Our Reasonable Faith

The life was made manifest, and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. And our second reading today is John 20:1-31.

Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him. So Peter went out with the other disciple and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth which had been on Jesus's head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.

Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not understand the scripture that He must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you seeking? Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him and I will take Him away. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to Him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. Jesus said to her, Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and that He had said these things to her. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, peace be with you. When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. Now 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. 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. Thomas answered Him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.

Our text for this morning is the last part of the passage we've read where it deals with Thomas and his doubts. I won't read it again since we've just finished. But I want to point out that it's very typical of those who attack Christianity that they chant that it's just something based on fantasy, on a myth, something we want to believe based on some tales from the past. Religion, these people say, belongs to former generations, but not this day. Today, we live in a scientific age, not like our forefathers, and so we should put all these superstitions aside.

And people who talk this way typically speak of Christianity as a faith and then contrast this to science, which they say is built on reason. And so those who follow Christ are said to rely on blind faith. Now I want to urge you to reject any such characterisation because nothing is further from the truth. The Christian faith is based on empirical truth, on facts that are verifiable. They're based on a solid historical foundation.

And we see that of all of God's acts. If we'd had time, we would have also read a bit of the book of Exodus where time and time again, we see Moses telling the Israelites, now look at what God did for you. He parted the Red Sea after He freed you from Pharaoh through ten plagues. You know that this is real, and remember it in your festivals and tell it to your children so they will know these are facts. And by the way, if you think the story about the exodus is a fairy tale, can I urge you to go to YouTube and see a movie called Patterns of Evidence, which shows all the historical, all the archaeological proof that is there for the reality of this event?

We now know that near Ramses, there was a town called Avaris. It's now under a tell, you know, one of those mounds, archaeological mounds, but they've dug it up. And it's very clearly not an Egyptian town, but a Hebrew town. And it's very clear that the people who lived there began prosperous, then got into trouble as slaves, and then all disappeared. So all these things are verifiable today.

Now one of the clearest New Testament passages to illustrate how faith is rational, I think, is the conversion of Thomas. Thomas, his skepticism was a healthy thing. And I want to point out that he was no different from the other disciples. They were all unwilling to believe even when the women came and said the tomb is empty. We've seen the risen Lord.

They weren't gonna take their word for it, and I don't think that's because they were women, because Thomas heard it from the men, and he didn't believe them either. I think they just did not think this was a possibility, seemed too far away from reality as they knew it. And in order to see whether it was true, they went out to investigate for themselves. And John, the author of our passage, stated very clearly that the only reason he believed is because he saw the tomb was empty, and he saw the cloths, the burial cloths folded up, and the body had gone. He saw the empty grave.

Look at verse eight there. Now Thomas was absent on this day when Jesus arose, and when Jesus met with the other disciples in a closed room that night. But Thomas was not prepared to believe their testimony. He wanted empirical evidence. He said, unless I can see with my eyes the scars and put my finger in the nail scars and put my fist in the hole in His side, which, yeah, they all knew about when they buried Him and when they saw Him crucified.

Unless I see that, I will not believe. Now I want to point out, by the way, that this rules out any idea that maybe on the cross Jesus just fainted, and He came through in the grave. Alright? The disciples had seen He was dead. No doubt about it.

And that's why they were utterly unprepared with the idea that He'd come back to life again. There's no room here for the so called swoon theory. Now I want to point out that there is nothing wrong with Christians looking for evidence. We want to know whether the things we experience are true, and that's part of our human nature. Christianity does not require us to be irrational.

We can be perfectly rational as Christians because God gave us reason in order that we could do the task that He gave us. And the threefold task, of course, was to worship God, to have fellowship with each other, and to have stewardship over the world. And in order for them to be able to do that, He gave them a brain which made them rational and so they could discern between truth and untruth. Now this became very important because since the fall, we see that untruth came into the world in the person of Satan. Satan is called the father of liars because his main aim is to deceive people so they will not worship God but turn to him.

