My Lord and My God

For the sermon today, I wanted to talk about a subject that I've thought about a lot and I think many of us have. There's a very famous story about a doctor of the law coming to Jesus and asking him, what is the greatest commandment of the law? I think we know that story. And he quotes Deuteronomy when he says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And I'm not going to go there, but I think we know the story. You can write down Matthew 22, verse 36, if you want to just kind of anchor yourself in that story. I've given sermons on that story in Matthew and the parallel account in Luke, looking at that original writing and the law, what's often called the Shema in Deuteronomy 6. There's a lot of study. There's a lot of scholarship around it. But there is also love and emotion in that. And sometimes we tend to shy away from that. Church services are not here to all be about emotion. That's our tradition. But we understand emotion is there. There is a head and a heart understanding to that verse. And today I'd like to talk about the essence of that great commandment, by way of perhaps a longer introduction than I would typically give. In God's church, when we think about loving God, we often quote John 14, 15, if you love me, keep my commandments. I think we understand that. And so many people say they love God, but then they don't keep His commandments, and we question that. But on the other hand, we sometimes can keep the outward form of the command without really sufficiently understanding the substance or really spending enough time to understand what it really means to love God. And so to introduce this subject, I'd like us to turn to John 20.

And I'd like to read together the story of Thomas. And if you have a Bible, I'd really encourage you to open it. If you don't have a Bible and you have a phone, I'd encourage you to open your phone and read along with me. As we read, probably one of the most powerful stories in my mind as I think about the Gospels and the impact on me and the impact on God's church, in John 20, we often focus on the beginning of the chapter, the empty tomb. They come after these three days and three nights. The women come to the tomb, and they discover it's empty, and there's this back and forth. And a lot of times we'll focus on the beginning part of that chapter. But then in verse 19, it talks about how that same evening, John 20, verse 19, being the first day of the week, the doors were shut, and all the disciples were assembled, and they were together. And Jesus comes to them, and he talks with them. But in verse 24, we're told that Thomas wasn't there. Thomas wasn't there at the time, and it says that he wasn't there. And so in verse 25, the other disciples therefore said to him, We have seen the Lord. We've seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I can see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. So Thomas was not convinced. And the way that John records what Thomas says here is quite dramatic, really. If you think about actually wanting to touch the wounds, were they cauterized? Would they be still black and blue? What would this actually be like? What was he actually asking, really, in this? You could kind of spiritualize it and talk about a metaphor and so forth, but it's very specific language. And we don't know why Thomas wasn't there. Perhaps he was so devastated by his Lord's death that he couldn't allow himself to imagine Jesus being alive. And perhaps he doubted what he had heard for those three and a half years. Why did God allow this? And why did the Romans do this? And why didn't Jesus do something? And I thought he was going to do something, and he didn't. We don't know what would have gone through his mind, what his motives were. But we have this story here, and we're kind of confronted. And we can kind of pause in this moment of doubt. This is a moment of doubt. And we have moments of doubt where we can be a little demanding of God, too. Like, God, you know, I've trusted you a lot of these years, and you're not coming through for me right now. What's happening? I want to see some results. And Thomas wanted to see something. And so we continue the story eight days later in verse 26. And after eight days, his disciples were again inside. So Thomas would have had some time to think about his request. They would have obviously had discussions. They would have talked a lot about what the next step was and what all this means.

And this time, Thomas was with them, and Jesus came, and the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace to you. And then he said to Thomas, Reach your finger here, and look at my hands, and reach your hand here, and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing. Jesus could have condemned Thomas at that time, eight days later, for his lack of faith. He could have lectured him, however gently, on the three and a half years they had been together, and how he could have been doubting after such a long period of time. He could have questioned him further, but instead, all that is reported here is that Jesus allowed Thomas to touch him in those traumatic places in his body. You know, sometimes I think that we seek connection as human beings. We suffer a great deal of disconnection in today's society. We have our Zoom meetings, and our conference calls, and sometimes we might be working with people for years, and never actually having met them. There's nothing like being in person. There's nothing like having that connection. There's nothing like touch. And this is about touch. This is literally Thomas's hand touching the body of Jesus Christ and touching him in these wounded places. I can't imagine putting my hand into another person's wound.

