Dennis Tuuri

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.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for this beautiful and moving account of the resurrected Savior. Bless us, Lord God. May we hear peace and life to us today through the text. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

Are you listening yet? Are you listening yet? Are you listening now? I heard an older Black pastor on NPR yesterday from the South with the devastating storms they’ve had this past week. And the reporter said, “What will be your message on the Lord’s day?” And he said, “It’ll be, are you listening?”

Now, we spoke two weeks ago or last Lord’s day about earthquakes and earthquakes were a thing that happened to announce the death of the old world and the beginning of the new world. And then we read from Hebrews that the shaking is going to go on continually till all that can be shaken is removed and all that is solid and of the kingdom will remain. And so the world today moves in its unbelief and God moves in various ways with various signs through various mechanisms to get people’s attention. And the Black pastor is right. We don’t listen most of the time.

We have here a wonderful text that I got very excited about last night—excited about it before, of course. But when I finally sort of looked at the structure, I’ve been working on it well, most of this last week I was at a Q gathering, but I’ve been working on this text some for the last week or two. Didn’t come up with a flow of the text that I liked. And then I thought about this Thomas the Twin emphasis here. And what we have are twin accounts, right? In this story of Thomas the Twin, we have two parallel accounts. And so I got very excited about this day.

I was excited before, but this text, you know, has a lot of wonderful things that it brings to us. Central to it, as is central to every Lord’s Day gathering where the Lord comes and through his word and through his pastors speaks to the congregation—central to it is God speaking peace to you and God speaking life to you. Every Lord’s day makes sense. The first day of the week when Jesus was resurrected is a day in which God’s people gather to hear peace and they gather with some doubts. They gather with some fear. The doors may be locked in various ways in the church, in their hearts, in their lives, and Jesus frees them by speaking peace to them. And Jesus would speak peace to us today.

Now the second account here that we looked at. The twin accounts both begin with a time reference. And by the way, I don’t know if I’ll talk about this much, but if you love meditating over the scriptures and their structure and this kind of thing, you know, if you look at the text as I outlined it today in the parallel fashion in which it is recorded, these twin events, you’ll notice that the actual occurrences both have like a postscript added to them, but the actual occurrences are a sevenfold set of things that happen, right?

And it moves through this sevenfold structure. And it’s not difficult at all seeing in this sevenfold structure allusions to the creation. And that shouldn’t surprise us because very beginning, the time references of both of these narratives are about creation, new creation. It’s the first day of the week. In another gospel text, it says at the end of the Sabbath, the Sabbath was over. And now the Lord’s day had replaced it because the old world was over. The old time references were over. And now we’re at the first day of the week, the first day of the new creation with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The great earthquake had announced now that the new world had been established and all that was left of the old world would be done away with. And so we have this first day of the week. And in the second account, the twin account, it’s the eighth day, eight days later. Now the reckoning of time by the Jews included the first and last days. So this is talking about the next Lord’s day, but it’s referring to it as the eighth day. Now God didn’t have to do that. He could have said the next first day of the week, but he said the eighth day. And the scriptures are replete with references in the Old Testament prefiguring that the eighth day is really when everything would happen when Messiah came.

The Old Testament sacrificial system required animals to be eight days old before they were ready to be transformed and burnt and ushered into the presence of God. The emphasis was not their death. It certainly was there, but their emphasis was their transformation. The priests had to go through eight days. On the eighth day, they were ready and cleansed. And they were new Adams, newly created on the eighth day to offer up those sacrifices to God as indication that when the great high priest came, the world would be transformed, heaven and earth would meet, and God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven in this new creation eighth day.

The altar itself had to go through cleansing for a week and then on the eighth day it’s ready. The entire Old Testament sacrificial system was an eighth day event in its origins. And indeed, there are eighth day Sabbaths. As you probably know, if you’ve been here very long, we’ve talked about this. Double Sabbaths are thrown into the Old Testament calendar. Why? Because God was prefiguring that when the Messiah came and when the old creation in Adam was done away with and when the new creation was established, it would be an eighth day event. It would be a new week in the history of man, a new creation order.

So on the eighth day is when we meet. We meet on the first day of the week, the eighth day of the week, we meet in the new creation. And every time we get together in that new creation, the Lord Jesus Christ comes to us and he speaks peace to his people. Now, it may not feel like that to you, but this is what you need.

My wife was reading me this verse from Psalm 38:6 last night. I am utterly bowed down and prostrate all the day I go about mourning. Now there are members of this congregation that is their state right now. Do you know that? When I got up this morning, I put this shirt on. My wife said, before we as we were getting ready to go, there’s a little stain on it. I said it’s okay that there’s a stain on the shirt.

