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WOUNDED HANDS
Hands of Jesus, Part 9
March 23, 2008 – Easter Sunday
Pastor Bob Sanders
This morning we’re going to look once more at the hands of Jesus. For the past few weeks we’ve been studying those hands and what they tell us about our Lord’s character – how they were healing hands, blessing hands, serving hands and even bleeding hands, as we saw Friday night. Today we finish this series by looking at his wounded hands.
Our Scripture reading is from John 20, and it’s found on the cover of your bulletin. Earlier in this chapter, John tells us how the risen Jesus appeared first to a weeping Mary Magdalene outside the tomb. Then later that same day he appeared to his frightened disciples in a locked room. Then comes our passage, which takes place one week later.
John 20:24-29
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
Thomas the Doubter
Doubting Thomas. That’s what everybody calls him. It’s not exactly fair because, for one thing, Thomas wasn’t the only one with doubts about our Lord’s resurrection. Read any of the Gospel accounts of the first Easter and you’ll see the initial response everywhere was unbelief. Mary Magdalene, Peter and John and the others, none of them believed at first. It wasn’t until Jesus actually showed up that they came around.
No, Thomas wasn’t the only doubter.
But he was at a disadvantage, because he hadn’t been there when Jesus appeared to the disciples that first Easter evening. Why wasn’t he there? We don’t know. But my hunch is that Thomas was grieving and preferred to deal with it by himself. A lot of us – especially a lot of us guys – are like that. We need some time alone to handle our sorrow. But thank goodness the other disciples didn’t leave him alone. They found him and told him how Jesus had come into that locked room and showed them the wounds in his hands and side, and how he’d commissioned them to be his apostles, his messengers, and sent them out into the world.
And the first thing they did was go find Thomas. They didn’t leave him alone in his grief. They cornered him, all ten of them, and told him, “We have seen the Lord!” For a lot of people, hearing the testimony of ten eyewitnesses would have been enough. But not for Thomas. Thomas has certain conditions that must be met before he’ll buy it. “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands,” he says, “and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Show me his wounded hands, says Thomas, and then I’ll believe.
Thomas the Believer
So don’t label him simply as “Doubting Thomas.” For one thing, as I say, he’s not the only one. For another, by the time the story ends he is an incredible believer. The risen Christ confronts him at his point of doubt and Thomas makes the greatest profession of faith anywhere in the Bible: “My Lord and my God.”
Almost all New Testament scholars agree that this is the climax of John’s Gospel. This is what John has been driving at. All through this Gospel Jesus has been trying to get people to see who he is. He’s made these amazing claims, like in John 10 when he says flatly, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Or in John 14 where he tells them, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:9). At one point in John 8 Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Not “I was” but “I am.” He’s deliberately using the divine name. When God spoke to Moses in the burning bush, he declared his name to be Yahweh, which means “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14-16). It means the uncreated, uncaused, self-existent being, the source of all that is – God! Jesus takes on the divine name, and John tells us when he said that they tried to kill him.
Who is Jesus claiming to be? Not just a good religious teacher. Not just a shining example of love and peace. He claims to be none other than God-in-the-flesh. He’s saying, “Crown me or kill me. Receive me as the all-powerful Creator God, or reject me out as a deluded liar. But I’m nothing in-between. Look at my claims! I can’t be just a nice guy or a wonderful teacher or a good example because I’m claiming to be God. So you either have to receive me as the supreme authority in your life or else you have to throw me out.”
And throughout the Gospel he’s pushing this. And finally here at the end Thomas comes out and says to Jesus: “My Lord and my God.” That’s what it means to be a Christian, you know. You’re not really a Christian until you can say it. On the one hand it’s a propositional statement: Jesus is Lord of the universe and God himself. In other words, there’s intellectual content to the faith. It’s not vague. It’s not a feeling. Thomas sees it and believes it. On the other hand, it’s personal. He doesn’t just say, “Lord and God.” He says, “My Lord and my God.” He rests his life on it. And until you see him as that – not just a nice person who helps you over the hard times in your life, not just someone you think about on Easter and Christmas, not just someone you pray to when you’re in trouble, but your true Lord, the one who’s at the center of your life, the one you bow down to in surrender and worship – until you see that and say that, you’re not yet a Christian.
“My Lord and my God.” Thomas speaks for us all.
Steps Toward Faith
Now, here’s the question: How do you get there? One of the reasons I love this passage is because it gives us some very practical ways to become the incredible believer we see in Thomas. Some of you are wondering if you really are a Christian. Maybe you know you’re not a Christian, or you’re not sure. Well, keep your eye on Thomas. There are some helpful steps here, as I’ll show in a minute. Some of us who claim to be Christians need Thomas too. Some of us are anxious and upset today because of a health problem. Some of us have been worried sick all week over money or a job crisis. Some of us have been bitter and angry because someone let us down, someone hurt us. And why is that? The reason we’re so anxious or so angry is because we don’t really believe that Jesus is who he said he is: our Lord and God, the One who defeated death and is more powerful than any problem we’ll ever face.
How are we going to come to faith in Christ? Or how are we going to strengthen our faith in Christ? The same way Thomas did. Look at the details, the little factors in this story. I’m going to give you just four. Very fast: four practical ways to find faith or encourage your faith.
Number one, listen to the apostles.
Verse 25 says, “So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’” In Greek it means they kept on telling him. Over and over they tried to tell him, and Jesus rebukes Thomas for not listening to them. “Stop doubting and believe.” Stop doubting what? Stop doubting what these apostles have been trying to tell you. Listen to them.