Thomas was confronted in a very personal and perhaps somewhat brutal way with the reality of Jesus's death and now his resurrection. And probably more than anything else, he was confronted with the truth that Jesus had been resurrected and that he was his Lord. And his reaction in verse 28 speaks to us through the ages. Verse 28 says, And Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God.

Thomas, who had doubted before, he doubted no more. He spoke words that few Jews of the time would have uttered. He called Jesus God. Jesus was more than a master or a teacher. He was Thomas's Lord and Thomas's God. Suddenly, everything that had once mattered to him did not matter anymore. Everything that seemed impossible before to him now seemed possible. How could it be? These wounds I touch, I feel, they're real, and yet you're here and you're alive and you're speaking to me. I think this was the moment of Thomas's conversion.

I think this is when Thomas became a Christian. Now, we can debate the facts of 40 days later, approximately 40 days later, the gift of the Holy Spirit being given. We can debate verse 22, where he says that you will receive the Spirit. We can talk about the technical aspects of baptism and laying on of hands. There's a lot of things that go with conversion, and I'm not diminishing those things, and they're important, but this is the moment when everything changed for Thomas.

This is when he came face to face with his Creator, touched him, and literally felt the marks of his sacrifice, and he says, you are my Lord and my God. And by the way, this is a difficult scripture for Unitarians. This is a difficult scripture for people who think that Jesus Christ was a created being, and he was not God, or he became God. No, this is a difficult scripture. My Lord, my God. You can't escape this right here. And verse 29 concludes this story by drawing us into it, and why it's relevant for us today. And Jesus said to him, Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed. That's us. We didn't do this, and yet we can believe, and yet, indeed, he says we are blessed when we do believe. Jesus is saying to all of us who weren't there to have that experience, we too can believe that Jesus is our Lord and our God. We too can call him that. We are called, I believe, to understand this. And not just to understand it, but literally to say it, Jesus, my Lord and my God, help me intercede on my behalf. We pray to the Father. We don't pray to God. We understand that. But this is the essence, I believe, of the First Commandment, to understand we have a personal connection to our Father in heaven and to our Lord Jesus Christ. This is our calling. This is what the First Commandment means, to love God with all our heart, with all our mind, and all our soul. Now, we're familiar with passages like Matthew 7, verse 21, that says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will be, enter the kingdom of God, but he who does the will of my Father. See, the problem is, and this is what we heard in the sermonette, now people take this and they'll go run down some crazy path with it and pretend that there's no other scriptures in the Bible that exist. We understand that. We have to read this in context. But sometimes, I think, in the Church of God, we can read all the other contexts and miss the base. We can read and understand and get into the Greek and the Hebrew and the scholarship and miss the raw emotion of touching our Lord in those wounded places or having him touch us in our wounded places. We can miss that. This is this emotion. This is this heart, and we have to connect this heart to all the other scholarship and to all the other theology that goes around with it.

And sometimes, I don't think we appreciate it. We have to be about our Father's business. That is the example Jesus gave us. We have to practice God's law. We have to understand it, to be able to practice it. We have to study it. We have to search the scriptures. We have to dialogue with God. We need to do these things. But sometimes, over a course of years, we can become sort of accustomed to it. We come to church. We do these things. We sing. We leave. Hopefully, we pray. But, you know, we can become accustomed a year after year after year after year, and we can lose sight of the power. American pastor Paul Washer points out that we enjoy that when we enjoy the best things all the time, sometimes we can become desensitized. And he tells a story about how he was in the Andes. And he's going on a train through the Andes, and he's with some younger people who had never been there. And he remembers when he was young and seeing the Andes for the first time. And if you enjoy the mountains, you know the power of what some of these mountain peaks can look like. And when he was a young man and he went, he was on that train. He's with an older man, and he's like, wow, look at this! This is amazing! And the older man is just sleeping. And then now he's older, and there's some younger people with him, and he's sleeping. And the young guys are going, wow, these mountains are amazing! We can become desensitized to things that have incredible power and incredible beauty. You know, if we're married, we may no longer appreciate our spouse in the same way we did at the beginning of our marriage. Has something changed? Does something change in our relationship? Or do we just become kind of desensitized? Does something so beautiful and wonderful as having that person with us all the time?