Now we've always had a need to discern between truth and error, between right and wrong, between good and evil because of this reality that evil Satan came into this world. And that's why we need God to guide us in His words, because in His words, we have perfect revelation. We talk about the world itself as being God's revelation, and we call it general revelation, but this is where Satan operates. In God's word, we have perfect revelation. Every word in scripture is from God, and there's no untruth there.

And that's why we are directed to scripture for answers. That doesn't mean that we suspend our rationality when we read the Bible. On the contrary, we use our reason because we are taught in John 5:39 to search the scripture. The word for search there is actually a word that means study diligently. We have to search the scriptures, first of all, to find salvation, but also to make us wise as we read in 2 Timothy 3:16.

The Bereans were commended because they searched the scriptures to see whether what Paul was telling them about Christ coming into the world and dying and rising again, whether this was true, and they discovered it was. Now even as we search the scripture, we also have to search God's general revelation. We have to study all the sciences. We have to study history. All the things that we can learn at universities are important because here, God also communicates to us. There's a whole section of scripture known as wisdom literature, and that includes the Ecclesiastes of Solomon and Proverbs and so on.

And in Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes, I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. Now that's important that we as Christians take an interest in what's happening under heaven, what's happening in the world that God has created. And here, I want you to remember that Christians developed science and modern learning. The first scientists, people like Newton, Boyle, Pascal, they were all firm Christians. In fact, if you can get their original books, not our today's version, which is much shortened because in today's version, they've taken out all the theological material.

That's especially true for Newton. Newton wrote more on theology than he did on physics, but who knows Newton as a theologian? No one. Who knows him as a physicist? Everyone.

And these men believed that God revealed Himself through laws. That's how God deals with things. And so they went to nature to discover what laws were placed there by God in order to make this world run the way it runs, and that gave them then understanding that today we call the sciences. Now I want to point out that the Bible is filled with words like search, examine, study, listen, understand. And in the same way when authors like Paul write, they talk about the need to argue, to reason, to persuade, to convince.

Read the book of Acts. It's filled with these words because we're dealing with a rational issue when we deal with Christianity, and therefore, any idea that we are dealing with a blind faith is utterly false. Now it would be wrong though to say that rationality can do without faith, though many people claim so. Maybe some of you have seen debates between Christians and non Christians, people like John Lennox debating with some of the atheists. And one time, John Lennox said, well, you say you're totally rational.

You don't want to believe in anything on faith. You believe everything your brain tells you? Yes. Well, don't you say that your brain is the product of an evolution from pond scum and you believe it? Well, I think he made the point.

To be an unbeliever is an irrational position. You need to have a faith. You have to have a faith in the science. You have to have a faith in your senses. You have to have faith in your brain.

Otherwise, you can't do science. Science would be impossible without faith. Faith is also relational. Most of the knowledge you possess is not something you personally experience, is it? Most of the knowledge you possess, you have because other people taught you so, beginning with your parents.

Right? Now sometimes we want to test things out for ourselves. I think a lot of young children, when the parents tell them, don't touch that. It's hot. It'll hurt you.

What do they do? They go out when nobody's looking and touch for themselves to find out, and they soon realise, yes, I can trust mum and dad. Next time when they say, don't run on the road because you could get run over, I'll trust them now. And, well, many things we learn at schools, at university, of course, we have no personal experience of, but we accept it because we trust the sources. Now it's important that we make sure we can trust the sources.

I think most of us would trust our parents, although perhaps not when they talk about modern things because they're a bit behind the times. Most of us might have trusted our teachers, especially if you went to a Christian school. You trust your textbooks, the literature. Perhaps you even put some trust in Google and Wikipedia. But it's important for you to find out where your sources put their trust.