If you want to find Jesus, if you want him to be real to you, whether you’re a Christian or not, it’s great to go to church and listen to a sermon (I’m glad you’re here, and I hope you’ll come back). It’s great to talk with other Christians and learn from them. It’s great to read Christian books and go to classes. But the number one most important thing is go and actually read the accounts by the apostles. Open this book and read the Gospels. Get to know Jesus. Watch him talking to people, touching people, helping people. If you haven’t been doing that lately, no wonder he’s just an abstraction to you. The first thing you have to do is listen to the apostles. Read the Gospels. They can stand on their own. No matter what your doubts about Christianity, if you read them with an open mind Jesus will become real to you.
Listen to the apostles. That’s number one. Number two, see how patient he’s been with you.
Look at verse 27. It’s right at this point where all of Thomas’ fears get blown away. What does Jesus say? He says, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas is thinking, “How did Jesus know I said that?” How did Jesus know? Did he show up the previous Wednesday and the disciples told him, “You know what Thomas is saying about you?” And Jesus said, “Oh really…”
No. Thomas realizes that Jesus has been listening. Thomas realizes that Jesus has been there all along. Jesus has seen all his doubts and fears. This is so important. Some of you think, “If God really knew me, if God saw me the way I really am, he wouldn’t want me, he wouldn’t love me.” And you think you can hide from God. Well, I’ve got some bad news and some good news for you. The bad news is that he does know you. You can’t hide from him. He knows everything about you – all the failures, all the broken promises, all the stupid things you’ve said and done. He already knows them.
That’s the bad news. Now here’s the good news: he still loves you. He knows it all, and he has never stopped loving you. He never will. That’s what this story tells us. You’ve got to see yourself like Thomas. Jesus knows everything you’ve said or done. But he’s never given up on you. He’s been patiently and intelligently loving you. That’s what blows Thomas’ fears away.
So if the first thing is listen to the apostles and the second thing is see his patience, the third thing is look at his wounds.
The thing that really melted Thomas was when Jesus said, “Put your finger here: see my wounds…” And this is the only thing that will really get to us, really melt our hearts, really transform us – we have to look at his wounds. We have to see those hands, those nail-pierced hands.
Friday night I mentioned Dr. Paul Brand. He was an amazing Christian physician who spent much of his life working with leprosy patients in India. The lepers he treated were people who had been ostracized and quarantined away from family and friends. One night he was speaking to a group of patients in the courtyard of the hospital, and he started talking to them about Jesus’ hands and how as a hand surgeon he always wished he could have studied those hands.
He talked about the kinds of things Jesus did with his hands – the things we’ve been talking about these past weeks – healing and blessing and serving. And as he talked, Dr. Brand noticed the deformed hands of those seated around him. Folks who suffer from leprosy (or Hansen’s disease, as it’s properly known) often have missing fingers, or their hands are twisted into a sort of claw position.
Then he talked about what happened at the cross, describing as only a hand surgeon could what it would do if a nail were driven into a person’s hand – how it would be left maimed and deformed. And finally Dr. Brand talked about Jesus’ resurrection hands, using this same story of Thomas. He asked, “Why did Jesus still have the wounds after his resurrection?” Answer: because the risen Jesus wants us to know he is a Lord who identifies with the suffering people of the world, who endures poverty with the poor, weariness with the weary, and clawed hands with the lepers.
The crowd listened intently, and when he finished speaking, all across that courtyard dozens of people, people who’d never heard about Jesus until then, silently raised their hands – their twisted, deformed hands – in a sign of respect and gratitude.
What broke through? The sight of those wounded hands.
Look at his wounds. What do you see? A maimed God. A gored God. A God who takes on himself all the suffering and brokenness of this bleeding world. That’s what blasted through Thomas’ fears and doubts. And that’s the only thing that will blast through your fears and doubts. The reason you’re anxious today, the reason you’re angry today (whether you’re a Christian or a non-Christian) is because you don’t see those wounds. You don’t really believe he’s a God who did that for you. And what you need is for the Holy Spirit to make that so real to you that, like Thomas, you give up your fears and doubts and say, “My Lord and my God.”
As we sang in church a couple weeks ago:
Crown Him with many crowns . . . Behold, His hands and side,
Rich wounds yet visible above in beauty glorified . . .
That’s what transformed Thomas. And that’s what will transform you.
All hail, Redeemer, hail! For Thou hast died for me;
Thy praise shall never, never fail through all eternity.
Look at his wounds. And finally, drop your conditions.
Did you notice? Thomas did not touch the wounds. Jesus showed up and said, “Put your finger here, Thomas. Put your hand here. Do whatever it takes, but stop doubting and start believing.”
And Thomas didn’t do it. He saw those wounds and dropped to his knees and said, “My Lord and my God.”
Why? Because Thomas realized that he’d demanded a condition for believing. And all of us do this. Every one who seeks to believe sets conditions. We say, “I’ll come to you, Lord, if you let me get ahead in my career. I’ll come to you, Lord, if you heal me or my loved one, or if you help my kid get into college, or if you give me a good life. I’ll come to you, Lord, if…
And if you have a condition, if you say, “I’ll come to you, Lord, if x” then “x” is your real Savior, your real Lord and God, the thing you’re really after. And I can tell you this, it will never die for you. In fact, it will demand that you die for it.
Some of you are here for the first time. Some of you have been sitting in church week after week. In either case, you’re not a Christian until you drop your conditions. Not until you say, “You’re my Lord and my God. You’re my number one. I come to you not if but because. Because of who you are. Because of what you’ve done for me.”
Then you’re a Christian. Then you’re transformed.
* * * * *
Are you looking for faith this morning? Are you ready to grow your faith? Here’s what we learn from Thomas. It’s pretty good stuff:
- Listen to the apostles.
- See how patient he’s been with you.
- Look at his wounds.
- Drop your conditions.
Good news! Jesus is risen. And guess what? He’s here, and he’s looking for you. Are you ready? Let’s go to him now.
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