Perhaps we have this extraordinary blessing. We don't realize it. God's call is even greater than that, and yet sometimes we can become desensitized to it. Our reaction to it can become like that. Just like, well, I know those mountains are amazing. I know I have this wonderful blessing of this husband or this wife. I know I had this incredible calling, but somehow it doesn't have the same... we don't have the same enthusiasm for it. What we're talking about, as I said here, is conversion. Thinking differently, living differently, living under the authority of our Lord and our God. And today I want to talk about what we need to become to be able to understand how to say this with that same passion, with that same energy, with that same emotion year after year, and really understand and mean it. The title of my message today is My Lord and My God, taken here from John 20, verse 28, saying, My Lord and My God means that we become a new creation, and we're constantly growing. We're growing in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're seeing God as our loving Father, and we're recognizing the good things in our lives that come from God and not from our own efforts. These are the points I want to raise with you today. I invite you on the first point of understanding a new creation, to go to 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17. And let's read that verse, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17, to say, My Lord and My God means that we become a new creation, and we are becoming a new creation.

Many of us have probably already read this verse many times, but 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17 says here, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. All things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.

But let's understand the context of this verse by going back to verse 1. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 1, For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven. And this is an interesting study. I've given a sermon on why we don't go to heaven, and this is not that sermon. I'm not going to go into that. I think that might even be online. I might reprise that. This is not talking about that.

But something different happens here that we see to a believer. Something happens when we fully submit to this way of life. Our perspective changes, and suddenly we groan for something better. We have a vision of something ahead, something new, something special, this special dwelling place. And we live this life with all its good and its bad, waiting for something much greater.

And verse 7 says that with this truth, it says, we walk by faith, not by sight. With this truth, we walk by faith and not by sight. And then in verse 9 it says, therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to him. So this is a whole flow that leads up to this new creation concept where we're groaning for something different and something new, something that's ahead that we're promised, that we walk by faith and not by sight, and that whatever we do, we seek to please him.

And our motives are based on love, but also on fear, the fear of God, the right kind of fear of God. And in verse 10 it says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Oh, okay, that's an interesting twist, isn't it? Suddenly now there's a judgment here. We're kind of in a beautiful moment, as it were, and now there's kind of a little bit of cold water.

We're excited about saying, my lord, my god, but we're also human, and we make mistakes, and we do dumb things, and we will be judged for that. And yet there is hope, and yet there's hope because there's mercy and there's understanding. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men that we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences. So Paul, even as he's going through this, he's reminding them that we will stand before the judgment seat of God.

And then we get, as I said, down to verse 17 about being a new creation. So are we a new creation? Are we becoming new day by day? Are we groaning for this greater habitation that he describes, this heavenly body, this spiritual body that we'll receive? I want to talk for a moment about the concept of newness, because when I say we're new, I mean, what does that mean?

What do you mean new? In Silicon Valley, there's a museum called the Museum of Technology. The Museum of Technology. And you can go there and you can see all the latest innovations in technology. But you know, it's very difficult to maintain a museum like that, because you have to constantly be changing it.

You have to constantly change your exhibits. Who can afford to do that? If you go to the Louvre in Paris and you want to see the Mona Lisa, okay, the Mona Lisa was installed in the Louvre in 1804, 220 years ago. Hasn't really changed. I mean, they put some things to protect her. They moved it around a little bit. Hasn't changed. But newness is different. The Museum of Technology, you walk in one day, oh, there's the latest technology. You walk in a week later. Well, I'm sorry, that's not new anymore.