And if your source denies God, then treat it very carefully because they're not gonna give you good information. They may well lead you astray. It's important that we know our sources. And sometimes, we realise that when our sources make claims, it is not based on rationality at all, but on their own prejudices, on their own worldview, which may leave God completely out of the picture. Now coming back to Thomas, I'm sure that Thomas had a high respect for his fellow disciples, and normally, would have believed them if they said, there's lunch here for you, Thomas.

He would have come to get something to eat and so on. But in this case, hold on a minute. I saw Jesus dead. I saw His totally ruined body. Not even the best surgeon could put anything like that back together again.

And I want to point out that Thomas was a healthy doubter. It was good that he doubted because people do not rise from the dead normally. And I want to point out that there's nothing wrong with being a healthy doubter. In fact, don't believe everything you are taught. Now we hear some wonderful things sometimes.

You only need to go on the network. And now with AI, we see all kinds of pictures generated of spacemen sitting on the comet that's coming to Earth. Have you seen that one? And all kinds of silly things like that. And, of course, we should say that's nonsense.

That's simply not true because there are so many false claims. And it's good for us to have this healthy skepticism, but we must not let misplace our faith. Our faith will guide us where senses can only go so far. And I want to point out that everybody has a worldview that is based on faith. That's how you get it.

You get it from your parents. You get it from your peers, from society. You just accept it, and it's not based on any evidence, but just you trust those who teach you on that. And I've met people with different worldviews. In Africa, we lived among some people who still lived very traditional lifestyle, and they had all kinds of stories.

Oh, you see this man who's limping? And that's because last night, the hunter there went and shot a crocodile, and he got him in the foot. And this man changes into a crocodile at night, and here's the proof. Look at how he limps. He was shot in the foot.

And all kinds of weird stories like that. They believed in people turning into animals at night and then being humans during daytime again. Now I, of course, dismissed most of that because there was absolutely no proof for that, and we know that Satan leads people astray. Unless I'd seen it with my own eyes, yeah, I'm skeptical. I don't accept it.

And we've got to respect that there may at times be issues on which we have to say, I don't know whether it's true or not, where we have to suspend our answer. We have to suspend our conclusion. I don't know if any of you have seen the Shroud of Turin, and I think it's a wonderful thing. People claim it was that cloth that covered Jesus when He died and that His imprint is on it. And I've got to admit, there's an enormous lot of evidence that seems to point that way.

But in the end, since scripture does not speak on it, I will say, I don't know. I'll leave that. God requires that I know that. He will let me know. And a Christian worldview recognises that God is in charge, and He will make known to us what we need to know.

There's some things we will not know because we do not need to know. And it's in this sense, I believe, that we must understand these words of Jesus here when He says, blessed are those who've not seen and yet have believed. This is not talking about a blind faith, but this is a faith that says, God, I know you are in charge. And if you say you did it, then you did it. And so we trust in the resurrection not because we are eyewitnesses to it, not because we could put our fingers in the scars or our fist in His side.

We believe because God tells us in His word, this is what I did. And then He gives us all these testimonies that we have there in the scriptures, in the gospels. And amazingly, there's an enormous lot of testimony that has come through history that you can find online about historians from early centuries giving evidence supporting that this is indeed what happened. This is not a blind faith. This is a faith that trusts in God.

And so when it's said, blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed, we are blessed because we trust God. Now I want you to notice lastly how Thomas responds when he sees Jesus. He doesn't say, oh, now I believe you are resurrected. No. What does he say?

He says, my Lord and my God. You see, he suddenly understood at last what was really the issue here. The issue was not, first of all, was Jesus resurrected. The main issue is why is it that a man who was dead came back to life again? Why is it that the person who had spoken about giving the sign of Jonah and how He would die and rise again, how indeed this happened?

It happened because Jesus is in control of history. And so Thomas at last realises that is the issue. Jesus is his Lord and his God. And when you get that bit right, then everything else falls in place. Okay?

If you haven't got that, you're never gonna get the right answers. But once you recognise that Jesus is your Lord and your God, then you will find truth in Him because He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is God. He's Lord of the universe, and all authority has been given to Him. He has absolute power over laws of nature.

