April 15th, 2012 - 2nd Sunday of Easter
John 20:19-31
One Week Later, in the Upper Room
I have always thought that Thomas was an interesting fellow. Because of this particular Bible story, he has been stuck with the title of “Doubting Thomas.”
It’s true that he needed convincing. He knew that Jesus was dead. From all his past experience he knew that people don’t rise from the dead, and he wasn’t about to believe just because the others said they had seen Jesus alive. It’s true that Jesus had said several times that after three days He would rise from the dead, but the Bible also says that the disciples simply didn’t understand what He meant by that.
Sometimes the experiences - and the resulting wounds - we receive in life make it difficult for us to believe. I have noticed all through the Bible that God seems to make a difference between a rebellious heart of unbelief and a sincere one that simply has trouble believing; like the man who said, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
Thomas needed convincing, but once he was convinced, he jumped in with both feet. He fell to his knees and dared to address Jesus as no one had before, so far as we know: “My Lord and my God!”
The Bible relates several occasions where someone was treated as though they were God. In the book of Acts, chapter 12, there is the story of King Herod, who on one occasion spoke eloquently to a group of political sycophants who were trying to curry his favor. Trying to flatter him, they applauded him, crying out: “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” The Bible says, “Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died.”
Later in the book of Acts the apostles Paul and Barnabas arrived to the city of Lystra. Paul healed a crippled man and the people mistook the apostles for incarnations of some of their pagan gods. They decided Paul was Hermes and Barnabas was Zeus.
They called the priest to come from the pagan temple of Zeus and they were getting ready to offer a sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, worshiping them as pagan gods. When the apostles understood what was going on, they were horrified, and ran into the crowd, shouting, “Men, why are you doing these things? We ourselves are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heavens, the earth, and everything in them!” They barely succeeded in stopping the people from worshiping them, but they refused to allow it.
In the book of Revelation, chapter 22, when an angel appeared to John and revealed the contents of the Book that he was to write, John writes about his reaction in his own words: “Now I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. Then he said to me, ‘See that you do not do that! For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!’”
There is a scary trend in our culture today, of using the terms “god” and “goddess” way too lightly. The radical feminist movement talks about “embracing the goddess within.” We deify the earth and call it Gaia, or Mother Nature, or Evolution, and attribute it with wisdom. I have heard little girls called “goddess” as a term of endearment by their parents, and I have seen cases of children with names like “Isis”. Football players are called the “gods of the gridiron.” Actors are called the “gods of the silver screen.” There’s a computer guru on talk radio on Saturday evenings. She’s pretty good, but I just can’t listen to her any more, because she has taken to calling herself “America’s digital goddess!”
God takes it very seriously when we worship someone other than Him. He Himself says, “I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, and showing mercy unto thousands, to those who love Me and keep my commandments.”
But Jesus didn’t correct Thomas, because what Thomas had said was absolutely right. Jesus is the Lord, and He is God!
We don’t know much more about Thomas. The Bible identifies him as “the twin”, so he was apparently one half of a pair of twins, but we don’t know anything about his twin brother or sister. Thomas was also the one who, when Jesus said they were going to Jerusalem and the others protested, saying that it was too dangerous, that people there were trying to kill Jesus, said, “Let’s all go, so we can die with Him!”
History apart from the Bible tells us that Thomas, like the rest of the apostles, went abroad as a missionary. While Paul went North and West, finally getting as far as the coast of Spain before being killed in Rome, Thomas went East and South, all the way to India. He planted a Christian church there that still exists, and is known today as the Indian Orthodox Church. He was finally killed by Indian religious fanatics who opposed his teaching of the Christian Gospel, in a swamp on the eastern coast of India, in the modern state of Tamil Nadu, where the city of Chennai, which used to be known as Madras, stands today.
The Christian population of India has never been very large. Even today, after centuries of modern missionary work, it’s relatively small. The CIA World Fact Book says that the Christian population of India today is only about 2.3% of the population.
I suppose that many people might conclude that Thomas was a failure. By the time of his death, he hadn’t established a large national church that we know about. He didn’t show any of the outward signs of success that the world looks for in a great missionary, at least none that we know about 2,000 years later. And he was murdered in a swamp.
Five years ago, I went to India and spent two weeks teaching in a Seminary. We landed at the airport in Chennai. While I was there, I actually visited Thomas’ grave. It had been housed for centuries in a tiny little Indian Orthodox church, until the 1500s when the Portuguese ruled this part of India. The Portuguese missionaries took custody of the remains of the Apostle Thomas and built a big, beautiful Roman Catholic church in place of the older building. I saw the iron head of the spear that killed him, which is still preserved two thousand years later, and the sarcophagus that holds his body.
Thomas served Jesus, His Lord and God, faithfully. He went where Jesus sent him, and he shared the love of God and His forgiveness through Jesus with the people that God gave him. And think about this: The population of India is over one billion people. 2.3% means that there are about 2,700,000 Christians in India today.
He was faithful to the very end, and the results of his service are millions of souls now in heaven and many more still on the ground in India.
I work at a software company in Tempe. One of our chief programmers is a friend from India, whose family are Christians today as a result of the missionary work of the Apostle Thomas! And his family is from Mombay, way over on the opposite side of India from Chennai.
Do you sometimes wonder if you are having any effect in your witness for Jesus?
Thomas’ life is a reminder that “your work in not in vain in the Lord.” You are simply called to be a faithful witness of His grace, and leave the results to Him. God will bless His Word and He will use you as His servant to accomplish His purpose. You can rest in that.