We've got to change that out. That's what newness means. We grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do we become like Christ in a single day? No, it's not possible. We might have that moment where we're ready to commit our lives. That moment of conversion like Thomas. But that's just the start. From there, it's every day walking in newness. Because as we're told here, we're going to be judged.

And thankfully, as we walk in newness, all those sins and all those issues, they're erased. They're behind us. They're blotted out. I love that term. You know, it's like one of those big sharpies, those really fat sharpies. If you draw a big fat sharpie across a word on a page, you can't read it at all. You'll never know what's under that thing. It's gone. Our sins are blotted out as we walk in newness of life with Him.

And as we repent day by day, we seek Him. We pursue Him. As a man pursues his wife, always. Our pursuit of God should be like admiring the beauty of God's creation here in the mountains and never really losing sight of how beautiful it is.

The actions we take towards God could be described as vertical. Sometimes we might raise our hands to the heavens and pray. We might gaze up at God's creation and go, wow, God, this is amazing.

And we might describe our relationship with one another as horizontal, as we interact with one another day by day. And the fact is that our interactions help us understand the vertical interactions, because we get to see ourselves through the mirror of other people. I didn't probably handle that very well, did I? No, you didn't.

I probably could have said that better. I probably could have been nicer. I should have replied to that person. I should have stayed longer. We get to see ourselves a little bit through the mirror, especially of the church, because now the mirror that we're seeing is of God's Holy Spirit reflecting back on us.

Most of the time the children of Israel spent in the desert was because God wanted to teach them to have vertical actions with Him. He wanted them to learn that God was their God and their Lord. There's an interesting verse. Maybe you've read it. It's in Deuteronomy 6. Again, a lot of things go back to Deuteronomy 6. It's such an interesting chapter. But turn with me to Deuteronomy 6, verse 23. It's an interesting play on words. I've seen it in different languages. I think it's valid. I don't think it's just a quirkiness of the English language. In Deuteronomy 6, verse 23, it's been pointed out that there's an interesting out and in here. Deuteronomy 6, verse 23, again, if you want to look at that with me, just take a moment to turn there. It says that He brought us out from there that He might bring us in. He brought us out to bring us in. Why did He bring us out to bring us in?

I think He brought them out of Egypt just as He brings us out of sin, that He might bring them into the land of promise, that He might bring us into a relationship with Him, that we might be in covenant with Him. These promises here, it says, to give us the land of which He swore to our fathers. These were physical promises. We, as New Covenant Christians, have greater promises. That's what we're told. We have greater promises. We have spiritual promises. The days of Unleavened Bread show us that we're called out of Egypt. The day of Pentecost shows that we're being given God's Spirit to understand Him, to understand His ways and His things. But Paul doesn't miss that concept. Go back to 2 Corinthians 5 again, because there is another concept in here about being a new creation that Paul talks about that I don't want to skip over. I wanted to give that context in verse 1 and talk about the judgment and talk about being pleasing to God, but there's a very important verse in verse 5. 2 Corinthians 5, 5. It's a great memory verse, by the way, if you want to memorize a verse. 2 Corinthians 5, 5. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee, as a deposit. God's Spirit guides us to understand this. He connects us to this vision of eternal life. So do we believe it? Do our actions demonstrate it?

If we went to court to be judged as Christians, would the prosecutors succeed in convicting you? Would I be convicted of being a Christian by my actions, by my behaviors? Does the evidence of how I spend my time make it clear that I serve God and man?

Would evidence of the kindness and love we show our husbands and wives, family and friends, be admissible and sufficient in a court of law? Could the advocates show examples of all the times we've said we're sorry to our spouse, our family, our friends, demonstrating that we have a humble spirit of repentance? See, these are the actions we show horizontally that are a reflection of our relationship with God. And our relationship with God then is a reflection of that. It goes both ways. What evidence would be presented in your trial in verse 10?

