Resurrection Evidence:
Empiricism, Reason, and Revelation
John 20:26–31
Matthew Lesson #200
May 13, 2018
www.deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Our Father, we’re thankful that You’ve given us Your Word and this remarkable record in the four Gospels of our Lord’s life on this earth, His ministry, the way He came—not to be served but to serve—and to give His life a ransom for many.
“Father, we are thankful that we have an accurate record that we can come to understand; that we can study and reflect upon, and that God the Holy Spirit uses to challenge us, to mature us, to teach us about so many different vital truths in Your Word.
“That that which You have taught us may live within us, and that as a result of believing in Christ and then believing in these things that we can have a rich, full, abundant life, and life that is beyond anything that we could imagine or expect.
“Father, as we continue to study the evidences of the resurrection and the appearances of our Lord after the resurrection, we pray that You will help us to understand these things and to apply them to our thinking, our understanding of Your Word and of the gospel, and the reality of the faith we believe.
“We pray this in Christ’s name, amen.”
Slide 2
This morning we are in John 20. It seems that John in his Gospel says more about what transpired between the resurrection and the ascension than the other Gospels, and though for those who are listening to this out of order, we are studying in Matthew in the period of time from the Garden of Gethsemane until the ascension of Christ—the final commission which He gives to the disciples.
We are putting all of the Gospels together to get a full picture of that last period in the life of Christ. In John 20:24 this morning, we are looking again at resurrection evidence. I’m going to be talking about empiricism, reason, and revelation.
This is a particularly significant passage because of one thing that Jesus says to Thomas when we get down to John 20:29. But first, we have to understand some things that are going on in this particular passage.
In this passage we have seen the previous appearance of our Lord one week earlier on the day of the resurrection. He appears later that evening to His disciples, and there are only ten present; Thomas is missing. At that point I think Peter and John had already believed, but the others not so much. It’s at that time, when Jesus appears to them, that they believed in the resurrection, but one disciple was missing, and that’s Thomas.
We read in this episode that afterward, when the disciples saw Thomas, they told him that they had seen the Lord, that He was alive, and that He was resurrected, and Thomas didn’t believe them.
He said, “Unless I can put my fingers in the nail prints and I can touch the wound in His side and the wounds in His feet, I’m not going to believe.” And that raises the question of the role of evidence in faith.
In the Scriptures it is clear that the faith that we have is not a faith that is in spite of evidence or a faith that is contrary to reason or to our everyday experience. It is quite different.
But within the history of Christianity, there are those who have somehow, in some ways demeaned the role of evidence in the role of reason. This usually shows up in those who are mystical, but it shows up in some others as well.
Some of you may have been taught that you weren’t really to ask questions, that that wasn’t something that you do. You just believe; that’s all you need to do. It’s just sort of this leap of faith and you’ll hear that language. I’ve heard people who ought to know better use that language. But that’s not good language, as we do not as Christians have a leap of faith.
That terminology comes from Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher in the late 19th century, who didn’t believe there was evidence of Christianity. You had to believe it because it ought to be true, but there’s no real reason or evidence for it, so therefore, you just took this irrational leap of faith.
For many in human viewpoint circles: atheists, philosophers, their definition of faith is believing that which is irrational, believing that for which there is no evidence and that is how they approach faith.
But that is not what the Scripture teaches. Scripture teaches that biblical faith is not divorced from historical evidence or rational observation.
Three things I want to point out in this introduction.
As skeptics state that faith is to be irrational, we must understand that every system of knowledge is ultimately based on a belief system, whether it is a religion, such as Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. They would grant that religion is based on faith. But science is based on faith, and all forms of rationalism and idealism are also based on faith.
Slide 3
Here is a chart that I have used many, many years, many, many times, and you have looked at that breaks down the four basic ways in which we or philosophers think about how we know what we know.
What is the basis for our knowledge? If you say, “I know something is true,” on what basis do you claim that that is true? Do you base it on your experience? Do you base it on reason? Do you base it on just mysticism, some sort of inner intuitive insight? Or do you base it on revelation—that which ultimately comes from God?
