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Peter also mentioned that we have the example of Christ in suffering. When we suffer, rather than being discouraged for it, we are to remember the example of Christ who was the Son of God who suffered. In fact, rather than being discouraged when we suffer, you and I can be encouraged, knowing that we are become more like Jesus Christ, our suffering Lord.

A couple weeks back, we had spoke briefly and somewhat awkwardly about wives and husbands. We talked about how Peter says a wife’s submission to her husband more about being a witness of Christ rather than being a laundry list of how women were supposed to behave. We talked about how husbands were to honor their wives and be willing to be as Christ is to His Church. Though not many of us in here are actually married, it’s important for those of us who have that on the horizon to think about how to be Christ-like in the way we interact with members of the opposite gender and we need to think about the implications of what that means for us as we start to think about issues of dating and marriage.

All throughout the book of 1 Peter, we’ve seen this almost masochistic pattern of Peter telling the believers to endure and submit to hostile authorities. In today’s passage, Peter adds another dimension and talks about how the believers are to suffer for the sake of righteousness as a part of the calling as a believer. That being said, let’s jump right into the text for today.

If we read the beginning of our passage in verses 8 and 9, Peter writes, “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.”

One of the marks of the early church, and really when the church is at its best is when we are able to live the commandment of Jesus Christ found in Matthew 5:38-41. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ ³⁹But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. ⁴⁰And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. ⁴¹And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”

This is the example of Christ that we talked about a few weeks back. Christ, when He was faced with reviling, did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten the Romans with attack, though He did let them know in Matthew 26:53 that if He wanted, He could have had twelve legions of angels come rescue Him. Instead of declaring rightly that He was Lord of lords and King of kings, Philippians 2:8 tells us that He humbled Himself by “becoming to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

So let me ask each one of us this question again: Am I living a life that is worthy of slander in the eyes of the world? Is the life I live complete and utter foolishness to people who don’t know Jesus Christ? Do the things I do not make sense when people from the outside look in?

Brothers and sisters, if we want to live the Christian life – if we really want to live the Christian life – it will not be a life that is easy in the eyes of the world. This is a pattern that is repeated over and over all throughout Scripture. In Genesis 6, God tells Noah to build a giant boat in the middle of the desert because it’s going to flood. In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham to pick up all his possessions and leave his home country and go to a place completely unexplored. Under the leadership of Joshua, God tells the Israelites to march around the city of Jericho for seven days instead of attacking it in Joshua 6.

For the outside observer, these seem to be completely foolish and worthy of laughter. But Hebrews 11 tells us that these people are to be honored and that the world is not worthy of them. When we consider this, then the reviling and the mocking is much less unbearable, but again, are we living a life for Christ that warrants the mocking of the world? Is the Jesus Christ that I know one that I’d be willing to be mocked for, or is He someone who I write papers about in school, while never really going out of my way to make a fool of myself for His sake.

Peter tells us in verse 8 and 9 that we are called to a life of blessing even when we are reviled. This is part of our calling. It’s not to be content in our Christianity today, but it’s to go out and speak the name of Jesus Christ in our brokenness – as we are – and recognize that we will be mocked and ridiculed by the world. The quicker we acknowledge the reality that this life is a life of shame in the eyes of the world, the quicker we can get over it and do the work that God has called us to do.

Many of us know what it means to be reviled for the sake of Christ. Perhaps we witnessed to a friend, wanting them to hear the truth about the joy of knowing Christ and instead of receiving the message, they told us that what works for us doesn’t work for them and that we should leave them alone. All of us have close family members who don’t believe in Christ – some of us in our immediate families – and talking to them is the hardest because they are the closest to us and when they reject the Gospel, it’s personal.

When I was a senior in high school, I was one of the people who organized our annual “See you at the pole” event. This is a nationwide event that happens during the school year where high school and junior high students gather around the flagpole in the front of their schools and pray for their school and the country.

That year, we had the largest gathering at our school ever, with 81 of the 1600 students showing up. We gathered around the pole, which was right in front of the school and we worshiped God loudly and publicly for about half an hour. After we did that, we all held hands and went around praying.

I think about that time, and for a Christian, we can probably think about that and say, “Amen! These kids are making a stand for Christ.” Yet when I think about it from a non-believer’s perspective, imagine what that must have looked like to come to their school and see 81 people holding hands around the flagpole with their eyes closed and their heads bowed in prayer. It must have looked strange at best, and cultic at the worst.

In fact, as we prayed, I listened to hear the reactions from students walking by. Some of them respectfully walked by in silence; others laughed at us for praying like that. I saw some of my Christian brothers and sisters who were too ashamed to join us walk by even more ashamed because they felt so guilty for not being with us. The best response we got, though, was from an unknown poet who walked by, chanting, “We don’t care! We don’t care! If there is a hell, I’ll see you there!”

We had done nothing to that person in particular, and yes, this kid was probably just immature, but the response of a believer who lives in a way that they will receive mocking is merely to bless. This is one of the most powerful witnesses that we can have as Christians living in a world where everyone is cutthroat in getting ahead. If we can show people grace and love especially in the midst of ridicule, it is a powerful witness.

Peter gives us another reason to bless in the midst of cursing, though. Not only is it a part of our calling, but he tells us straight up in verse 12, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

One of the greatest motivations for us to bless and do good is simply that God watches us. I know that often times this can be misconstrued that God is always looking at us to watch to see if we will make a mistake. But the reality is that the opposite is actually true. God watches us simply because He loves us so much.

I don’t know about you, but when I like something a lot, I have a tendency to look at it for a long time. Whether it’s devoting two hours to a good movie, or looking at a sports magazine, or even another person, we all have a tendency to stare. Some of stare so much that it’s actually a little creepy – if you want to know how to stare without getting caught, ask June, he can help you out.

But I know that in my finite mind and with my finite love, I can stare at something I love and then get tired or worn out. God, on the other hand, keeps His eyes on us because He genuinely loves us and His love will not wear out. So when I remember that, then I am motivated to bless others because I know that my God is watching and I long for the day when I stand before Him and hear Him say that phrase that we so often quote, but rarely live by: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

But the fact that God watches us is not just a motivation for us to do good. It’s also one of the greatest comforts in the midst of difficulty as verse 12 says, “But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

You can bet that there were believers in Peter’s time who were discouraged and worn out from living the Christian life. How could they not be after being persecuted for following Jesus? I wonder what the believers in the early church would say if some of our prosperity teachers tried to preach that message to them in their context as they were being slaughtered by the Romans. I know what it’s like to feel worn down from living the Christian life, and I grew up in America where there is no persecution for being a Christian.