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. What is the evidence of our sin? Has it been completely blotted out because we are repenting day by day as a new creation? And there's nothing to discuss because God in his mercy has allowed us to be reconciled to him through the sacrifice of his Son who has blotted out our sins? Or have we become desensitized? Have we become sort of, well, yeah, I understand that. And then in actual fact, there are still sins, many blind spots that we don't have that are there. We're our behavior, our actions.

And now suddenly there's something there. These are complex issues, and I think the sermonette brought them up. Once saved, always saved? No. Is God merciful when we sin? Yes. Well, we have repentant of every single sin. I hope so, but what if we don't? What if there's something we can't see and we die? Is God going to allow us then to not be in the first resurrection? These are complicated questions. We seek and strive to serve God. At least we should. We seek to be a new creation, but we fall down. This is why there has to be passion and urgency to our prayers and our Bible study, because we are going to stand before this judgment seat. And it's not going to just be, well, you know, yeah, you know, I was baptized on this date, and I went to the Feast of Tabernacles, and I went to every Passover, and I did this, and I did that. That's not going to be enough. It's our personal relationship day by day that's going to make that difference of how we stand before God and our judged. I'd like to share a second point about what it means to say, my Lord and my God. It means that we see God as our loving Father. We see God as our loving Father. Turn with me, if you will, to Hebrews 11 verse 6.

What is your perception of God? What is your view of our Heavenly Father and of Jesus Christ? Do you see them as looking out for you? Do you see them as people that you can commune with? Do you feel you can connect to your Heavenly Father, or do you feel like sometimes your prayers just are stuck? Hebrews 11 verse 6, But without faith it is impossible to please Him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

When we've been through a difficult trial, we may doubt God's existence. We may doubt that He's there for us. In fact, I'm working with somebody in France who sent me an email this week saying, Does God still heal? Does God still do miracles? Is He still involved in our lives? It's a legitimate question from somebody who's just coming to understand the truth because that person looks around and goes, Well, if there's a God, I don't know what's going on. And sometimes we can wonder, does God actually hear our prayers? I've heard someone say to me that they've never seen anointing work. Think about that. Think about that for you personally. Society says God is dead. We see injustice in our lives and we can doubt God. This is the point of that story about doubting. This is where we began in John 20. Has this weakened our faith? Has this changed our perception of God?

There's a well-known parable in Luke 19 that I want to read with you today if you want to turn over to Luke 19.

Well-known in the sense that it's about talents or meaners. There's different versions of the story. Luke 19 will start in verse 12. It helps us better understand the difference between those who believe in and trust God and those who don't. And sometimes we miss that point when we're reading this parable. Luke 19 verse 12. Again, we're trying to understand this concept of what it means to love God. And this point here is that we understand that He truly loves us and that He cares for us. Luke 19 verse 12. Therefore, a certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. And so he called ten of his servants, delivered to them ten meaners, and said to them, Do business until I come. Now there's an interesting sort of fact about this. Whether the people understood this as he was telling it or not, there's some debate about this, but this story does have an historical context. There is the story of Archalaeus, the son of Herod the Great. When his father died, he was named his successor, and he was going to take over all of that. And he went to Rome and he asked Augustus for that right. But Augustus was a little bit concerned, and so Augustus agreed, but he gave him an inferior title to emphasize Judea's submission to Rome. So he didn't give him all the same titles as his father. And so there's some discussion that Jesus is kind of building on this story. Now, Jesus is talking about himself clearly, so we don't want to take that too far. But this story about a certain nobleman who went into a far country would have been reminiscent of Archalaeus going to Rome to receive for himself the title of Herod.