I heard a talk at the Q gathering on a new book coming out called Veneer and how we put on these veneers over who we are. Well, you know, when you come to church, God wants you to hear peace, but he doesn’t want you to pretend that you have not come here perhaps in mourning, okay? God says it’s all right. In your mourning, in your difficulty, in the disciples’ fear, right? And in their uncertainty and doubt, he speaks peace to them as a way of empowering them to do the work that he called the church to do then and that he calls you to do this week. So it’s that kind of thing.

By the way, I’m not sure that I agreed with the authors of Veneer. I think that actually putting on a veneer that’s better than who we think we are is probably a good thing because I think the transformation actually happens a lot more from the outside in. I know, you know, that’s evangelical heresy. It’s all got to come from the inside out, but I think the scriptures frequently say that what’s going on is from the outside in. And this is what happens here in this text.

If we look at the interior of the disciples, they have locked doors. They’re fearful. They have doubts. Don’t just think about doubting Thomas. Think about the doubting apostles. They doubted the message of the women. The women got them there, right? The women were the ones that Jesus sent with faith to announce his resurrection. And they doubted. And in fact, in this very twin text, you can see that Jesus finds it necessary to show not just to Thomas but to all the disciples his resurrection body and the wounds that he received on the cross as evidence that this was him. So it’s not just Thomas. All the disciples needed to see certain things by sight. But Jesus came to them from outside. He didn’t focus on who you are interior. He speaks peace to us from outside. He brings us evidence of who he is so that we would be changed then interior, in our interior.

So it’s a wonderful account. I wanted to spend a few weeks before we get to Pentecost talking about these post-resurrection appearances of the Lord Jesus Christ. I did this couple of years ago, I think, and we went through all the post-resurrection appearances. They’re quite significant, of course, but they’re significant for what we’re talking about last Lord’s Day and this Lord’s Day. They’re significant about the new creation aspect of what we celebrate on Easter Sunday and every Lord’s Day.

Because what we have is forty days when Jesus is in his resurrected transformed body and stays on earth. The new creation that’s coming when Jesus returns, we all get body changes. The world is transformed, not burned up. It’s transformed. That world has now penetrated into the old world. And for forty days the one who brings new creation and transforms the world into the new creation walks around. He’s with the disciples for forty days. Now he’s not with them the whole forty days. He comes and he goes, right? But he’s there. So the new creation, the transformed physical body of mankind, or super physical body actually, a spiritual body, is now existing in the context of our history.

Now he ascends, you know, after forty days, but the point is he’s here and the new creation has penetrated the world. And this is what you have to live like, is what he’s doing and he’s instructing us to live out the reality, the truth that peace has come finally to the world definitively through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now it’s a cool body. It’s really neat. Clearly in both parallel accounts, he appears in the midst of a locked room. He can go through walls or whatever it is, but clearly also it’s not the demonstration of his wounds is to say, “I’m not a ghost. I’m not bodyless.” He’s got this transformed body. And so he spends forty days penetrating the old creation.

What is he doing in those forty days? Well, Acts tells us that he spent these forty days talking to them of things of the kingdom. He was doing the same thing he was doing prior to the resurrection. Now I know there’s some differences, of course, but that’s what he did for his ministry, right? He spoke about the kingdom of God being at hand, and that’s what he continues to do. And even his body has the marks he received in its original body. Right? That’s really interesting to me.

Right? Paul says you’ll be able to recognize one another when Jesus returns and transforms us. There’s something about our bodies that will be the same. We’ll have individuality. And in Jesus’s case, he has the marks of his vocation with him in this body. And he’s actually doing the same sort of thing he did before his death and resurrection. Now I know, I know he’s you’re not him and all that, but he—we are Christians. And I think there’s some implications of this for what we do on this earth that are interesting to think through, meditate about, and think about this.

What Jesus is doing is he’s preparing his people to carry out what we talked about last week at the end of Matthew, the so-called great commission. That’s what he’s doing. He’s speaking of things of the kingdom. He’s preparing them for conquest. He’s telling them what they should do in the context of this new world.

Let’s look at the text just a little bit here. We’ll won’t spend a lot of time here, but I wanted you to see these parallels in these two accounts, most of which I’ve already alluded to. But we have a time reference first, right? It’s the first day of the week. It’s the eighth day of the week. We have the new world. The earthquake has happened. It’s torn apart the old world and it’s brought us into the new world. And so this is what the time indicator is in both things.

