In Defense of Thomas (John 20:19-31)
===
jeremy_1_06-16-2026_111536: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Rebuilding Faith.
These are 10-minute Bible messages for people with questions and doubts. Before I begin today, I want to remind you that the audiobook version of The Edge of the Inside is now available,
and a number of you have told me you've already finished it on audio. That's one of the that's one of the benefits is you can, you can get through a book quickly if you've got some time. And so if that is interesting to you, I wanna encourage you to check out the new audio version. You can find all of that at edgeoftheinside.com.
Today, we are looking at the resurrection of Jesus and, uh, at least part of it.
We've seen the death and the burial of Jesus, and then afterward, what happens next? In particular, what happens with the followers of Jesus, who had put all their hope in this guy and then watched him die, and then they try to figure out, "What do we do now?" And this is the story we see. We're in John chapter 20, beginning [00:01:00] in verse 19 Says that Sunday evening, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders.
Not, not a great start so far. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them. "Peace be with you," He said. As He spoke, He showed them the wounds in His hands and by His side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord. Again, He said, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you." Then He breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." So you have this moment, the disciples are in this locked room. They're obviously terrified. They're scared, and then Jesus shows up. This dead man shows up behind these locked doors, and He says something that's important.
He says, "Peace [00:02:00] be with you," because they were probably terrified, right? You would be terrified if you suddenly saw a dead person show up behind a locked door, and yet they realize this is the resurrected Jesus. Now, here, Jesus is going to leave them now with the Holy Spirit. There is a passing of the baton happening in the resurrected Jesus to the Holy Spirit moving forward.
What's interesting, though, is that it'll be about another two months until Acts chapter two and the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fully reveals herself, and that's not happening here. And so we have almost this initiation of sort, where Jesus is setting this up, but it's not fully happening quite yet.
That's gonna come in a little bit. Verse 24, " One of the 12 disciples, Thomas, nicknamed the Twin, was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, 'We have seen [00:03:00] the Lord,' but he replied, 'I won't believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.'
Eight days later, the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked, but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. 'Peace be with you,' he said, and then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side.
Don't be faithless any longer. Believe.' 'My Lord and my God,' Thomas exclaimed, and then Jesus told him, 'You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.'" I mean, talk about FOMO here. Thomas finds out, "Hey, all of us got to see Jesus again. He's resurrected. He's not dead anymore.
Uh, sorry you weren't there." I mean, can you imagine that? And so Thomas is [00:04:00] like, "Look, I need to see it, too." And I have always felt bad for Thomas. He gets a bad rap here, but all he wants is to see what everyone else saw. He's not asking for more than they got. He's saying, "Look, you guys got to see this. I want to see this, too."
And I want to just point out every sane person would doubt that a dead person had come back to life. In fact, we might say that's a mark of your sanity. This isn't something that normally happens. Using logic in your pursuit of Jesus is not a sign of weakness And if you are listening to a podcast that highlights our doubts and our questions, you might really resonate with that.
I'd suggest that we could use a bit more logic these days as we follow Jesus. So much of Christianity right now seems to look nothing like Jesus, and [00:05:00] people don't see the logical problems with that, of saying they follow this man and then doing all of the things that are in direct contradiction or violation to all that Jesus represents.
And this story is significant. Now, there's a detail here that is an interesting detail. It says that the second appearance happened eight days later. Now, in a Jewish culture, eight days would mark the time from the birth of a baby until that baby boy would be circumcised eight days later. And so if we look to that detail and suggest there may be something more here, that would suggest that the first time Jesus shows up, the first story we looked at today, is like the birth moment of these disciples and this new movement.
And then eight days later, when Thomas is there, this is like the circumcision moment, right? Where Jesus then comes back. Jesus seems to think it's [00:06:00] important for them to have confidence in his resurrection, in his physical body. And so in that light, the disciples getting proof of Jesus' resurrection is not a character flaw, it's a rite of passage.
It's not, "Wow, I can't believe you guys needed to see this." It's, "Of course you would need to see this." Of course, right? If you want to say that this man has risen from the dead, yeah, you're gonna need to experience that for yourself. And then we get to verse thirty. " The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book.
But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him, you will have life by the power of his name." So here we return to John's stated reason for [00:07:00] this book. We saw this passage in week one of our series, and I love the idea that John's saying, "Look, these are just some highlights.
These are just some of the cooler things that I wanted to include." I mean, we can only imagine what happened on all the other days. What are all the other stories that didn't quite make the cut? What else did Jesus do? And that is one for our imaginations. Now, I wanna close today. I wanna use Thomas as an example rather than a cautionary tale.
We often present him as look out for this, this is what it looks like if you doubt, but I wanna look at Thomas as an example. He named his doubts, and he was clear on what he would need in order to follow Jesus. And so I wanna ask, have we done the same thing today? What would it mean to name the thing that you need to see [00:08:00] before you can move forward?
Just to name it. Not just to give yourself permission to acknowledge that there is something, but to name it in your pursuit of moving forward. And then I'll even take it up a notch. Thomas didn't just name his doubts privately, he said them out loud to other people. So I wanna encourage you this week, a homework assignment if you will, to have a conversation with someone else, have the courage to share with them what it is that you would need to see from Jesus to move forward, what you are hung up on, what that next step is for you.
Because Jesus honors Thomas' request, and he meets him in the way that Thomas needed it. Could it be possible that Jesus would do the same thing for you today? I'll see you next week on [00:09:00] Rebuilding Faith