And here in the story we have these minas that are this term that's used. It's worth about three months' salary. That's what it says in my Bible. There's different debates about how much Amina was worth, but you know it's a certain sum of money. And we continue in verse 14, but his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, we will not have this man to reign over us. And I'll just quote the Encyclopedia Britannica here. Archalaeus ruled Judea until about 6 AD when Augustus recalled him to Rome due to incessant complaints of his brothers and the other people in Judea. He was tried, and he actually lost his case. His kingdom was removed, and interestingly enough, he went into exile in France. So that's the connection to France in this case. So again, there is an interesting story that might go behind this, but again, we understand Jesus is talking about himself. And so as we read the rest of the story going through, then came the first saying, Master Yermina has earned 10 minas. And he said to him, well done, good, faithful servant. And we kind of know that flow. And so we often leave the story with, you know, go use the talents you've been given, be productive, serve God, and we will have a certain reward. And that's often our focus, but it misses something. In respect to this particular parable, there's a parallel account in Matthew 25, but Luke's account highlights a crucial lesson that Jesus was teaching, that of whether Jesus's followers would accept him as their undisputed king. Remember, this is the context of what's given. There's a dispute about whether he should be the ruler or not. And the question is, are these servants going to respect him as their undisputed king?

And if we've been in the church for a long time, we might say, well, of course I understand Christ is my king. However, the important point is that the man here who buried his mena, his talent, had a perception of his king that was wrong. He saw his vertical actions with God as a relationship of performance and potential punishment. He saw God as a harsh and uncompromising king, rather than seeing his king as someone who loved him and cared for him. Notice verse 20, And came another, saying, Master, here is your mena, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief. For I feared you, because you are an austere man. Or in my margin it says, severe man. You collect what you do not deposit, and you reap what you do not sow.

Remember, this is a parable directly to the disciples. It's specifically for those whom God is calling. The reason this servant gave for his action was his opinion of his king. He thought his king was a hard man, a difficult person to deal with.

Our perspective of God makes all the difference in our relationship with God.

Before touching Jesus's wounds, Thomas saw him as likely a great teacher, a prophet, perhaps, but he hadn't grasped who God really was. And that's, I believe, why he said what he said in response to touching those wounds. More than anything, he had not grasped the magnitude of the sacrifice that Christ had made for him, the suffering that he had gone through so that Thomas might have eternal life, that he might be reconciled to the Father. This is the kind of love that God the Father and Jesus Christ have for us.

What do you think of Jesus Christ? What do you think of Jesus the Messiah, of God the Father? Are they righteous? Do you trust them? Do you think they're tough or maybe a little indifferent to your suffering? I think we may need to ask ourselves these questions honestly, and if the answer isn't 100% yes, I know they love me, then perhaps we need to be thinking and meditating and talking about our feelings about God our Father and Jesus Christ our elder brother. Saying, my Lord and my God, means we are 100% committed to believing that God truly loves us.

Look in verse 22, And then he said to him, Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow. Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?

And he said to those who stood by, Take the mena from him, and give it to him who has ten menas.

For I say to you that everyone who has will be given, and from him who does not have even what he has will be taken away from him.

What God has given us can be taken away. It can be taken away. It seems strange that someone who has ten menas would receive another mena, but the principle is that the servant who produces profit, who grows, is the one who trusts God completely and applies himself.

You know, it's often said if you want something done, give it to a busy man, right? That's this kind of servant. This person is dedicated, 100% there, serving, trusting, repenting, growing, becoming new every day. That's the kind of servant that produced the ten menas. He just said that if you want something done, as I said, and trust it to somebody who's going to really be busy and get it done. Verse 27, But bring him, excuse me, but bring here those enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them and slay them before me. See, the point that Luke is bringing out in this parable, which is a little bit different than Matthew, is whether we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Master. That is what is being discussed here.

Bring here those enemies of mine who do not want me to reign over them.

And that's what happens. We can lose our salvation. We can lose that if we're not dedicated to it. Now, again, that doesn't mean we're going to walk around all stressed and so forth. That's the whole point. God loves us, and He's going to constantly be there to help us through those difficult times, to learn those lessons.

One final point I'd like to make here in this sermon is saying, My Lord and my God means that we recognize that the good things in our lives come from God and not from our own efforts. And that can trip us up sometimes because we might think, Well, you know, I worked really hard to get here, and God, what are you doing now?

That's not the right attitude. God has given us these great things that we have. All these good gifts come from Him, and He wants to keep giving those things to us. And a lot of times we just have to get out of the way and recognize that those things do come from Him.