However, one of the greatest comforts for the believer in the 21^st century is the reality that just as God sees our good deeds as we obey Christ, there is also the reality that He sees the bad deeds done against His people.

In Exodus 2:24 and 25, after the Israelites have endured harsh slavery at the hands of the Egyptians, the word of God says, “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.”

If you and I decide to live a life for Christ that would merit revile from the people around us, we have the double blessing of knowing that not only does God see the way we bless those that would speak against us, He also sees the resistance that people place against us.

I think that this is a pretty important point for us to grasp because I know that for me, one of the biggest deterrents in living a radical life for Christ is fear. I am afraid of being rejected or ridiculed by people, so it prevents me from living out the way Jesus tells me to live. Sometimes I can be afraid of losing my friends or the love of my family members. I went to a Christian college, and sometimes I would be afraid of looking like an overspiritual nerd, so it prevented me living radically. I can’t even imagine the pressure that those of us who go to secular universities feel.

Fear of man is one of the biggest hindrances of us living the way God wants us to live. We are afraid of what the people around us think and the reality is that we will live by what or Who we fear the most. This is what Peter talked about earlier when He said in chapter 1 about living in fear of God. Proverbs 29:25 says it like this, “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.”

The reality is that you and I will be afraid of living for Christ. We just will be. I know that because that’s how I am. But there is another reality, and that is that God sees the ridicule and the resistance. Be afraid when you live radically for Christ – that’s okay. But if you fear, remember also that there is an impartial Judge who sees what you’re going through.

I want to just end our message today by talking briefly about how Peter tells us that we are to bless and defend the faith.

If we read verses 15-17, we see:

In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, ¹⁶having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.

For those of us who are privileged enough to encounter resistance from the world because we’re living the life that Christ wants us to live, Peter reminds us that we are to continue to bless and regard Christ as holy. And when we share the testimony of Christ to those who would ridicule us, we are to do so gently and respectfully.

When I was younger and zealous in my faith, I knew very little, but tried to witness a lot. I thought to myself that people would surely accept Christ if they would just listen to the words that I spoke to them. That is, I thought that the only reason they didn’t believe was because they hadn’t experienced what I had experienced. I tried to witness to people with this idealistic mentality that if I could just outsmart them or get them to a place where they would just listen to my testimony, they would immediately fall to their knees and groan in repentance for their sins.

Yet what I soon discovered is that people really are resistant to the Gospel. We have the sinful nature in us that makes us not want to listen. People found any excuse not to listen, and when they did, they would say things like, “What works for you is fine, but it may not be right for me. The important thing is that you are happy and good. Leave me alone.”

To me, that was not a spiritual problem, but an intellectual one. I actually believed that people who didn’t accept Jesus Christ were dumb or more foolish. Instead of loving them, I began to look down on them and insult them and grow bitter toward them.

This is a temptation to all of us who want to share Christ and who are passionate about Him and indeed the Church often took this approach when trying to win converts. In the past, we’ve used bully tactics to scare people into believing, or peer pressured them, or even launched crusades to get people to Christ. When the Europeans first came to the New World, they basically enslaved the people who were already living here with the intent to share the Gospel with them.

But Peter tells us something different in verse 16. He tells us that we are to share the Gospel gently and with respect. I don’t think this has to do much with trying to be nice to people or PC or to make people comfortable. I think it actually has to do with the reality that Peter knows most people will not accept the truth of the Gospel. But if they’re not going to accept it, Peter says that “when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”

When I share the Gospel, I must do it in a way that – not if – but when people reject it, they will still be able to see the work of Christ in me. When I share the Gospel with my unbelieving friend or family member, they must still be able to see the work of Christ in me even if they don’t allow Him to be the Ruler of their life and the Savior of their soul.

This means that you and I must be prepared to share the Gospel at all times. Ephesians 5:15 and 16 says it like this, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”

Being prepared to share the Gospel at all times is not an easy task, nor is it a task that will reap immediate fruits. I think many of us want to see immediate results from sharing the Gospel. The reality is that it doesn’t work like that. I have shared the Gospel with probably hundreds of people, and have seen probably less than a tenth of them come to the Lord – so far.

However, if we are prepared at all times to share it and share it in a way that is gentle and respectful, the hope that we have is that they will one day come to a place where God prompts them to receive the salvation found in Jesus Christ. Even when we encounter resistance or trial because we live for Christ, the call of His people is to continue to faithfully plant the seeds of the Gospel wherever we go so that souls can be won for the kingdom.

Brothers and sisters, living the Christian life is not easy. It should make us sweat a little and encounter difficulty. But it should also give us great cause for joy. This is why Peter is able to say in verse 17, “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”

So I want to just call us to that place of joy. I want to remind us that even suffering for Christ is better than living comfortably against Him. My prayer for us in here is that we can struggle through what this means in our 21^st century context where we don’t encounter the kind of persecution or hardship that the believers in Peter’s time did.

Let’s pray.

Submit to Suffering

Tertullian, an early church father, once wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Go on, rack, torture, grind us to powder: our numbers increase in proportion as you mow us down. The blood of Christians is their harvest seed.”

On April 20 of this year, residents of Karachi, Pakistan woke up to find pro-Taliban messages chalked onto the walls of two churches. The messages included, “Long live the Taliban” and “Embrace Islam or prepare to die.” The next day, the Christian residents staged a protest in the hopes of attracting the attention of the local government to provide protection. Officials, however, did nothing. The night of the protest, April 21, more than 100 masked extremists invaded Taseer Town with automatic rifles. The Taliban leaders shouted, “You infidels have to convert to Islam or die. Why did you wash up warnings inscribed on walls of church and home doors? How dare you are to take out procession against Taliban?” The extremists sexually assaulted several women and physically abused dozens more with clubs, iron rods, and whips. They set a number of homes on fire. When two Christians resisted, the militants killed them execution-style directly in front of their families. This happened two weeks ago, brothers and sisters.