Rationalism is the first system in the chart. In rationalism, we have certain innate ideas. Whether you’re talking about the ancient Greek philosopher Plato or you’re talking about the Enlightenment philosopher Descartes, rationalism begins in the mind.
The argument is that based on first principles that are known by the mind, we can on the basis of logic, basis of reason argue to truth. We can argue to the existence of God. We can argue to the existence of other beings.
But the problem with rationalism ultimately is it fails and falls into the trap of what is called solipsism, which is similar to the word alone, sole: that you don’t really get outside of your head to the existence of other things.
But when you remove all of the complexities and the arguments of rationalism, ultimately, there is a faith in the ability of the human mind to reach eternal truths apart from any form of revelation.
In empiricism the idea is that the mind is an empty slate, and so we don’t start with any innate ideas, but that everything that comes into the mind comes via various forms of input—sensory data: what we see, what we taste, what we smell, what we touch.
As that comes into the soul then through that experience, then we formulate our understanding of the world around us, and that is called empiricism.
It is based also on logic and reason, but ultimately, like rationalism, it too is based on faith in human ability. It’s based on the idea that I can come to an understanding, on the basis of my empiricism, my experience, I can extrapolate and come to understand eternal realities and eternal truths that are totally beyond the observational experience of any human being in time or space.
Mysticism comes into play historically as a result of the failures of both rationalism and empiricism in human history because they eventually break down. It’s recognized they just don’t get there. Since we as human beings seem to have embedded within our souls a sense of eternity that’s indicated by the writer of Ecclesiastes, Solomon, that we have eternity in our hearts.
Because of that, because of what Paul indicates in Romans 2 and Romans 1:18 and following, we know God exists because the evidence is both external and God has made it evident within us, so that every human being knows God exists. Therefore, we can’t truly live as if there is no God and there is no meaning.
If reason and empiricism can’t get us there, then we just get there through a leap of faith. That’s mysticism. That was part of the foundation of what developed into existentialism.
Mysticism too is based on faith. It is based on faith in human ability. So it’s not faith versus reason. It’s not faith versus the scientific method. It’s not faith versus experience. It is faith in the wrong thing versus faith in the right thing.
It’s faith in limited, finite, human reasoning abilities—faith in limited finite human ability to interpret experience—versus the faith in the revelation of the eternal omnipotent Creator God of the universe.
Faith is always based on the logic and reason that God put into the universe, but faith precedes the rationalism and empiricism, not the other way around. That’s the first point in the introduction.
The second point in the introduction is that in Christianity, faith therefore, is based on the right use of reason and the right use of experience.
Going back to the Garden of Eden, we see that God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and He told Adam to name all the creatures and the process of categorization and classification of naming all the animals.
That’s before Eve is created, and already Adam is beginning to note that all of the animals that came into his purview were in pairs, and there’s not a pair for him. There is not any creature comparable to him.
As God has brought him to that awareness, then God is going to create a helper that is comparable to him, and so God causes a deep sleep to fall on him, and from his side, his rib, He creates a woman.
Then God gives him some information that He couldn’t get from the experience of identifying and classifying everything. God says, “Of all the trees in the garden that’s good to eat, you can eat from everything, but you can’t eat from that one tree over there because if you do you’ll die spiritually.”
In other words, he could learn a lot from empiricism, he could learn a lot from rationalism, but he couldn’t learn how to really ultimately identify and categorize all the data correctly, until he had that one piece of information from revelation, and that is that one tree, “If you eat from it, you will die spiritually.” That was it.
So revelation is necessary. We can come up with great theories, great ideas. They may even be 98% correct, but it’s that 2% that’s wrong, that flaws the formulas. You’ve got to know something that is only available through revelation.
So to understand revelation—because revelation is verbal, revelation communicates—you have to use reason and experience in order to interpret those verbal statements.