In both accounts, the doors—the disciples are gathered together. In the second account, Thomas is with them. In the first account, Thomas isn’t with them. And so Jesus comes, the doors being locked. So the doors are locked, the disciples are gathered together. In position two, in the number two position. In the third position, Jesus actually comes then and he stands among them. And it’s very almost identical language in both accounts.

And the first thing he does, in the fourth position in both accounts, is as I said he comes for the purpose of saying something. He speaks peace to them. So what we can see here—let’s just stop there for a moment and think about us and think about what this means for us.

Jesus comes to us in our fears, in our cloisteredness, in our kind of locking ourselves away for fear, right? Fear of the Jews in their case, in our case, fear of all kinds of things, you know. Jesus comes to us in those states and no matter what we’ve done to secure ourselves from him—I mean, they’re not trying to keep him out, but they’ve locked the doors. But Jesus has no problem with that. And Jesus comes to us specifically to speak peace to us.

This is quite significant. And if we are the Lord Jesus Christ’s messengers and what he’ll do at the end of the first thing is to breathe on them, make them new creation, right? Like he breathed on Adam. The spirit of life goes into Adam. He’s a living man. And here the disciples receive the Holy Spirit. It’s obviously these are new Adams. Quite plain. The text is telling us it’s new creation. We’re the new people. And he tells them that as the Father sent him, he’s sending them. And he’s sending them for a particular purpose to speak the forgiveness of sins or the retaining of sins to other people.

That’s in the first account. Well, if that’s what we’re to do, if we’re to be like Jesus, then there’s this speaking of peace I think that we’re supposed to do to one another. So let me just talk a little bit about speaking peace.

Speaking peace. Since this is the double message of what Jesus does, it seems very significant. Now there’s a peace that we receive from Jesus that comes directly from the indwelling Holy Spirit, right? The peace of God that passes all understanding will be with us when we, you know, pray and process our anxieties correctly. We have an interior peace that the Lord Jesus Christ speaks to us inaudibly and yet powerfully at moments in our lives. So there is that kind of peace, this you know, audible peace that the God of peace will be with us.

And what that means I think in the text is that the God of peace is with us with or without communication from outside. Colossians 3:15, right? Let the peace of God rule in your heart. So there’s peace there. And so it’s important for us to take this new creation first eighth day of the week message of Jesus—peace to you—to take it deep into our hearts today, to receive it and to recognize that this is essential to our new ability to live out the great commission to accomplish it.

It begins with us being moved from fear and doubt to peace. And this week, may the Lord God speak peace to your inner man as you exist in the context of difficulties, doubts, admissions of failure, whatever it may be. May the Lord God grant each of us peace at the center of our being. If you don’t have Christ’s peace ruling in your hearts, it’s very difficult—I say near impossible—to do the work of Christ that God’s called you to do. At least it’s greatly diminished.

So God speaks peace to us and speaks peace to his people through his own indwelling Holy Spirit. However, God also speaks peace to his people through the means of the human voice and their presence. In John 13:20, we read, “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me. And whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” We are supposed to speak peace to one another. Right? We’re Christians. And I came to you today as a pastor and I spoke peace to you. And throughout this week, it is a very good thing to speak peace to one another in the name of Jesus Christ to bring people to that inner sense of peace that we talked about first.

So God speaks peace through other people. A very important. Don’t miss the significance of this. We are to speak peace to one another. 3 John verse 14: “But I trust I shall shortly see you and we shall speak face to face. Peace be to thee. Our friends salute thee.”

Psalm 35:27. They speak peace but they devise deceitful things. So we are the anticipation and the example of Jesus in John is to speak peace to one another. And that’s the anticipation. Now if we speak peace and don’t mean peace, we’re doing it hypocritically. But the anticipation is we are supposed to speak peace to one another. God brings the peace that surpasses all understanding in part through human voices speaking peace to one another.

And we don’t wait till the other person’s got it all together to speak peace. We’re like our Savior. We go to people in sinful fear and we don’t tell them, “Hey, hey, knock it off.” I mean, sometimes we do as it’s called for. But what Jesus tells us here is that when we’re sitting around scared and sinning in our fearfulness or sinning in our doubt, right? One of the ways we’re to help one another is to speak Christ’s peace to each other. And that relieves the fear and brings the assurance that strengthens us for the great commission, for the task that God has called us to do.

To speak peace to one another is to assure one another of the Father—the sovereign Father’s blessing rests upon us. When God speaks peace to Thomas and then demonstrates through his physicality that this is him, Thomas’s response is “My Lord and my God.” Now “Lord” is this one who rules over everything and “God” is our powerful, strong one. So Thomas’s response to God indicates how his peace is achieved by recognizing God as our Lord, but also recognizing him as our powerful one.