I want to remind us of the reality that persecution happens against our most worthy and dear brothers and sisters in the Lord all around the world as a way of prefacing what Peter talks about in this passage. When I read about this particular persecution, and when I think about the persecution that’s happening in places like North Korea and China, I don’t know about you, but I get filled with anger and sadness that people are being slaughtered simply for making the eternal-life giving confession that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Persecution against Christians happens today. In fact, Christians are the most persecuted people today, with more Christians dying in the 20^th century than in all the previous centuries combined. And it happened during the time of Peter’s first letter to the persecuted believers. So when Peter begins today’s passage with, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good,” those words carried a different weight than for those of us reading it in our comfortable 21^st century context.

The Apostle Peter is not crazy. Sometimes when I read the New Testament and I look at people like Peter or Paul who get persecuted for preaching, I think that something is wrong with them. In Acts 5, the Apostles John and Peter are told not to preach anymore and then they are beaten for preaching. Verse 41 tells us that “they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.” In Acts 14, Paul is stoned and left for dead. After regaining consciousness, he goes back into the city to leave for the next day and eventually comes back. Verse 22 says that when he returned to the city where he got stoned, he, “[strengthened] the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” When Paul and Silas are beaten and thrown into prison in the city of Philippi, Acts 16:25 says, “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”

Persecution against believers should not surprise Christians. In fact, we should expect it because Jesus Himself says in John 15:18 and 19, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” This is the reality.

But for Peter to turn around and tell the believers going through the midst of persecution to honor the emperor – it almost seems like the greatest act of betrayal against Jesus and His followers. It’s like if I went to the church where the Taliban killed the Christians and said to them, “You should love, honor, and obey the Taliban.”

I think that we here in America often times can’t really understand what Peter talks about when he writes verses 13-17 about honoring the emperor and following the earthly authorities. For us here, we often look at this passage and we say that this is about things like going the right speed limit, or not jaywalking, or not littering, etc. We trivialize it because we have not encountered the difficulties that an enemy state places on us.

We here in America try to keep our politics and our religion separate – and rightly so in the sense that our power doesn’t come from the government, but for the believers during the time of Peter, to say that Jesus was the Son of God was a political statement. They could not separate their politics from religion because their confession that Jesus was the Son of God meant betraying the empire of the day.

As a quick aside, I want to call that to our attention as believers living in the 21^st century in a country that is considered friendly to believers. We must never ever make the mistake to think that our power comes from simply engaging in the political process, or from gaining favor from the government. Power against homosexuality doesn’t come from ratifying Prop-8. It comes when the people of God stand with conviction and speak – in love – to the people around us, bringing the convicting truth of the Gospel, even under persecution – and especially when we’re not facing it. The way to defeat abortion isn’t to overturn Roe vs. Wade. It will happen when we are the prophetic voice in our society that speaks against the murder of innocent children, and when we can get our society to grasp just how evil it is.

We need to ask ourselves why Peter told the believers to submit to a political institution that was responsible for the deaths of so many believers. Verses 13, 16, and 17 give a little insight into that. Verse 13 begins with, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” In verse 16, we read, “Live as people who are free, not using for freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.” And in verse 17, Peter writes, “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”

If you remember to about a month ago, we talked about how Peter told the believers that instead of being afraid of man’s sword, they were to fear God. The same principle applies here. Submitting to our earthly authorities has very little to do with our fear of them, but more of a respect for out God, trusting that He has established even the evil authorities to reign. If we really believe that God is in control, then we must also accept that He has instituted authorities to rule over the worldly realm. And if I really believe that, then who am I to disobey what God has instituted?

Now, we need to remember that institutions have done great evil over the years. Slavery was allowed in this country for hundreds of years before Christians led the way in abolishing it. The German government systematically killed millions of its own people while her people remained silent at the attempted genocide against the Jews. But the principle here that we need to remember is how we can best act for the Lord’s sake in relation to these institutions – whether it means submitting to them, or speaking against them.

I grew up in one of the most liberal cities of the Midwest, believe it or not. You wouldn’t think that a city in Iowa would be very liberal, but because I’m from a university town, the surrounding city was also incredibly liberal. Just to give you an idea of where I’m from, Iowa City has the most homosexuals per capita of any city in the Midwest. We also have the most abortions per capita in the Midwest, while Iowa ranks second to South Carolina in the number of abortions per capita in the country.

Because I grew up in such an environment, I also have a politically liberal streak in me. Since then, I have become a little bit more conservative, but I used to consider myself to be pretty radical. One of my friends growing up called me the most liberal person that he knew. One of the things that I used to say was that having a military was pointless and that it was even evil to have an institution whose main purpose is to kill people. It got to the point that I used to say that if the federal government instituted a military draft, I would burn my draft card and get arrested instead of being forced to go to war. I was really a stupid high school kid.

One day, I was going on one of my rants at church, and my Bible study leader simply had enough. In front of everyone, he started to yell at me – not because of my political beliefs, but because he asked me what kind of witness I was being for the sake of our Lord. He told me that I need to submit to authority not because I thought it was right or wrong, but simply because that was the way I could be a daily witness of Christ in my life.

But being submissive to our authorities has another dimension. Verse 15 says, “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.” Verses 18-20 read:

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.

On one hand, you and I are lucky in the sense that we can live in a country that does not persecute us simply for worshiping Jesus. On the other hand, there is a very real dimension of the Christian faith that we miss out on because we are not suffering. The witness of Christ is the most powerful when we endure persecution and are still able to cling to God.

When I was in college at Wheaton, we had a chapel speak come in to tell us a story about how one of his friends was a soldier in the Special Forces that got captured in Iran while he was on a secret mission. Obviously he couldn’t go into too much detail about what that mission was, but he told us that his friend was a Christian, and that his friend was actually captured by the Iranian government.

It is a problem when any foreign soldier gets captured by another government, but it’s even more problematic in that he was a Christian, and Iran’s official name is “The Islamic Republic of Iran.” For months, this dear brother was kept in prison by the Iranian government, and was interrogated for being a spy, while waiting for his trial. And for months, this brother would spend his time in isolation praying out loud to Jesus to be His strength. In Iran, the trials are conducted by Muslim clergymen. He knew that he was going to be held to account for his actions by a Muslim, and so all he could really do is pray for strength and help.