Turn with me here to Philippians 3. Philippians 3, verse 1-3.

And again, I hope you can read this together with us, really drink in of God's Word. This is what we're grasping to see. How can we understand what Thomas said, and how can that apply to us as we walk day by day with God as His instrument? Philippians 3, 1-3. He says, He's speaking of circumcision, He's speaking of works of law, He's speaking of people who are trying to earn something through what they do. Paul wrote to them about those people who want their faith to rest on the things that the Jews did to prove themselves righteous. For the Jews' faith depended on how you washed your hands, how you washed your dishes, how you combined certain foods together, even today in Israel, that's the case. What you did or didn't do on the Sabbath, even the fact that you were circumcised.

And some of Jesus' disciples had integrated these rules and practices into their faith, and here He reminded them of the proper perspective on their relationship with God.

Our Christian faith is more than just a set of laws. It is based on these laws, of course, but that is not where our salvation comes from. We do these things because we love God and we want to please Him. And if we don't do them, well, then we're going to be lost. We're going to be off on some other course. Today we have access to numerous Bible commentaries and translations. I'm reading the New King James. There's probably lots of different translations out there. We can look at the Greek behind this. We can explore the story, like I said, of this historical figure of Archales. In some countries, men and women, our brothers and sisters in Christ, have none of this. They don't have any of those things. They might not even have a Bible because they can't read. It took me a little while to get over the concept of baptizing an illiterate person because it so goes against my life experience. I mean, if you can't read the Bible, how can you understand God? Well, they can listen to the Bible. They can come to church every week. They can come to Bible studies. They can talk to their friends in the church about the Bible. There's lots of ways. And so I've baptized illiterate people. They don't know the Greek or the Hebrew or the English or the French. They know what they hear. And they can still be converted. And they'll be in God's kingdom, I believe. On the other hand, if our faith is based on our ability, as I said, to study or follow every single rule, well, then we're not much better than the Pharisees. No. That's why it says we worship God by His Spirit and by these things that we understand. It says, though I also might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so, circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, of Hebrew, concerning the law of Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law blameless. But what things were gained to me, these I have counted lost for Christ. He could have boasted. He was the scholar. He knew these things. And He counted all that loss. But indeed, I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. He put all those things that He had done behind Him and recognized that it was understanding who Christ was and following Him. This is the sign of a Christian. We worship in spirit and truth. We place our trust in Jesus Christ. Job was a righteous man. He was a righteous man, but even he had something to learn about his own righteousness. We know that from Job 42, where he says, My ear had heard of you, but now I see you with my eye. Peter told the assembled crowd in Acts 2, verse 36, that Jesus was both Lord and Messiah.

Paul writes in Romans 10 that we must declare that Jesus is Lord. Jude wrote in Jude 1, verse 4, that Jesus is our only sovereign and Lord. John wrote in Revelation 17, verse 14, that Jesus is the Lord of lords. Do we see a pattern here with men of faith and things we read in Scripture? As God's people, we must follow the example of Peter and Paul and Jude and John and call our elder brother Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God. And not just say it, but live it. So Thomas doubted, and so do we. But Thomas stopped doubting, and so must we.

We don't know what happened to Thomas after the resurrection. There's different theories.

Various non-biblical sources claim that he traveled to India and was killed there while preaching the Gospel. A few years ago, I visited the Indian state of Kerala, and I learned that many Christians there in that part of India believe that Thomas arrived in India by ship in 52 AD. There's a lot of writing about this. And that he was killed in the city of Chennai on the southeast coast in 72 AD. Again, these are just legends at this point. We don't really know. But there is the Cathedral of St. Thomas, which was built in Chennai in 1524. And there is also evidence of Sabbath observers in India in the 16th century, if you look into that. Whatever the truth about Thomas, we can be sure that he did his part to serve God for the rest of his life. And he did great things through the power of Jesus Christ, God the Father, their spirit working in him. Let's learn from his example. Now let's understand what it means to say, my Lord and my God.