In the Old Testament, right, it’s Yahweh, our covenant God. He’s our Father. And so one way we speak peace to each other is to remind each other of the fatherhood, the covenantal faithfulness, the loving kindness of God toward us as his children. And the other thing is he’s also our God. He’s also our strong one, our Elohim, right? Our powerful one, our master who is stronger than all the other powers or gods. And we speak peace to one another and relieve fear by reminding each other that we’re trying to get them like Thomas to acknowledge God’s love and care as our sovereign and our Father, but also as the one who is powerful to deal with all of our enemies.

And so to speak peace is to speak really the characteristics of God and to bring people to an awareness of that. And that’s what relieves fear and that’s what removes doubt. God loves us and he’s most powerful. And when we say that to one another, we speak peace with that message. Then we bring empowerment and freeing. The bonds fall off.

Speaking peace assumes that we’re on one another’s side. Boy, this is so important today. You know, really in one sense the mark of being a Christian is loyalty to Jesus and loyalty to his people. We are so prone, you know, to want to distance ourselves from Christians and not really be on each other’s side. I was at this Q gathering for three days and there, you know, it’s like when you’re like a sophomore in college—at least when I was back in those days—it’s the time when you sort of become very self-critical. Oh my, you know, our stupid culture and America’s bad and creates all the problems and you know all this. You become very self-critical. And you’re going to get through that sophomoric phase. But it’s as if evangelicalism now is just absolutely caught in that phase. And so everything’s about not wanting to be things that other people won’t like. And so there’s this self-critical nature and a lot of disparaging comments made in Christian gatherings about fundamentalism, evangelicalism, conservatism—we’re making other people feel like they shouldn’t do certain things.

The head of—actually, his first book, I haven’t read it, but apparently it’s called “Unchristian.” And that’s what it’s all about, is that the world perceives Christians as people that just want to tell them what to do. And the idea is lighten up, Christian. Now there’s some truth to all of that, right? But speaking peace to one another means an acknowledgement that we’re with each other in this task. We’re on each other’s side. You see, we have community together. We’re loyal to each other. Disloyalty marks our culture. There’s very little loyalty left. That’s why gangs exist is because they have this hunger and need for loyalty to one another. And the gang will, you know, watch your back. The tribe, your tribe will protect you.

And oh, that the Lord God’s people might be like that. That this church would have a sense of loyalty to one another. Each member of us and our families would have a sense of loyalty to one another. And that Christians in general would have this sense that we’re on each other’s side. And that empowers speaking peace. That is the background assumption of it, that we’re on each other’s side. So that’s I think an aspect of speaking peace to one another.

We speak peace to his people and to his saints. Psalm 85:8, “I will hear what the Lord will speak. For he will speak peace to his people and to his saints, but let them not turn back to folly.”

Now I think that from one perspective, this Psalm is actually fulfilled in the account from John 20 that we read, the two, the double, the twin accounts. He says “I will hear what God the Lord will speak,” and that’s you know kind of what Thomas acknowledges in response to God speaking peace. Will speak when God the Lord comes incarnate in the flesh and when he finishes his work. This is what happens. God the Lord will speak. For he will speak peace to his people and to his saints. This is really important.

We just sang about having the two-edged sword in our hands to execute judgment against the unrighteous. Now we don’t speak peace—you know, there’s a big discussion at the Q gathering I was at. There’s a real problem right now. Everybody’s found the Jeremiah text about seeking the peace of the city, but somehow they’ve transformed the text of speaking peace to the city as if the city was all about what we’re all about. One of the phrases repeatedly spoken of was “common grace” and “common grace” and “the common good.” We want to, as we enter the public sphere, seek the common good. And so instead of seeking God’s peace in the city through the removal, you know, of sin, they’re instead speaking peace to the city either directly or indirectly by cooperating in all these ventures and never really speaking anything negative about it.

One of the things at Q was the head of Q, Toby—I think his name is. No, Gabe. Gabe Lyons. Okay. So Gabe interviewed the Ground Zero Mosque guy, the imam who wanted to build the Ground Zero Mosque. Protesters outside the event that I just happened. And you know, I can’t help but believe that at the end of it, the imam left having heard peace from Gabe to him. The last thing Gabe said—you know, Gabe, you know, I don’t know the man, but you know, he sends his kids now to a classical Christian school. I’m not trying to demean him, but I’m saying that in the context of this event, he framed the discussion with the Imam by talking about the Crusades to us first. That’s where he began to talk about the history of Muslims and Christians was the Crusades.