When the day of the trial came, instead of worrying about what he was going to say, he remembered the words of Luke 21:14 and 15, where Jesus warns the disciples that they will endure trials in the last days. Jesus says to them, “Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.”

The judge asked him, “Why are you here in Iran?” The Holy Spirit prompted him that he was sent, not by the government, but by Jesus Christ to preach the gospel. He replied, “I have come here to preach the truth of Jesus Christ to the nation of Iran.” The courtroom was shocked so the judge said to him, “I will ask you again. Why are you here in Iran?” Our dear brother answered in the same exact way, and took it one step further by preaching for two hours in the courtroom about Jesus Christ.

After his testimonies and message through the cross-examination, the judge ruled that he was mentally insane and released him immediately. On his way out, he was stopped by a man who he recognized. This man identified himself as one of the guards who held him in prison. What he didn’t know is that while he spent those days and months in isolation on the floor of his jail cell praying, there were guards watching him. As they listened to him pray and cry out to God, two of the guards got saved and had joined an underground church. In the courtroom, there were a couple people that made decisions to follow Christ, and this brother is now a missionary in Iran.

The witness of Christ is so real in the midst of persecution, and we are to be honored when we suffer for something so righteous as the name of Jesus Christ. So let me ask this question of all of us in here, starting with me. What is my witness to the world around me? Am I living radically enough to experience the discomfort of the Christian life? Believe it or not, the Christian life is not supposed to be comfortable. Comfort is one of the worst things that can happen to us because it makes us less sharp for the Lord. Discomfort keeps us on our toes and wrestling with issues of what it actually means to be a believer.

Now obviously none of us in here is going to encounter something like this soldier did this coming week, but there are little things similar to that which we encounter on a weekly basis. I was at Starbucks a couple months ago, and I ordered my coffee and instead of giving me $18.56, the guy behind the counter gave me $19.56. This guy knows that I study theology at Fuller and that I work at a church, so even though I was tempted to just pocket that extra dollar, I stopped him and told him he gave me too much. About an hour later, while I was doing my work there, a woman came around handing out sheets of paper saying she was deaf, asking for donations. I had my Bible open and all my sermon notes out, and she placed that piece of paper gently on top of my open Bible. I thought to myself, ‘Man, if I had just kept that dollar that guy gave me, then I would not have a net loss in funds due to this transaction,’ but because she placed it on my Bible, there was no way that I couldn’t give to her – not for my sake, but for the sake of Christ’s name to the people watching.

I realize that example may seem trivial, but I’m being completely serious. The witness of Christ to this world is so important. How we act around the people around us reflects on more than just us – it reflects on Christ. And if you and I are fortunate enough to encounter persecution because of it, Peter tells us in verse 20 that “this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.”

In fact Peter goes as far as to say in verse 21, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” Listen to what he says in verses 22-25:

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

This itself could be an entire message – and indeed I almost placed it into a message by itself – but I didn’t because this is so important to our understanding of suffering for Christ.

A lot of times, we can use the phrase, “I’m suffering for Christ” as a way of saying that my suffering indicates that my faith is stronger. That is, if I’m encountering hardship for Christ, then it shows that I have a strong enough faith to hold on even when life is difficult. And certainly there is some truth to that. It is an honorable thing to suffer because of Christ.

But what Peter does here is to say that our suffering isn’t just done for Christ, but it is the result of being like Christ. There is a subtle, but giant difference between the two. In the first case, we view suffering as an offering we give to the Lord for what He’s done. It’s our act of worship to Him, or a way of proving to Him that we are strong in the faith. In the second case, we view suffering as a way to emulate Him and become more like our Lord.

This is exactly what that verse that we looked at earlier from John talks about when Jesus says, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

Philippians 2:5-8 says something similar to what Peter talks about here:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Peter says here that “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” This is the example of Christ that we are to follow. Suffering isn’t just the result of hostile governments responding to the people of God. Suffering is the very nature of the Christian life because Christ Himself was a Man who suffered.

And praise the Lord that Christ suffered. Verse 24 says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” Hallelujah!

It is because He bore the wounds of the incredible torture and suffering that we are able to be healed and called children of God. Verse 24 tells us that “by his wounds you have been healed.” This is the reality of what Christ did. He suffered so that you and I can be healed.

And if Christ suffered, and I want to be like Christ, I also must suffer. But if the suffering of Christ brought the opportunity for the world to be saved, then my suffering can also be a powerful witness that brings others to life in Christ.

The witness of a suffering Christian is powerful. In fact, the growth of the church is directly related to the suffering of her members. It is no accident that church growth has exploded this past century and that there are more martyrs for the faith than ever. Given that reality, why do you think domestic missions within America has been in decline the last twenty years? Do you think it could possibly have anything to do with the fact that American Christianity has become too comfortable and complacent? Something to think about…

Now there is a difference between suffering for our faith and suffering because of the circumstances of life. Peter is clearly talking about the former, as persecution was happening to the believers. But I also think there is a powerful witness in a believer being able to seek Christ and worship Him in the midst of the struggles of life. When we suffer because of the circumstances of life, I want to encourage us that we are becoming more like Christ and remind us that this is the reality of the Christian life. Be encouraged, brother or sister.

Rest

We have all experienced times in the Christian life where we feel overwhelmed by our circumstances or it doesn’t seem as fresh as it once was. Some people call it being tired, others call it being burnt out, while others call it forgetting their first love. We can call it what we like, but each of us who have lived a life of faith for however long know exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s the feeling of having a billion different things to do and not knowing where to start simply because there is too much to do. For some of us it’s that we have nothing to do and we are confronted by silence or a lack of activity that makes us tired or burnt out. If you’re like me, you get that feeling when you realize that even though there is a long list of things that you need to do, you feel as if you’ve not even started it or even put a dent into what needs to be done. Things begin to add up and then the list gets longer and longer because each item requires time and energy, but that means that it’s time and energy taken away from other things that could be done, and soon enough, you’re staring out of a giant hole you’ve dug for yourself and you feel as if you cannot get out of it.

Today’s message is one that I need to preach to myself this afternoon more than anyone else in here. This message is a way for me to work through some stuff I’m dealing with right now and it’s a message that I believe God wants to speak to us in our English Ministry.

