means to us.  And now it is a week later.  I would like us to once again step back in time to these two weeks in the resurrected life of Jesus.  Our scripture reading this morning starts out on Easter Sunday and then skips a week to the eighth day of Jesus’ resurrection, counting Easter day itself.

Please listen and follow along to the events of these two Sundays as recorded by the Apostle John in the 20th chapter of his Gospel account, verses 19 through 31, and I’ll be reading from the Easy-to-Read Version of our Holy Bible this morning…

19 The day was Sunday, and that same evening the followers were together. They had the doors locked because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them. He said, “Peace be with you!” 20 As soon as He said this, He showed them His hands and His side. When the followers saw the Lord, they were very happy.

21 Then Jesus said again, “Peace be with you. It was the Father who sent Me, and I am now sending you in the same way.” 22 Then He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of anyone, their sins are forgiven. If there is anyone whose sins you don’t forgive, their sins are not forgiven.”

24 Thomas (called Didymus) was one of the twelve, but he was not with the other followers when Jesus came. 25 They told him, “We saw the Lord.” Thomas said, “That’s hard to believe. I will have to see the nail holes in His hands, put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side. Only then will I believe it.”

26 A week later the followers were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. The doors were locked, but Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here. Look at My hands. Put your hand here in My side. Stop doubting and believe.”

28 Thomas said to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”

29 Jesus said to him, “You believe because you see Me. Great blessings belong to the people who believe without seeing Me!”

30 Jesus did many other miraculous signs that His followers saw, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you can believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Then, by believing, you can have life through His name.

--John 20:19-31 (ERV)

Let us pray…  Heavenly Father, again we thank You for sending Your Son Jesus into this world to offer us salvation and forgiveness of our disobedience.  He atoned for our sin by the shedding of His own blood.  And then You raised Him back to life to show not only that He lives again and will live forever, but that we also will live again, in new, incorruptible flesh.  Sadly, Father, not everyone believes in Jesus as Your Son and accepts Him as their Lord.  Please help us reach out to the non-believers of the world, sharing the Good News and showing Your love.  Help us spread the message that all anyone has to do is to believe in Jesus and accept Him as Lord and they will live again after this mortal life ends.  And please forgive us when we hesitate to serve You and our Lord, even though we have no good reason not to do so.

Speak to us now, Father, that we might hear Your voice through Your Spirit within us and better understand Your message today.  Thank You for saving the eye-witness accounts of the resurrected Jesus so that we might read them and believe.  Help us share this Good News in our daily walk.  This we pray in the precious name of Your Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.   Amen.

Little Philip, born with Down's syndrome, attended a third-grade Sunday School class with several eight-year-old boys and girls.  Typical of that age, the children did not readily accept Philip with his differences.  But because of a creative teacher, they began to care about Philip and accept him as part of the group, though not fully. 

The Sunday after Easter the teacher brought in some L'eggs pantyhose containers, the kind that look like large eggs.  She gave one to each child and told them to go outside on that lovely spring day, find some symbol of new life, and put it in the egg-like container.  Back in the classroom, they would share their new-life symbols, opening the containers one at a time.  After running about the church property in wild confusion, the students returned to the classroom and placed their containers on the table.  Surrounded by the children, the teacher began to open the eggs one by one.  After each one, whether a flower, butterfly, or leaf, the class would ooh and ahh. 

Then one was opened revealing nothing inside.  The children exclaimed, "That's stupid.  That's not fair.  Somebody didn't do their assignment." 

Philip spoke up, "That's mine." 

"Philip, you don't ever do things right!" one student retorted.  "There's nothing there!"  

"I did so do it," Philip insisted.  "I did do it.  It's empty.  The tomb was empty!" 

Silence followed.  From then on Philip became a full member of the class.  He died not long afterward from an infection most normal children would have shrugged off.  At the funeral this class of eight-year-olds marched up to the altar not with flowers, but with their Sunday school teacher, each to lay on it an empty pantyhose egg.

We believers have a couple of symbols we use to denote our faith.  Early Christians used a sketched image of a fish, knowing that Jesus had first chosen fishermen to follow them with the promise of making them fishers of men.  They were persecuted and could not use anything obvious to show they were Christians, so they would draw the image of the fish in the dirt to recognize each other, a sign that could easily be obscured by a simple sweep of the foot.  And we still use that sign today, even though most folks now know it as a Christian symbol.

More prevalent in our culture, though, is the cross.  We use the cross as a reminder of the sacrifice that our Lord Jesus made on our behalf.  Our churches have crosses on prominent display, we wear them on our clothes, in our ears, and around our necks.  Some use them as a mere decoration, but we know what the cross truly means to us.

While the empty tomb might be a more appropriate symbol of our faith, it would not be an easy one to reproduce as jewelry or church adornments.  Which makes little Philip’s idea an exceptionally good one, I think.  I’m not sure if they still make L’eggs pantyhose anymore, but an empty box could serve the same purpose.  

Or maybe an empty glass.  In his 2nd letter to his young protégé Timothy, the Apostle Paul writes, "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand."  (2 Timothy 4:6 (NKJV))  Jesus poured Himself out for us, leaving behind an empty glass, an empty tomb.

Little Philip got it right.  The empty tomb is indeed a great symbol of new life.

Jesus had been arrested, beaten, and crucified, but He was the Messiah!  If they could do this to Him, what couldn’t they do to His followers, too?  So the disciples went into hiding.  Some scattered, leaving Jerusalem as soon as they could, before the authorities could come for them.  Two of them that left town actually ended up walking with the risen Jesus without realizing it.  When they finally did recognize Him, they hurried back to Jerusalem to tell the others.  Even though they had left earlier out of fear, they came back to share their good news.