So he framed it interestingly and then at the end he told the Imam, “We support your work. We have a few theological differences. We support your work.” The Imam must have left feeling that he had been spoken peace to from this gathering. And we just aren’t supposed to do that. Jesus doesn’t go to his opponents, to the ones who would be persecuting and killing his people and speak peace to them.

Now we want to bring them to peace through the proclamation of the gospel. Rick McKinley at the pregathering of Q, at Mago Day Tuesday afternoon, said that, you know, as we intersect with the city, we have to recognize that, you know, most people today don’t feel guilty. So you can’t really address their guilt. And I thought to myself, well, they probably don’t feel guilty because we’re never telling them that they’re guilty. Who would tell them that they’re violating God’s law? Their hearts, their consciences, of course, are hardened. And if they don’t hear the message that they’re supposed to bow the knee to Jesus Christ and that their sexuality, their political action, everything that they do is supposed to be brought in submission to Jesus—well, you know, why would they feel guilty if we don’t bring them that message?

Part of who we are is an offense. Christians are an offense to the world. And when we seek peace by speaking peace instead of actually seeking God’s blessing in the city in conformity to his word, we don’t do what this text is about. Jesus speaks peace to his people, right? He will speak peace to his people and to his saints, not indiscriminate speaking of peace to people. We’re to speak peace from our hearts, of course. And by the way, in that same verse, that talks about speaking peace to his people and to his saints, and even there it goes on to say, “But let them not turn back to folly.”

So if you turn back to folly, now you’re not the ones who are hearing the message of peace from God. We should speak peace to those who have sinned by helping them to come to confession of their sin and repentance. I was told at this event that Sam Adams had repented over his escapade with the underage boy. But then I heard the individual account of his meeting with significant Christian leader—two hours praying, etc. And I don’t think it was—I think repentance probably isn’t the right word. I mean I think he certainly was troubled by the event, but he continues, of course, to have a homosexual partner. And so you know, speaking peace means bringing people to an awareness of their sin and confessing that sin. As we speak peace to those who are forgiven of their sins through biblical repentance.

And so we speak peace to one another on that basis. And finally, let me just say that, you know, another part of Jesus speaking peace—either immediately or immediately and us speaking peace to one another—in letting this text tell us who we are as Christians when we go to each other in fear and doubt—the other side of it is we have to hear peace from those that speak it.

You know, part of the paraclete—Jesus, the indwelling of the Trinity, the gifting of one another that goes on in the Trinity. There’s no selfishness, right? They’re giving to one another. But they’re also getting from one another. And it’s a lot easier for a lot of people to give than it is to receive. To receive means things that we don’t really want to enter into. Sometimes we have needs, etc. So I would say it’s important as well to speak peace to each other this week, but it’s important to receive peace from one another when they speak it to us.

These disciples are models for us because Jesus spoke peace to them and they came to peace. Now you know, they were still behind locked doors a week later, but they’re models for us in the ability to receive peace from Jesus. And so, you know, I hope that this week might be a reminder to us. This text will be to speak peace to one another, to speak it discriminately, not indiscriminately—not to those who have turned away to folly or who haven’t come to submission of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no peace for the wicked. God makes that quite clear in the scriptures. Why? If we’re going to be like Jesus in speaking peace, why would we speak it to people that don’t have peace? I mean, and that God doesn’t want them to have peace. He wants them to be troubled until they come to repentance and to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive the peace of forgiven sins. So we’re to do that and we’re to receive peace from one another.

May the Lord God grant us this week that we would put this into practice in our lives, not be like the fools that heard and walked away and said, “Well, that’s interesting.” But those who hear, may the Lord God each this week, may God give you an opportunity where you think it’s right, the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and may you submit to that prompting to speak peace to another Christian this week. And may you, as those bring the message of Jesus’s peace to you, to release you from fear and doubts—or the way we pull away from our responsibilities—receive that word of peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.

So in both accounts, in that third slot, right, new life coming, the world is being filled—we have Jesus speaking peace or coming rather. And then in the fourth slot, peace is the central message of what the new world is all about. It’s at the center of both messages. The fifth slot is common as well, as we talked about. In the first account when he had said this, he actually showed them his hands and his side. In the second account he speaks to Thomas, but he again tells them to put—again it’s related to the hands and side of Jesus, not feet by the way, which we sang about earlier. Should probably change that song, remove the foot reference because it’s not there.