One of the things that I’ve noticed about our ministry here – and really most church ministries is the tendency to fix our spiritual problems by doing more. If I feel an emptiness, then my response is to go into my room and read my Bible for an hour and pray for an hour. When I feel like I am not important to the people at my church, I look for ways that I can be involved and seen. When I make mistakes in areas of sin, I either feel like I can’t come to church, or I feel like I need to pray a certain amount to cleanse myself from these sins.

I have even said in the past that I am at the point right now where I literally feel unclean if I don’t read my Bible every day. About a month ago, I missed an EM service to play my cello and be a groomsman at my old roommate’s wedding in Pasadena and I felt so guilty and dirty for missing that Sunday service.

All of those things I mentioned above are good things in the Christian walk and they’re things that we need to do. You and I need to have a healthy and regular quiet time of reading the Word and praying to grow in our walks with Christ. When we sin, we need to take some time to repent before the Lord for our sins, and if we feel led, we should take the privilege of investing our time and our lives in serving God at our church.

However, the problem with all of things that I’ve just mentioned is that they all have the tendency to become a subtle form of legalism. I’ve talked with so many Christians who, with the best intentions, say things like, “Ultimately, if someone wants to grow, it’s up to them to make the changes.” I think this about myself and about others all the time without realizing that what I’m really saying is, “You have to earn your spirituality,” something that is completely contrary to what the Gospel message actually is.

The passage for today speaks about the way to counter the legalistic tendencies of our Christian walk. Now, it’s important to note that the main point of our passage for today is not about legalism in the Christian walk. In fact, when this was written, Isaiah was speaking six woes to Israel and to Assyria as Israel was steeped in their sins of idolatry and reliance on forces other than God. Chapter thirty is a woe against a nation that is stubborn and rebellious toward Him.

What I did want to look at today, however, was how God invites His stubborn and rebellious people to repent and return to Him as a way of us understanding a bit more about this concept of resting in the Lord. That being said, let’s get right into the passage for today.

The first thing I want to note about this passage is God’s invitation to His people. Verse 15 says, “For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

God’s invitation to His people is not an invitation to do more or serve Him more or give more money, or anything like that. His invitation for His people is always first to return and rest in Him. What’s amazing about this isn’t just the fact that this is the nature of God’s invitation. It’s the fact that He makes this invitation to His people even after they’ve lived in sin for so long.

Isaiah 1-39 is often known as the Book of Judgment, and Isaiah 40-66 is often known as the Book of Comfort. Like the name clearly states, the Book of Judgment is about God’s judgment on a nation that has strayed so far from Him and whose end is imminent (remember that the northern kingdom of Israel was wiped out during the time that Isaiah wrote, and Isaiah prophesied about the destruction of the southern kingdom of Judah as well).

Yet even in the midst of God’s judgment and promises of wrath, He invites His people to return to Him and rest in Him. He tells His people that it is in returning to Him that we will be saved, that their strength is in quietness and trust.

This should provide a breath of fresh air for those of us who go to a Korean church and are so used to equating serving God with serving the church, or who have this mentality that we always need to do things in order to earn God’s favor because when we look at what God tells His people in verse 15, there really isn’t any task that He gives them to be saved other than to return, rest, and trust.

I want to talk about this idea of rest for a bit because a lot of times, we talk about how we need to wait on God or find our rest in Him, but we don’t really know or explain what that actually means.

This idea of rest actually comes from God Himself. Most of us probably remember what the Bible says God did after He created the world. In Genesis 2:2, the word of God says, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” The concept of rest has been around as long as creation because the word of God tells us that as soon as God is finished creating, He takes a day to rest.

However, the concept of rest does not mean that we lock ourselves into an empty for a day and do nothing or just sleep. That would imply that this is what God did on His day of rest and it’s actually a serious sin called sloth. In fact, we can be incredibly busy and still be at rest in God, while other times we could do nothing and be completely restless.

The Sabbath day to the Jews is meant to be a holy day of rest. The fourth commandment given in Exodus 20:8-11 says:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

This is why the Pharisees made up all these extrabiblical commandments to prevent them from doing any work on the day of rest, and they were wrong because they failed to understand that the idea of rest is both a physical concept and a spiritual one.

In order to understand rest a bit better, we have to understand what it means to say that God rested. In the very next verse of Genesis 2:3, it gives us an insight into what God-emulating rest means. Genesis 2:3 reads, “And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”

In Ancient Middle Eastern cultures, whenever a temple is created, there is always a day after the construction is completed where the worshipers allow their god to basically move into the temple, which was created as a house for the deity. Now we obviously reject the understanding that there are multiple gods, but this principle actually makes the Jewish and Christian creation account that much more powerful in light of the cultural context that it was written.

When Genesis was written, the first three days involved creating day and night, sky, and earth. After that, the second three days involved the filling of those things with the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, sky creatures and sea creatures, and finally cattle and humans. The pattern is that there is creation, then there is a filling of that creation.

In light of what we just talked about with the ancient cultures giving time for their god to fill the temple, what makes Genesis’ creation account stand out in light of all that is that someone reading it in their context would have known exactly what God was doing on the seventh day. He wasn’t just taking a nap or taking a break from His hard six days of the nine to five. The seventh day of rest signifies His filling of His temple: creation itself.

So when we say today that we need to rest in God, we are taking time to allow God to fill us: His creation and His temple.

Let me give another example of this idea of rest. In Exodus 14:13 and 14, the word for rest is used again in this context. “And Moses said to the people, ‘Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.’” I love that. I love that God says that all we need to do is sit back and let Him do the work in us and through us.

We need to be careful here because I think that a lot of times, we can think of being filled by God like we’re a tank that runs until we’re empty and then we need to come to church on Sunday to get a refill. If we ever have that misconception about rest, Hebrews 11:9-11 gives us some insight into this. “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”

Believe it or not, finding rest in God actually takes a lot of work. Listen again to what Hebrews says in verse 11. “Let us strive to enter that rest.” That is, let us struggle to rest.

Wait a second. At the beginning of the message, I talked about how placing an emphasis on what we do is a form of legalism and that there was nothing we could do to find our rest in God, that we need to actually rest more and do less.

The point is this: how do I bring myself to a place of allowing God to fill me up so that I can return to Him and rest in Him? This will be different for each one of us because we are all at different places in our spiritual walk.