A third thing we observe is that when it comes to Christianity, the Bible reveals to us who God is as the infinite eternal incomprehensible Creator God of the heavens and the earth and the seas and all that is in them.
It tells us that man’s problem is one of disobedience and rebellion against God, which brought spiritual death to man, brought sin and corruption into all of the universe, and left man without hope and without any way to save himself.
It also tells us the great story of God’s salvation: that God provided a Savior who could solve the sin problem, who could pay the penalty for sin, and provide a way for us to have eternal life.
That when that happened, it was preceded by promises and prophecies that could be understood, that could be clocked and measured, so that people like Hannah and Simeon in Luke 2 are waiting at the temple when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to be presented to God.
They were ready because they understood revelation, not because they had some sort of special additional insight other than they were told that God would not take them home until they saw the Messiah. But they knew the Messiah was close because they understood the Old Testament. They understood it logically, rationally, exegetically, but that reason was subordinate to faith.
When it comes to the life of Jesus—the miracles of Jesus, the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, the claims of Jesus to be God, and ultimately the claims of the resurrection—these run counter to autonomous or independent reason and experience.
We’ve never seen anybody else that was born without the normal sexual procreative forms of conception. We’ve never seen anyone raise someone from the dead. You’ve never seen anyone without benefit of the medical complex, directly heal someone with leprosy or give sight to the blind.
We’ve never seen anyone who’s been raised from the dead who was actually truly dead for three days, and then came forth from the tomb. We’ve never seen that.
When these things happen in Scripture, there’s always corroborating evidence that’s given. God doesn’t operate in a mystical vacuum. When you go back into the Old Testament, as I’ve taught many, many times, and God speaks to somebody and gives them direction, it is not without confirmatory evidence.
That’s why there are guidelines given in Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18, so that if someone comes along and claims that they are a messenger of the Lord and says, “this is what God says,” you can evaluate that message through the use of reason and comparison with other messages to see if that is a true claim or not. Scripture is very clear: we are to think.
The idea of the world out there, the skeptics out there, is that Christians put their brain into neutral on Sunday morning. The sad thing is there are a lot of examples of that—which is quite an embarrassment to the Cross and Christianity—because there are too many Christians who just put their brain into neutral. But that is not the biblical way, as we’re going to see in this particular passage.
As we looked at the evidence for the resurrection, we have seen that Jesus prophesied this many times. The fact is that if He had not risen from the dead, He would have been demonstrated to have been a false prophet. The disciples, we’re told, did not really understand what He meant. Neither did they believe it.
In fact, throughout all four accounts, as we’ve studied over the past several weeks in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we’ve discovered that the disciples did not readily accept the resurrection. They didn’t hear the tomb was empty and think, “Ah! He did it! He rose from the dead!” When they heard that the tomb was empty, they said somebody stole His body.
They didn’t believe in the resurrection. They weren’t looking for a resurrected Savior.
They stayed in Jerusalem instead of going to Galilee. If they had believed there was going to be a resurrection when Jesus said, “After I’m crucified, go to Galilee, and I’ll meet you there,” they would’ve gone to Galilee to meet Him there.
This is a great example that they lacked any faith whatsoever in the resurrection. When others came with reports that they had seen the risen Lord, they didn’t believe them either. They found it extremely difficult. Possibly all but Peter and John did not believe in a resurrection until Jesus stood in front of them in a physical resurrected body.
Let’s look at what happens in terms of what the Bible teaches about the importance of proof and evidence: two things that Luke said in Luke 1 and Acts 1.
Slide 4
In Luke 1 he starts off telling us who he’s writing the Gospel account for, and why he’s writing it. Luke 1:1–2,
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us …”
What does that tell you? That there have been others before him, and I would argue that it’s certainly Matthew and probably Mark.
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word have handed them down to us …”
What he points out there is that what he is basing his Gospel on is eyewitness accounts. He’s not basing it on oral tradition. He’s not basing it on hearsay. He is not basing it on some other form. He has talked to eyewitnesses.