And suddenly, Jesus appeared among them!  He came right there into the locked room, right into their midst, and simply told them to be at peace.  And then He told them that if they forgive the sins of another person, that person’s sins will be forgiven.  But if they don’t forgive that person’s sins, they will not be forgiven.

Now we need to remember how Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive the trespasses of others”, and when He said, “You will be judged with the same measure that you judge others”.  I just wonder if we don’t forgive the sins of another person, and their sin is not forgiven by God because of it, are we taking a risk that our sin won’t be forgiven, too?  Just to be on the safe side, let’s be sure to forgive the sins of others as we seek forgiveness for our own sin.

Now we don’t know why, but Thomas was not in the upper room with the others that first Easter Sunday.  When he did finally join them, the others told him about Jesus’ visit and how they saw Him in the flesh.  But Thomas didn’t believe them.  In his defense, their story would have been tough to accept, had Jesus been an ordinary man.  The only way he would believe that Jesus was alive and in the flesh again would be to see Him with his own eyes, to see His hands and touch the nail holes and stab wound.  Then, and only then, would he believe.

Fast forward a week to the following Sunday.  The disciples were all together in the same place as before, and this time Thomas was there with them.  Again the doors were locked, barred from the inside, and again Jesus just suddenly appeared among them.  That in itself would be quite startling and a bit unnerving, wouldn’t it.

After His usual greeting of “Peace”, Jesus looked right at Thomas and said, “Put your finger here. Look at My hands. Put your hand here in My side. Stop doubting and believe.”  And of course, Thomas believed – he no longer had a reason not to.

Now the Apostle Matthew, in his account of these times, recorded that Jesus sent word to the disciples through the women who had gone to the tomb to go to Galilee and He would meet them there.  Please listen to Matthew’s last entry in his Gospel account, from chapter 28, verses 16 through 20…

16 The eleven followers went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus told them to go. 17 On the mountain the followers saw Jesus. They worshiped Him. But some of the followers did not believe that it was really Jesus. 18 So He came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth is given to Me. 19 So go and make followers of all people in the world. Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach them to obey everything that I have told you to do. You can be sure that I will be with you always. I will continue with you until the end of time.”

--Matthew 28:16-20 (ERV)

This is our great commission.  This is the mission Jesus gave us.  We are to go and make followers of all people.  We are to go to them, not wait for them to come to us.  And we are to go to all people, not just those who look and think like we do.  Anyone and everyone is fair game because God wants everyone to be saved.  He sent His Son Jesus that the whole world might be saved through Him!

Black or white or yellow or red or brown; rich or poor; knowledgeable or ignorant; liberal or conservative; make or female or any other sexual orientation or chosen lifestyle…  None of that matters, because once we believe, once we accept Jesus as Lord, we are changed into new creations – the old has passed, the new has come.

Thomas became a believer in the resurrected Jesus because He had seen his Lord in the flesh, risen from the grave and alive again.  We are blessed – truly blessed – to believe without having seen Him, without having touched His wounds.  We believe without seeing, because that is what faith is all about.

God gave us faith, and we are truly blessed.  Because through our belief, we can have life eternal through the power of the name of Jesus.  And so can anyone.  Let’s help others believe, and live.  In the blessed name of Christ Jesus our Lord, the Son of God, who came in the flesh to redeem us, who was raised from the dead into flesh and returned to heaven, and who is coming again to judge us all.  Amen.

Let us pray…  Almighty God, thank You for giving us the faith to believe in Your Son Jesus so that we can enjoy eternal life.  We believe, even though we have not seen Him with our eyes, or touched Him with our fingers.  We believe!  Thank You, Father, for so great a gift of love.  Sometimes, Father, we hesitate to share this gift with others.  Sometimes we even refuse to forgive someone for what they did to us.  Please forgive us these times, Father.  Help us be more forgiving, more merciful in our dealings with others.  And Father, guide us around any pitfalls in this life and strengthen our spirits to do Your will.  And please help us do a better job of sharing Jesus with others so that they too may be saved by Your mercy and His sacrifice.  

Father, please shield us from Satan as he attacks our faith, trying to make us his own.  Help us be better servants, glorifying You in all we do so that the world can see You in us, through our deeds, in how we live.  And help us remain strong, faithful, and true to You in all things, no matter what the world throws at us or holds out before us.

Please hear us now, Father, as we pause for just a moment to speak to You through Your Spirit within us, promising to be more obedient to Your commands, and seeking Your help to do so…

Lord Jesus, You blessed Thomas by allowing him to see You in the flesh and to touch Your wounds so that he could believe.  And You bless us for our belief even though we have not seen nor touched You except in our hearts.  Thank You, Jesus, for following our Father’s will and giving of Yourself for us.  Please help us be more understanding, more merciful, more giving and forgiving of others, remembering that we are all created in our God’s image and that You came to save us all.  So Lord, please help us reach out to the non-believing world with the Gospel message, showing Your love through our love.  Give us the words to say, show us what to do to help bring the lost to You.

Lord Jesus, please shield our minds and our hearts from Satan’s lies and the world’s empty promises.  Guide us around all the devil’s traps and snares.  Help us see though his temptations and all the false teachings.  Help us fend off his attacks.  Please help us be faithful and true to You, putting all our trust in You, all our hope in You.  Heal the hurts that separate and divide us one from another.  Help us keep our focus on the things of heaven and the needs of others rather than on anything this life might offer.  This we pray in Your blessed name, Christ Jesus our Lord and our Savior.  Amen.