Some of us in here need to start reading our Bibles again regularly and allow God to speak to us in that way. We have not allowed God to speak to us through the word of God for so long that we cannot hear His voice through that. Perhaps others of us need to take a vacation where we take a hike and enjoy God’s creation and pray as we walk. I have heard God speak to me many times when I go driving or hiking in the woods. Maybe you need to start fasting regularly to be filled with God’s presence. I went through a year or two of college where I felt God convicting me to fast twice a week, so during my first and second senior year on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I fasted and prayed. Or maybe, just maybe, you need to sleep. Seriously. One of the biggest hindrances for young people having a dynamic spiritual life is simply that during college, we mismanage our time and end up having to stay up really late to study, which means that we’re sleep deprived. When we’re sleep deprived, we have to cut things like our devotions and it’s actually harder to hear God’s voice because we’re so tired. Do what you have to do to get to that place of rest where we can let go of our control and let the Lord live through us.

The sad thing, though, is that last sentence of verse 15 and verses 16 and 17. In verse 15, God invites His people to find a holy rest in Him, but he also says, “But you were unwilling, and you said, ‘No! We will flee upon horses’; therefore you shall flee away; and, ‘We will ride upon swift steeds’; therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill.”

God has no illusions about how most people will react to this invitation to rest. Most people will have nothing to do with a quiet rest that comes in God because we are so programmed that we need to do more for Him.

You see, you and I can do a lot of things without acknowledging God as our source. We can try to work and study without Him, and we can even do ministry without acknowledging Him as our All. But if that’s how we live, sooner or later, we will get burnt out.

This is what God says to the people of Israel in verses 16 and 17. “You said, ‘No! We will flee upon horses’; therefore you shall flee away; and, ‘We will ride upon swift steeds’; therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill.”

If you try to live like that as a Christian, you will get burnt out. I guarantee it. And even if you don’t get burnt out, that’s worse because you’ve not released control of your life over to the Lord and let Him be all in you.

I was reminded of that this morning as I got ready for church. I’ve shared this with the other education staff, but the last few weeks, I’ve been feeling a little tired and burnt out with everything. Since I started school, I feel like I’ve had a grasp on everything and things seemed to be really coming together well. I was reaching my academic goals, and at the same time, I also feel like there are some good things that are happening at church – and so I started to get comfortable.

Comfort is probably the worst thing for my soul because when I get comfortable, I get less sharp. Instead of humbly acknowledging God as the source of strength, I started to trust in myself, thinking that I could continue to just rely on myself to do well. And when that happens, rather than being a steward of what God had given me, which made me work really hard, I saw myself as lord over my circumstances, which meant that I started to get lazy. The work started to pile up, and now I’m at the point where I feel overwhelmed and unable to finish everything.

When I get overwhelmed, I don’t experience joy. When I prepare my sermons, there is usually such a great sense of joy because I love studying God’s word and letting Him speak to me through it, but I noticed the past couple weeks that I was putting it off and really started to think of it as work instead of being able to be used by God to preach His word. This morning, I was doing some reflection and introspection and the Lord convicted me that I had trusted myself, and as a result, I started to get burnt out because I really don’t have the ability nor the strength to last even a week with all that needs to be done. I repented, and as I took time to pray and repent, God’s joy began to flood my heart and I was able to prepare this message out of joy, and not because the deadline of 1:30 was looming closer and closer.

This is exactly what God says to Israel in verse 18. “Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”

On one hand, we are to wait for God to meet with us, but in the same token, God waits for us to return and rest in Him. I love this. God waits to be gracious to us. He’s waiting for us to acknowledge that we need Him and that we will rest in Him by letting Him fill us up.

This should change the way that we all think about the Christian life. We all have a tendency to try to earn God’s favor, or to think that we have to do certain things to live a powerful Christian life. And certainly if I don’t read the Bible, pray, or fellowship, I cannot have a powerful Christian life. But the starting point is not in the disciplines. The starting point is in the Christian notion of resting in God and letting Him fill us so that He can overflow into our devotional life. When I allow God to fill me by resting in Him, my prayers come to life. Instead of just hanging out with people, I can fellowship with them.

I know this to be true about ministry as well. The most effective ministry from me happens when I’ve spent time resting in God and just being with Him. This is why the worship team is taking April off. It’s not about giving them a passive break because they’ve been working so hard – though they do work hard and probably do need a break. It’s about having them actively worship God and come to a place where they themselves become lead worshipers instead of just being worship leaders.

Brothers and sisters, there are many things that tug at us and demand our attention. The reality of life is that we are all running around from one place to another, busy with the different areas that God has called us to be faithful in. Yet in the midst of all of this, the invitation that God gives us is that He’s waiting to be gracious to us and exalting Himself to show mercy. I want to call each one of us back to a place where this rest becomes a reality for us; where, even in the midst of business, we’re able to have the peace that Christ said He would give us in John 14:27 with, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” May that peace and rest be a reality in our lives because without it, this Christian life becomes the Christian burden.

A Greater Faith Than Thomas

Paul says it another way in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19 when he writes, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” If the message behind Easter is lost on us today or the rest of the year, Paul makes it clear that we are the most pathetic people worthy of people’s pity.

And if you think about it, that makes sense. If Jesus Christ has not been raised from the dead, then what in the world are we doing here? Why am I at church all day every Sunday when I could sleep in? Instead of hanging out with 7^th to 12^th graders on Friday nights, Korean youth pastors all over this country could be going out and having fun rather than pulling their hair out trying to connect with students who clearly think they are the most uncool people in the world. (Don’t get me started on all the things I would do instead of coming to church if Jesus didn’t raise from the dead.)

But because He lives, everything here has meaning! Because He lives my weekends are not wasted preparing sermons and praying for people. It is because He lives that you and I can experience the joy of new life today. All our mistakes in the past and our triumphs can be redeemed because the message of redemption in the Bible is a true message contingent upon the reality of Christ’s resurrection.

However, I understand how easy it can be for us to doubt this reality. In fact, doubting Christ’s resurrection is not new to our time. People have doubted the reality of Christ’s resurrection since the time it occurred – people who should have known better than to doubt it. In today’s passage, we see a famous instance where Jesus confronts one of the doubters of His resurrection: His own disciple Thomas.

Before we get into today’s passage, let me just give a brief introduction to who Thomas was. Thomas was one of the twelve disciples who also went by the name Didymus. A lot of times, Thomas is looked down upon because of our passage today, as it is the most well known, but Thomas also shows incredible bravery and devotion to the Lord at times.