Probably when Paul was in prison for two years in Caesarea by the Sea, Luke took advantage of that opportunity, and he interviewed Mary, he interviewed other family members, he interviewed early church members, he interviewed the other disciples that were still around, and other eyewitnesses of the 500 that had observed and seen and heard the resurrected Lord, and he wrote down these accounts.
He talked to those for whom miracles had been performed. He talked to those who had been part of the 5,000 and the 4,000 that Jesus had fed. He talked to those perhaps who had had demons cast out of them. He got those eyewitness reports, and he recorded them accurately.
Slide 5
Luke 1:2, “It seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.”
We learn that Theophilus is probably a believer already. He’s been taught the gospel. He’s been taught these things about Christ, but Luke is writing to fill in the blanks and give him the details.
Luke represents this as eyewitness reports. The language he uses indicates that he followed through. Actually, the literal meaning of the word is he followed through accurately or with precision. That’s the idea. He investigated everything carefully. He followed through accurately or with precision.
Then he reported it sequentially. In the introduction to Matthew, I pointed out that Luke is the only account that is chronological, based on this particular verse.
He is presenting the life of Christ to Theophilus on the basis of something that is well researched and grounded on eyewitness reports. He doesn’t expect Theophilus to believe in a vacuum, to just believe because he’s heard stories, but he’s going to give him well researched and grounded information based on multiple eyewitness reports,
Slide 6
The second passage Acts 1, as well as in Luke 1, we see that there’s no concept in these passages of some form of relativism. He doesn’t use words like “probably” or “maybe” or “it is likely that,” he presents it accurately: this is exactly what happened.
There’s no relativism here at all. It presents an absolute understanding of history. The facts have been sought out, they have been understood and evaluated, so that the person who reads this is going to understand that this is an accurate report. They are expected to engage their intellect and not just believe in a vacuum because it seems like a good story.
Acts is Luke’s second account. Acts 1:1–2, “The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen.”
Luke goes from the birth until the ascension. He’ll pick up with the ascension again with a little review in Acts 1.
Slide 7
Acts 1:3, “To these—that is to His apostles, that would be the Eleven that are left after Judas—to these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering—that is after the Cross—by many convincing proofs.”
The word here in the Greek is TEKMERION, which indicates it’s a legal term. It is to present something with certainty. It has the idea of evidence: proof, infallible evidence, undeniable evidence. He gave them empirical evidence.
He shows up and they can see the nail prints in His hands, His feet, and His side. He shows this to Thomas. Thomas looks at Him, and I don’t think Thomas actually touched Him, but Thomas looked at Him, and His presence was enough. It was self-evidential authority.
Luke summarizes this with many convincing proofs. Not just once. It didn’t just happen on the day of the resurrection. It happened again and again and again. He says He “appeared to them over a period of forty days and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God.”
For the next forty days, between the resurrection and the ascension, Jesus is showing up and He’s talking to the disciples almost every day, and teaching them all about the Church Age, and providing for them.
Slide 8
Our third passage is in 1 Corinthians 15. Two parts of 1 Corinthians 15 are important for us.
This is the Apostle Paul writing some years later to the church at Corinth, which is questioning the reality of the resurrection. Maybe He just appeared as a ghost, maybe they just thought He appeared, maybe it was a part of his imagination.
That’s what the modern skeptic wants to say, is they were so religiously minded that they just had this conjured-up vision, this was their imagination. It was like a sort of group hypnosis, and they all believed it, but that doesn’t explain any of the evidence.
1 Corinthians 15:4–8 tells of the appearances; some of these are not mentioned in the Gospels. “… and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas—that’s the Aramaic name for Peter, Cephas—then to the twelve.” Notice He calls them the Twelve even though there’s only eleven.
Slide 9
“After that He appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, and then to all the apostles …”
This is James, half-brother of the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. He appeared to him. He was not a believer until this appearance.
“… then to all of the apostles and last of all, as it were to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.”