But in any event, so that’s what Jesus does is he accommodates. He takes his statement of peace and brings demonstration to them of why they should have peace, right? He speaks peace, but he brings then evidence, we could say, of why they should be at peace. Yeah, I know you think I’m a spirit, but actually I have a body here. It’s a spiritual body, but I’m not a ghost. This isn’t some kind of dream or something. And so when we speak peace, to accompany it by evidences of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in the world is a good thing. It’s a good thing.

And then the disciples are glad when they saw the Lord in the sixth slot. True man, man created on the sixth day and redeemed man, new man here in that sixth slot is glad. And in matching this then is Thomas answering Jesus, “My Lord and my God.” Now this is really nice. These structures like this kind of show us things that we wouldn’t normally think of coupling together. Do you want to be glad? That’s what we want. We all want to be happy, right? Well, this says that the way you become happy is to acknowledge Jesus Christ as your Lord and your God.

Thomas doesn’t say, “Oh, I see you’re the Lord and you’re the God. You’re my Lord. You’re my God.” And God would hear us speak. Hear the speaking of peace to us from Jesus. And he would see the evidences of Jesus’s work. And then we would respond with a personal affirmation that we’re going to follow him in everything we do. Remember that great multitude in Revelation 7—I at least think there’s at least application, if not primary interpretation of the text—that’s us here on earth surrounding the throne of God, serving him night and day, praising him with everything that we do.

Jesus is our Lord and our God 24/7. And so if you want joy, if you want gladness, it’s related to an acknowledgement, as Thomas acknowledged, that Jesus is my Lord. He’s the one that’s going to take care of me. My God, my strong one, my defense in times of trouble, not my own political abilities to defend myself. God is my strong one. He’ll be my defender. God is my Lord. He’ll take care of me. He’s my shepherd. He’s my king. He’s my Father.

And so that is related in the text to this sixth slot of the gladness of the disciples. And then the seventh slot, of course, I’ve already referenced this. Jesus then commissions them in the first account by sending them. Now there is the saying of Jesus. There is an underlined section, an action that he does in between his sayings. So maybe you don’t buy the matching up of the seventh section. That’s okay. But Jesus commissions his people, shows us that they’re new creation, empowers them by the Holy Spirit. And in the matching seventh slot with Thomas, Jesus says, “You’ve believed because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

I think that’s really a better interpretation of the text. He’s not asking him. He’s telling him, “You believe because you’ve seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Brothers and sisters, that’s you and me. And the account with Thomas—that particular matching account—there’s a commissioning, but there’s a blessing and benediction of empowerment for that commissioning. If we put these two accounts together, Jesus speaks peace to you, but by the end of the text he speaks blessing to you, now and then he says that you know there are many other things written, but these have been written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And you, so it’s the application of it, the appropriation of it for ourselves that Jesus wants us to have here.

Now let me relate this back to last week’s message and the conclusion of last week’s message. We stopped last week. We went through Matthew 27 and 28 and what we saw was the conclusion, of course, was the great commission. And the conclusion here is a blessing and benediction, peace to us, the empowerment of us to release people from sins and to retain sins. And then in relationship to that with Thomas, you know, he says that these are written that you might—well, actually to us—that you might have life, right? That you might live in this.

Life for the Christian is being empowered by God’s Spirit to work out the great commission in the world. What is the great commission though? That’s the question. What’s the great commission? What’s the purpose that God is accomplishing in the world? And one of the exciting things about the Q conference was the very first speaker. He said, “What if your vocation is not incidental to the mission of God in the world but that your vocation is the mission of God in the world.”

Okay. So what if your vocation is not incidental to it, somehow, but it is the mission of God in the world? Now what does that mean? It means that once we become—and this we’ve taught this at this church for thirty years but probably not very well at times. And I’ve struggled to find ways to really get this across. But you remember the offering system? Yeah, there’s a purification offering. It takes care of our sins. But then there’s other things going on. There’s the transformation through the peace offering or through the ascension offering. There’s the bringing of tribute to God in the midst of that system—meaning we’ve worked all of this and bring it to him in a portion of it to indicate our work.

I don’t believe from one sense, from one perspective, yeah, this is true. But we were sitting around afterwards talking about this man’s speech at a table, and I was—there was a young man there who was part-time pastor and part-time medical salesman, seller of medical goods and equipment. I said, I thought that was really important what the first speaker said about vocation being the mission of God in the world. He says, yeah, we have to be really honest in our dealings and I got to put in a hard day’s—a good day’s work. Got to be diligent. And I want to be kind to the people I interact with.