In John 11, there is an instance where Jesus wants to go back to Bethany to heal His friend, Lazarus. This is a dangerous trip for Jesus because the Jews of Judea, where Bethany is located, want to kill Jesus. Verse 8 tells us that, “The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you and are you going there again?’” When all the disciples advise Jesus to lay low for a bit, Thomas is the only one to speak up. In verse 16, the word of God tells us, “Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’”

Later on in Thomas’ life, he was the only disciple to take the Gospel beyond the reaches of the Roman Empire, preaching as far as India. Eventually he would be martyred for the faith, having spears driven into both his arms and legs for preaching Christ. So for anyone to say that Thomas was merely a doubter whose only lesson is to teach us to have more faith than he did, is simply wrong and doesn’t understand who Thomas really was. That being said, let’s jump right into the passage for today.

The passage begins by telling us in verse 24 that “Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.’”

Now again, before we quickly judge Thomas’ lack of faith, think about what Thomas has just gone through as a follower of Christ. This is a man who left everything for three years and followed Jesus around the Holy Lands, watching Him heal the sick, raise the dead, and preach messages of hope and salvation. Thomas is a man that, as we talked about above, was incredibly devoted to Jesus and was willing to die for the cause.

So imagine the shock he must have gone through when it seemed as if Jesus’ promises of an eternal kingdom were not being fulfilled. He probably felt betrayed by Jesus, or maybe he even felt foolish for believing that Jesus could be the Messiah. On top of that, our passage finds Thomas a mere three days after Jesus’ death. There is a good chance that he was still recovering from the fact that Jesus died. Have you ever received horrible news? Did you accept it quickly, or did it take you a few days for you to process things?

When I look at Thomas’s reaction to the news of Jesus’ resurrection, it encourages me as a believer living in the 21^st century because Thomas was a man who saw Jesus face to face, lived with Him for three years, and was willing to even die for Christ – and still doubted. And if Thomas, this disciple of Christ, could doubt the resurrection and turn out to be a man who took the Gospel to places that it had never been before, then it gives me hope when I encounter my own doubts about the reality of Christ and His resurrection.

I think that if we were all honest here today, we would all acknowledge the fact that we’ve doubted whether or not the message of Christ’s resurrection is a reality or not. In fact, the core of many of our issues is simply because we don’t really believe in the fact that Jesus Christ lived two thousand years ago, died, and then rose from the dead. It’s pretty much accepted universally that Jesus lived and died, and maybe we can acknowledge that, but it’s the part about Him rising from the dead that we don’t really believe. I know this is true for all of us at time because, let’s be real, if we actually believed that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead and was who He said He was, then you and I would live very differently than the way that we do at times.

I’m not going to stand up here from the pulpit and say that doubt is always wrong or that it is always bad. Doubt can be wrong and can be bad when it consumes us and causes us to rebel against God. At the same time, doubt can be very healthy for our walk with God because it causes us to question why we believe what we believe. In fact, I would say that if I have not had a moment of doubt during our spiritual journey, it probably means that my walk with Christ doesn’t mean enough to me for me to think critically about it.

Thomas doubted Christ’s resurrection and he was with Jesus during Jesus’ public ministry. Think of how much easier it is for us to doubt who have not seen Jesus face-to-face, but rely on church traditions handed down for the last two thousand years and our personal experiences with God. I know how easy it is to doubt those things because I’ve doubted them many times myself. How in the world does God expect a person to believe in Him almost two thousand years later without actually seeing Jesus Christ like the people in the first century did? We’ll talk about that in a bit.

Thomas is almost scientific in his demand for an explanation. He says in verse 25, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” There’s that old saying that goes, “Seeing is believing,” but Thomas takes it one step further and says that not only does he need to see, he needs to feel the wounds of Jesus Christ in order to believe.

This, to me, is the nature of doubt that is unhealthy. It’s a doubt that finds any excuse to disbelieve. For those of us who doubt the reality of Christ’s resurrection, let me ask this question. What would it take for us to believe that Jesus Christ lives and that He sits at the right hand of God? What would it take for us to believe that the way we live today actually makes a difference in eternity?

I’ve often asked myself these sorts of questions when I doubted because I wanted to test my doubt and keep myself honest about it. Sometimes we want a miraculous sign that would just show that God really exists. I get so frustrated with people I talk with who say that they’re not sure if they believe God exists – that if only God would give a sign, then they would truly believe. We say that if God would just do something so obvious for us, then we would have no choice but to believe. If only we could walk outside someday, look up into the skies and see the smiling face of Jesus looking down on us while the clouds spelled, “Jonny, this is God. And not only a general idea of God, this is the Christian God and the Presbyterian denomination is the perfect denomination of all the ones I have chosen. I am indeed a Calvinist and you’re doing the right thing by studying at Fuller while pasturing at Nachimban Church.” If only that would happen, then surely I would believe!

The reality is, brothers and sisters, even if that were to happen, we would not believe. For those who are chronic doubters, there are always explanations to things that don’t involve God. The answer to the questions I asked about what it would take have nothing to do with the external circumstances, but have everything to do with what’s going on inside of us.

Jesus tells it a different way in Luke 16:19-31. He tells a parable of a rich man and Lazarus. The basic idea of the parable is that there is a rich man who enjoys life and does whatever he wants, while a poor beggar named Lazarus has a terrible life. After they die, Lazarus is in paradise with Abraham, while the rich man is in eternal torment. In verse 27, the rich man cries out to Abraham:

“I beg you, father, to send [Lazarus] to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” But Abraham said, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.” And he said, “No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

Jesus makes the point that no matter what someone sees, unless they deal with the issue of belief or disbelief in the heart, they will simply not believe.

This is demonstrated in the following verses of our passage for today. Verses 26 and 27 read, “Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although 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, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.’”

Let me make a few points about these two verses. The first is that Jesus already knows Thomas’ doubt. After Jesus appears in a locked room, He intentionally approaches Thomas to have Thomas check the wounds He had from the crucifixion. You see, Jesus already knows the doubts that we have about Him and His resurrection. He knows that His followers will have doubts – even those closest to Him.