Let me ask you a question about when he uses this word “appeared.” 1 Corinthians 15:6, “He appeared to more than 500,” 1 Corinthians 15:7, “He appeared to James,” 1 Corinthians 15:8, “He appeared to me,” let’s go back one, 1 Corinthians 15:5, “He appeared to Cephas.” He uses the same word “appear.”
How was it when He appeared to Peter? Was it a ghost? Was it imagination? Was it in Peter’s head? No. Physical bodily resurrection. How did He appear to the 500? Physical bodily resurrection. How did He appear to James? Physical bodily resurrection. It’s not something they saw in their head.
How did He appear to the apostles? We’ve just seen it. He appears in the room. They see Him. It’s a physical manifestation of His resurrection body. He offers to have them touch Him. He eats; He shows that this is physical, bodily. Then in 1 Corinthians 15:8 Paul says He appeared to him also.
What I don’t understand—and it does bother me; I am concerned about this—is why is it that so many, even evangelicals, like in this recent movie on Paul the Apostle: when it comes to Jesus appearing to Paul, they make it psychological. It’s in his head.
You don’t see that Paul sees the same thing that Peter, and the 500, and James, and the other apostles saw. He just sees something psychological in his head. The sad thing is that when you don’t have Paul seeing a physical bodily resurrected Jesus, you are in essence providing something that instead of supporting the resurrection, denies the resurrection.
This is sad; and let me put it this way, I have never seen a film representation where they did it biblically. That bothers me because this is the foundation of Paul’s whole argument here in 1 Corinthians 15: that this is not a subjective, psychological, mystical religious experience.
In fact, he bases his apostleship on this: that Jesus appeared to him the same way He did to the other apostles, and commissioned him to be an apostle in the same way He commissioned the other apostles. The foundation for Christianity is based on that which is historical and verifiable.
Now it’s true that when He appeared to Paul, those who were with him just saw a bright light. But Paul saw the physical bodily resurrected Jesus, and when Jesus talked to Paul, those who were there couldn’t discern the words that Jesus said, but they heard the sound of His voice.
They heard He was saying something, but they couldn’t hear exactly what it was He said. That doesn’t mean it’s subjective; it means it is objective because they did hear the voice, they just couldn’t discern what the voice said.
As we look at those passages, we realize that Paul is saying that the resurrection is something that was real, and something that was verifiable, and something that had historic evidence behind it. You’re not putting your brain into neutral to believe in the resurrection.
Slide 10
1 Corinthians 15:14–15, “and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain—or empty or worthless, meaningless—your faith is also in vain.”
That’s the key passage there because he’s saying if Jesus really didn’t rise from the dead, physically and bodily, then all of Christianity collapses. There is no truth, there is no eternal Jesus, there’s no victory over death. Jesus didn’t pay for sins. The whole of Christianity stands or falls with a physical bodily resurrection of Jesus.
It goes on to say that if He wasn’t raised from the dead, then “… we are ‘found to be false witnesses of God, because we witnessed against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.’ ”
Basically he’s saying that we would be false witnesses and we’d be witnessing against God if He didn’t really raise Christ.
Slide 11
1 Corinthians 15:16, “For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.”
If you just believe 100% there is no such thing, nobody can ever be raised from the dead, then there’s no resurrection of individual believers, and there’s no resurrection of Christ, and if Christ wasn’t raised, your faith is worthless.
Slide 12
Historic verifiable evidence of His resurrection is provided in the Gospels. Furthermore, in 2 Peter 1—although here, Peter is talking about what they saw on the Mount of Transfiguration, his point is the same—that we don’t put our brains in neutral. There is historic verifiable, empirical evidence of the truth of Christianity.
2 Peter 1:16, “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”
They saw His glory there on the Mount of Transfiguration, and he is fully aware of the fact that what the critics were saying then, as they say now, is this is just something somebody made up. It’s a myth. You’re just fooling everybody with your story.
But these are men who gave their life for the resurrection. John is the only one of the 11 apostles, who live to die of natural old age. All of the rest died for the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. And that just isn’t going to happen—people are not going to give their life for a lie.