I said, “All that’s true, right? That’s true. We want to do that. It’s part of what we do. It’s part of our vocation and it’s part of our occupations as well. But that’s not what the speaker was talking about.” What the speaker was saying was that when you sell a piece of medical equipment to somebody, it has a purpose. It is the mission of God in the world because that medical—how is it that? Well, the medical equipment is going to be used to help somebody be healthy who can go out and build houses, build beautiful structures, build beautiful churches, create gardens, create beauty in the world.

If what we see in Matthew 28 and in John 20 is a new creation with a new Adam with new life being breathed in—if Adam’s task was not just to go about things in an ethical way, Adam’s task was to exercise the cultural mandate, was to follow the instructions, the command he had to exercise dominion in the world and to beautify it, exercise dominion, to subdue it, to make it beautiful, to take the garden imagery and go down those rivers and change the face of Arakis into a beautiful garden. Dune reference for those of you—that don’t change it into a beautiful world. That’s why God put man here. And for all I know, it’s not restricted to the world. It may go out to the cosmos.

We saw some beautiful pictures at the gathering from the Hubble telescope. You know, billions and billions of stars, billions of planets. Well, maybe that’s where we’re going, is to beautify that, too. I don’t know. But we get it wrong when we say that God’s purpose is to save the lost. If by that we mean that what we’re doing here is just saving sinners in the sense of bringing them to forgiveness of their sins and acceptance by God—that’s not why you’re here. You’re here today because God saved you for a particular purpose.

That purpose is to exercise occupation and vocation in all the world as his mission to transform this world, to beautify it and make it better than it was when God put us here on this earth to carry out that cultural or dominion mandate. Do you understand the significance of that?

I’ve got five kids. I’ve got two, you know, in-laws—you know, I’ve got two sons-in-law and they’re all doing really different things. One of them—we don’t know what she’s going to do yet, Charity. But you know I’ve got two sons-in-law, for instance. And one of them, you know, writes algorithms so that devices can interpret or hear human speech in a context of backgrounds. And one of the specific things that his algorithms have been used for is a little bear that Hallmark makes so that a guy can sit there and read to his child or a mom can, and when particular words are heard by the chip that he helped design the algorithm for, it can then—the bearer will then speak as the book is being read. The bear will join the conversation.

So what he’s doing is creating a device to bond parents with children and to give them a nice time together of embodiedness. That’s a cool thing to do. God wants, as part of the beautification of the world, he wants relationships between parents and children which are broken in the fall to be restored. And I’ve got, you know, one son-in-law doing that. I’ve got another son-in-law who fixes your cars. And if you didn’t have a car, if Jonathan didn’t have a car that ran, he couldn’t go down to the place where he writes these algorithms and that parent and child wouldn’t be bonded in the same way that they’re bonded now because of his work. You see?

I’ve got another son who’s in, you know, works at Daimler, Northwest Truck or whatever it’s called, Daimler Corporation that makes trucks, big trucks I assume. And these trucks are used to transport things around so that Mike can get his car parts, I suppose, and so that Jonathan can do his stuff and these bears can be taken to people and all kinds of other things that trucks are used for. And these trucks are an essential part of the dominion fulfillment of God, that we’re beautifying and changing the world.

That’s what he does. He’s a little cog in a huge corporation. But when he goes to work, I hope he has the sense that his occupation, part of his vocation, his calling is his occupation. And that occupation is not incidental to the mission of God in the world. It is the mission of God in the world. It is exactly what God saved us to accomplish.

When Jesus told the disciples the great commission, he didn’t go say, “Well, bring people to a forgiveness of their sins and then just let them wait around until they go to heaven.” No, he said, “Disciple the nations, baptizing them outside in transformation and teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you.” What was the first thing God commanded us? Exercise dominion in the world. The dominion mandate, the cultural mandate in Genesis 1 and 2. That’s the first commandment of man. That’s the prime commandment. That’s what we got back to now through the coming of Jesus Christ. That is the great commission.

I’ve got a couple of daughters. I’ve got another son who works at Wells Fargo. And you know, if people don’t have mediums of exchange and money to create the transactions, the trucks aren’t going to run. The cars won’t be fixed. The little storybook won’t be read by mom and dad to their child, and that good relationship won’t happen. The child will grow up alienated and he’ll be all kinds of crying, I don’t know. But you get the point, right? So Ben’s work is essential.

Now in each of these vocations, of course, they’re going about it in a Christian way. They’re trying to build relationships. They’re trying to witness to people and help people’s broken lives also. And that’s an important part of their vocation, their calling. But their occupational side of that is essential to the mission of God in the world as well. In fact, it’s probably the central thing. We bring people to Christ. We fix their brokenness so that they can then go out and beautify the world.