Yet in the midst of these doubts, the second point I want to make is that Jesus meets us where we’re at before getting to the punchline of this whole discourse. Jesus does not overlook Thomas’s real doubts or rebuke Thomas for his lack of faith. Rather, He does what He always does with people He loves: meets them in the midst of their needs and their doubts.

Jesus did not need to single Thomas out during this incident. He could have just appeared and I’m sure that Thomas would have believed. Remember that verse 26 tells us that Jesus came into the room even though the doors were locked. But the fact that Jesus singles out Thomas is not because He wants to rebuke Thomas for His lack of faith – it’s because He wants to acknowledge Thomas’s real doubts and meet him in the midst of that.

This should encourage us to reevaluate what we think about doubt. Jesus did not wait for Thomas to believe before meeting him. Thomas still doubted in the beginning verse 26. Jesus does not wait for us to have perfect faith when He meets us. I don’t think any of us can have perfect faith because we are so weak. But what Jesus does is meet a person in the midst of their doubt to dispel their doubt. This is why I don’t believe that all doubt is wrong. It’s because even in the midst of it, Jesus can meet us.

That being said, Jesus cuts to the issue with Thomas and for those of us who don’t believe with this simple statement: “Do not disbelieve, but believe.”

It is so simple yet so difficult, isn’t it? “Do not disbelieve, but believe.” You and I will encounter doubt many times in our walks with Christ. Maybe some of us today even doubt the message of Easter that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And we could meet one on one and I think I could do a decent job of explaining why Christianity is the best religion of the many in the world, why it makes the most sense, and what makes it different from all the other religions, but at the end of the day, it boils down to this one issue: “Do not disbelieve, but believe.”

When I was a freshman in college, I had a crisis of faith where I almost walked away from the church completely. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Hold on, there are people who are much more intelligent than I am who believe in different gods than I do. On top of that, they are much more devoted to their gods and they are better people than I am. Why am I right and they wrong?’ It was a very post-modern crisis of faith that shook me to the core.

For the next two months, I started a downward spiral where I was unable to worship at church or at prayer meetings. I began to get cynical and look at people who were genuinely worshiping as stupid because I thought they were blindly following the faith they grew up with, while simultaneously hating the fact that I couldn’t feel God’s presence when I was in those situations. I began to test God because I felt like the people around me were just evoking some emotional response to music and in my pride, I said, “God, if You’re real, prove it. I’m just going to sit back and You show me that you really exist.”

I was genuinely ready to leave the church because I felt like I had been lied to my whole life and that I was just going through the motions of a faith that I had inherited from my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. I began to ask questions like, ‘What about the dinosaurs? Why doesn’t the Bible say anything about them if there is so much evidence that shows they existed hundreds of millions of years ago? What about the fossilized skeletons of different primates that seem to show progressive evolution?’

Yet through some counsel from my old EM pastor, God began to speak to me, and the message that He spoke was simply, “Do not disbelieve, but believe.” He spoke to me and said that even my faith was a gift from God and that at the end of the day, the issue was not whether or not He proved Himself to me. The issue was whether or not I would believe with what I had even if He did.

The reason why doubt is not bad is because when we come out the other end of seasons of doubt, the response that many of us who are believers will have is exactly the response of Thomas in verse 28. “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” Doubt strengthens our faith because if we are able to overcome our doubts, we come out confessing as Thomas confessed that Jesus Christ is indeed our Lord and our God!

A little while back in the message, I posed the question, “How in the world does God expect a person to believe in Him almost two thousand years later without actually seeing Jesus Christ like the people in the first century did?” Let me close today’s message by talking about that for a bit.

In verse 29, Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”

The Christian message is contingent upon the belief that a man named Jesus lived two thousand years ago, that He died around the age of thirty-three after about three years of ministry, that three days later, He rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven, and as a cherry on top of all of this, that He was indeed the Son of God like He claimed. When it comes to the first two points, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Jesus did exist and that He was indeed crucified at the hands of Roman soldiers. No serious scholar denies the existence of Jesus – it’s pretty well documented.

And even the fact that Jesus was a miracle worker is well-documented by the contemporary historians of His time. Josephus, a secular historian that lived around the time of Jesus calls Jesus a wonder-worker, a man who performs healings and miracles, without believing the fact that Jesus was the Savior. The Babylonian Talmud says that Jesus was hanged because He practiced sorcery, and Celsus, another historian, says that Jesus learned magic in Egypt and called Himself God as a result of it. The fact that Jesus existed and that He did miraculous things is actually a pretty well documented phenomena in all the ancient texts we have – both Christian and non.

What we doubt today, however, is whether Jesus actually rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is actually the Son of God. To this, there is no “proof” other than what the word of God says because there is simply no explanation for it that would conform to the category of what proof is.

What I will say is that Jesus makes it very clear for those of us who take the leap of faith to believe. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Think of the potential our faith can have today if we believe without seeing.

At the beginning of the message, I talked about how Thomas had the faith to go beyond the reaches of the Roman Empire and preach to China and India and eventually get martyred for the Lord. Many times we think that if only we saw Jesus as Thomas and the other disciples did, then we also could go to the ends of the earth like they did, but I actually think the exact opposite is true.

If I can believe that Jesus Christ lived 2000 years ago, that He ministered for about three years before being crucified, that He rose from the dead after three days, ascended into heaven, and truly is the Son of God – without actually seeing Him, then the potential for greatness is unimaginable. Think about that for a second. It takes greater faith for us as believers to live for Christ and do His work in the 21^st century than for those who saw Jesus with their own eyes because we’re basically taking an eternal risk that He is what the word of God says He is. And when I think about that, rather than feeling a sense of doubt, I feel an incredible sense of privilege and joy, knowing that Christ Himself said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”

You and I, if we really believe the Easter message that Christ has risen, are either the biggest idiots in the world, worthy of pity and contempt because of our foolishness, or are the most blessed because even 2000 years after the fact, we hold fast to faith in Christ – Hallelujah!

So the question I want to leave us with today is not whether or not we doubt – for surely we all have our doubts and will continue to doubt. The question I want to ask is whether or not 2000 years later, we will take the risk to believe in the risen Christ who now sits at the right hand of God, the Father. Will we believe that Jesus is alive without actually having seen Him rise and live again? Will we have the faith that endures through our doubts and trusts that He is risen indeed? Because if that’s the kind of faith that you and I can somehow have, then Jesus tells us that we are blessed.

Let’s pray.