2 Peter 1:17, “For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory—referring to God—‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’ ”
He’s got evidence. He heard the Father’s voice. 2 Peter 1:18, “and we ourselves heard this utterance.”
It’s empirical: we were witnesses. It is not one, there were three of us there, so it is confirmed not just by two witnesses, according to the Law, but by three witnesses.
The disciples did not expect people to believe apart from critical thinking. After all, they didn’t believe it at first, they were unbelieving; they had to be convinced through empirical evidence.
Slide 13
1 John 1:1–3 John states it this way, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard—empirical data—what we have seen with our eyes—empirical data—what we beheld and our hands—touched. So seeing, hearing, touching—concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—
“what we have seen and heard—he repeats it again in case you just missed the importance of it the first time—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.”
In other words, there is no fellowship with God, there is no eternal life, unless our report of this empirical evidence is absolutely true.
Slide 14
We have seen five in our study of the post-resurrection appearances and we’re at the sixth one.
- The appearance to Mary
- The appearance to the other women
- The appearance to the two on the road to Emmaus
- The appearance to Peter in private
- The appearance to the Ten, which we studied last time in John 20:19–25
- The appearance to the Ten plus Thomas in John 20:24–31.
We will take a look at what happens in these passages.
Slide 16
This is a week later, the next Sunday.
John 20:24–25, “Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ So he said to them …”
“You guys are fools!” Well, in essence … that’s reading between the lines here. He is not believing them. He’s been hanging with these guys for the last three years, and he doesn’t believe them at all. He is as incredulous as they were. This is not the presentation of gullible disciples who parked their brains in neutral.
“But he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into a side, I will not believe.’ ”
In other words, I’ve got to have hard evidence. I’ve got to be able to actually see and touch the nail prints and the wound in His side.
Slide 17
John 20:26 says, “And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace to you!’ ”
I pointed out last time that as in the previous episode when it says, “the door was shut,” the Greek verb there probably means it was locked. They were afraid of the Jews. They didn’t want anybody coming in, and Jesus appears through locked doors, and He’s in their presence. He says the same thing to them in Hebrew, “Shalom Aleichem!”
He goes to Thomas and He doesn’t say, “Well, look at Me.” He says, “Okay Thomas, you wanted to put your finger into the wounds on My hands and My feet and My side. Here it is. Touch Me. You can do that.” “Then He says to him, ‘Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.’ ”
The problem that we run into here in modern evangelical Christianity is there are people who say that if your faith is based on miracles, if it’s based on signs, then that may not be genuine saving faith.
John MacArthur has said that because that’s essential to being able to come up with the heretical doctrine of Lordship Salvation, because what he wants to reject is the fact that in John 2:23, Jesus did many miracles and many believed in Him, PISTEUO EIS, the language that is used all through John to indicate belief in Jesus.
John 2:24, “But Jesus didn’t trust Himself to them.”
MacArthur wants to say, “See, they believed in Jesus, but it wasn’t saving faith, because Jesus didn’t trust Himself to them. He wants to reject the idea that somebody can believe the gospel, trust in Jesus, and then go the rest of their life with no spiritual growth, and they’re not saved.
That’s not the gospel! That’s heresy! That’s Lordship Salvation. He wants to base it on that and the only way He can get around it is to minimize what happened by saying. “See, the faith of those people in John 2 isn’t real faith because it is just based on signs.”
But what we have seen all through John 20 is that the disciples see the resurrected Lord and they believe. Now we have Thomas who’s going to believe as a result.
Slide 15
At the conclusion of this section in John 20:30, “And truly Jesus did many other signs—that’s a miracle—in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.”
John is saying, “I’m telling you, there are these eight signs in the Gospel of John, and that on that basis, that evidence, you can believe and you’ll have eternal life. That’s not what the Lordship crowd says.