I have two daughters and you know, what’s their deal here? Well, you know, some people work at these places that make chip fabrication places, right? And they clean up the machinery and they make these machines and they make sure they can make these chips really good. And I know nothing about this industry, but I assume there’s these things going on, these processes where these things—particular component elements make these chips, and these chips then become part of everything I’ve described in our day and age. And they, you know, there are people that maintain these things. So there are devices now that create integrated circuits that help form all kinds of other things. And that’s what my two daughters do. They primarily—now this isn’t all, but their general occupation is caring for the most important former of the world there is: people.

They take little—well, they make little babies first of all. They bring them into the world and then they raise them up. And they’re creating someone who will go off to Daimler or the software factory or the car repair place or the bank or whatever it is, and they’ll—they’re literally forming souls to fulfill the mission of God in the world. And I’ve said this before, I don’t think people believe me, but I think that the soul you’re creating is a lot better and more prepared for dominion work if he gets his diaper changed regularly, okay? You spend fifteen, twenty years forming this soul that you’re going to launch into the world. That isn’t important work. I would say that’s probably the most important work—is to form reformers right now.

There’s other work than that, too. My wife went through all of that and now she’s still involved in forming grandkids as I am. But she also now in the providence of God loves to meditate on literary structures of the scriptures and comes up with—it’s beautiful what she does. Now she’s doing some other things and she has this other vocation now or occupation as part of her calling. And as a result of that it helps me tremendously. I think it’s going to be helpful to other people. I should confer with Jim Jordan. He’s quite interested in just bugging me to get her—get him her stuff on Isaiah.

So you know, I’m not just saying that women their primary deal, their primary is formers. But there’s other formers—but there’s other things that they end up doing in the world and that is their mission in the world. That’s God’s mission in the world through them.

So you know, it’s quite important for us to recognize that this peace that Jesus speaks to us—the assurance of forgiveness that—you know, are you listening now? Means to us today: are you listening to the fact that God has brought you into the new creation, he’s restored you and forgiven you through the work of Jesus Christ, and he’s equipped you now to change the face of the world, to exercise the dominion mandate, to subdue the earth, to beautify it and to make beautiful the raw materials that God has left us in the context of this world.

Are you listening? Do you see your vocation, your occupation that way? God wants you to see it that way. Your pastors want you to want you to see it that way. Why am I preaching on the Ten Commandments, old stuff from the Old Testament? Because that’s how we’re going to fulfill all this stuff is understanding how God’s work, how God accomplishes his work by seeing, for instance, that the way we’re going to have more beautiful cities is not through eurocratic confiscatory taxation, but rather it’s acknowledging the property rights that God enshrines in his Ten Commandments. We don’t know how to do that task apart from the law of God.

Now the Spirit of God is what empowers us to keep that law. But that’s why we do that. That’s why we speak about that stuff is to do that.

Let me say one last thing about women. By the way, why is Eve given to Adam? She’s a helper fit for him to accomplish his task. That means more than having babies. She is his helper in the thorough sense of the word. And if nothing else, I, you know, I think that part of God’s mission in the world is wives understanding their husband’s vocation, occupation, and coming alongside and encouraging that and helping them to accomplish that in a better sense.

I think, you know, the Q gathering was interesting, diverse. I was at the gathering—I would go from exhilaration to fear of what is going to happen with evangelicalism moment to moment throughout the thing. But you know, back in the early 80s when this church and others got involved in Christian political action, I said then there were two things, two questions. Will Christians get involved? And will they get involved in a distinctively biblical way? Q-like events, other like events around the country, city transformation movements, serve the city, the work of Kevin Paul, the work of other folks in our area and around the country, and the Q gathering itself means that yes, Christians are going to polish the brass on what they used to think of as a sinking ship.

Yes, they will get involved. The second question is: how biblically will that involvement be? And to the extent that it’s formed by the great commission, by us discipling the nations, by teaching them to observe all things Jesus has told us, to the extent that we do that, then transformation will happen. But to the extent that all we do is get involved as kind of a metaeurosocialistic all that stuff going on—no.

So praise God that evangelicalism is polishing brass on what they used to think of as a sinking ship. May they recognize now. May they hear what God is saying to us, that the world desperately needs us to help them fix what is broken because all they do is break more things in trying to fix what’s broken. May the Lord God use each of us in small significant ways of vocation and occupation this week. And may we recognize the significance of each of our lives.

We are those who have been given these accounts so that we might believe them and that we might get up tomorrow morning and recognize, you know, that our vocation is the mission of God to the world.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that we meet on the first and eighth day to hear his peace to us and his empowerment for the task you’ve given us to do. Bless us in it this week. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.