He can suspend them to do miracles. He has absolute power over all human forces and dealings. He has absolute power over the spiritual realities. He has power over life, and He demonstrated that in the resurrection that He could put down His life and take it up again. But He also should have power over your lives. And that is the whole point of John's gospel.

He says there, it is written so that we may believe and have life in Christ. That's why he wrote that book, not because, oh, got some interesting tidbits of information that'll tickle your ears. No. He wrote this so that you might believe and you might have life in Christ. You see, faith is not an end in itself.

Faith must lead to worship and fellowship and stewardship as we saw. Faith must lead to the life that God intended for us. And John makes the point he could have told umpteen stories about the life of Christ. In fact, in the next chapter, he says, if I'd put them all down, well, there wouldn't have been enough books to fill them all. And why did he write them down?

Because he and the Holy Spirit who led him judged that these were the most helpful for a healthy faith based on fact. And we are reminded of this throughout the gospels and throughout the Old Testament. I mentioned already how Moses time and time would point to the Israelites, look at what God did for you. Look and believe. And so we too are to look at what God does and take it in faith.

In John 10:38, Jesus states that His works testify to His identity. They will help people know who He is. And in chapter 11, we have, of course, the death of Lazarus. And then Jesus says something that sounds absurd. They come and tell Him, oh, Lazarus died.

And Jesus says, oh, Lazarus is dead, and I'm glad. Hey. Lazarus is dead, and I'm glad? Yes, He says, because now I have the opportunity to show you how I have the power to bring him back to life and so bring people to faith. In chapter 13, Jesus predicts that Judas will betray Him so that His disciples may not lose faith when the thing happens, but be strengthened in their faith.

In chapter 14, He foretells His ascent into heaven. In chapter 17, He prays that His disciples may be sanctified in truth and belief. In chapter 19, John testifies to seeing Christ die so that his readers might believe when he testifies to the resurrection. And I asked our reader to also read the opening to John's epistle. Did you notice how John said, I'm telling you about what I heard, about what I have seen, about what I have examined, about what I have touched.

He's talking about empirical realities, not some pie in the sky when we die. No. He's dealing with facts. And throughout the Bible, we are reminded through what God did that He is there and that He loves us and cares for us. The faith that we have is not a blind faith.

The faith that we have is a faith that is solidly built on reality, and everything points to it when you study and examine it. There's nothing irrational about faith in Christ because our faith is an empirical faith, a faith that this is a world that God made and designed and governs by His word. Our faith is a historical faith in His Son who came to Earth and died and rose again. Our faith is a trusting faith that we can rely on God, that He does everything for the good of those who love Him, and that He will lead us to eternal life. Now such a faith is a rational faith.

There's nothing blind about it. It is a faith in the true light which enlightens everyone. It's a faith in reason. Say reason? Go to John 1:1.

In the beginning was the word. What is the word "word" in Greek? In the beginning was the logos. Logos is from where we get our logic. And John wrote that because the Greeks in those days believed that all of reality was governed by logical means, by reason, and they refer to this as the logos.

And John is saying, you're right. This world is governed by logos, and this logos is Christ. So John clearly teaches us that our faith in Christ who came and died for us and who led us to a new life so that we may call Him our Lord and Saviour. This faith is a totally reasonable faith based on fact. Amen.

Let us pray. Our Lord God, our Father, we thank you for all the testimony we have in your word, all the testimony we have in your creation, pointing to the reality of what you teach us about our situation as sinners, about how Christ came to save us, how He died for us and rose again so that one day we too, when we die, may rise again to a new life in Him. Father, we thank you that already we can enjoy many of these realities as we live in Christ. Help us to identify with Him more and more as we put behind us the lies and untruths and misconceptions that Satan seeks to engineer. Father, we pray that we may be solidly based on truth by a faith based on rationality, a faith based on your promise in your word.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.