Slide 17
John 20:26–27, Jesus says, “… put your hand here.” There’s nothing wrong with believing without this kind of direct empirical evidence. But today we don’t have that direct empirical evidence. You can’t go and put your hands in the nail print, and the wound in Jesus’ side. You believe because of revelation.
Slide 18
Revelation is the light of God. Psalm 36:9 says, “In your light we see light.”
That’s the point in that opening chart I gave you, is that the way we understand truth is to presuppose the truth of revelation. In the light of God’s Word, then and only then can we properly interpret the data that we see in front of us.
Slide 19
We’re reminded of these signs in John. There are eight signs. Most people teach—in fact, when I first taught John, I said—there were seven signs. The big sign is the eighth sign. That’s the resurrection.
There are seven other signs:
- He turned the water into wine in John 2:1–12.
- He healed the nobleman’s son from a distance in John 4:46–54.
- He healed the cripple at Bethesda in John 5:1–15.
- He fed the 5,000 in John 6:1–4.
- He walked on water in John 6:15–21.
- He healed the man born blind in John 9:1–7.
- He raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11:1–44.
- The resurrection of Christ is the eighth and final sign John 20:24–29 (John 2:18–19).
Slide 20
Thomas didn’t need to touch the nail prints in His hands or the wound in His side. He immediately recognized that Jesus was indeed alive. He was there in flesh and bone, He was resurrected, and he said, John 20:28, “My Lord and my God!”
In John 20:29 Jesus then replies to him in a most significant verse. “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed.”
He doesn’t say it’s fake belief or an inadequate belief. The same language is used all the way through John, just believe in Him. He says because of this you believed. He doesn’t say, “You aren’t blessed,” but He does say,
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
He doesn’t pronounce a negative judgment on Thomas, but He says for those who believe on the basis of revelation and the evidence that’s presented in revelation, secondhand evidence, not direct empirical evidence, but indirect empirical evidence, because it’s on the basis of what’s written and on the basis of their report,
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Faith for us is that:
- what the Scripture says is more real than our unaided reason and unaided experience will tell us
- the stability of God is more real to us than the instability of our circumstances
- the certainty of God’s promise is more real than the vagaries of our life
- God’s care for us is more real to us than the feelings that we have of our own ineptitude and inadequacy
When we come to the end of what the Scripture teaches about God and His relationship to man, God wants to be known by human beings. He gives evidence of that, Romans 1:18–21, that the heavens represent God’s invisible attributes and communicates that, so, it is evident to them.
Paul goes on to say, Romans 1:19, “… for God made it evident within them.”
The issue is human volition. They have to decide, “Do I want to know God or not?” The most important decision, of course, as you know is the Cross, is to trust in Christ as Savior, but after that it is a day-by-day decision, are we going to continue to want to know God?
Slide 21
In closing I want to remind you of 1 Chronicles 28:9, a profound statement by King David on His deathbed; he is giving direct guidance to his son Solomon. It applies to every one of us,
“As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him—the message for every believer is to continue to know God and to serve Him—with a whole heart and with a willing mind—see you don’t put your mind in neutral. It’s based on the use of your intellect—with a whole heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the intents of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever.”
Closing Prayer
“Father, we thank You for this opportunity to be reminded of the evidence of Scripture that Jesus is who He claimed to be, that He is Your Eternal Son, the Second Person of the Trinity who entered in human history to die on the Cross for our sins, to pay that penalty that we might have eternal life.
“We pray that if there is anyone listening to this message, anyone here today who has never trusted Christ as Savior, that they would take this opportunity to do so based on the evidence of Scripture.
“Father, we pray that for us as believers that we would be mindful of what David said to Solomon, that we are to seek You with a whole heart, with our minds, and be mindful of the warning that in negative volition, You may turn us over to divine discipline, and we may be forsaken by You in time.
“Father, we pray that we would continue to pursue You, wanting to know You and wanting to apply Your Word that we may experience that full abundant life that Jesus promised for us, that we might have life and life abundantly.
“We pray this in Christ’s name, amen.”