A Message From The Apostle Thomas(From our 4-20-25 Worship)

In this episode, I pretend to be the apostle Thomas preaching one year after the resurrection of Jesus.Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/yujK2-wkO_8Transcript: Shalom. Shalom, brothers and sisters, grace and Peace to each and every one of you.If you don't know my, my name is Thomas and I don't bring this up to. To build myself up in any way, but I was blessed to be one of the 12 that got to walk with our Lord.Today is an encouraging day. It's the Lord's day, and we get to worship the true and living God of of heaven. We know him and we love him, and I believe the house is a little fuller today than it normally is, but.I don't want you this morning to, to look at me and build me up because I was one of our Lord's apostles. I'm not perfect. I never will be, but it's hard for me to remember sometimes that some of you, even just a short while ago that it was that, that you didn't get to walk with her. Lord. Yes. You didn't get to see him, you didn't get to hear him with your own ears.So today, I, I stand not before you as someone who better than you or someone who has something internally inside of me that's better than you, that you can't ever arise to. I simply stand before you today because I want you to be able to see our Lord and Savior with your, the eyes of your heart, and I want you to be able to hear him.With the ears of your mind, I want you to be able to experience him like we were blessed to be able to experience him. You know, some people, some people make fun of me. They wanna call me Doubting Thomas, and I don't really think that name fits. But when our Lord died on that cross, it shook me to the core, just like it did all the apostles.And I'm not proud of those days, but I hope that what you can get from our time together today is that even, even in the darkest place that you are, even with the biggest doubts that you may have, you can still search out the truth. He was a dark tie. My heart was broken, but I still sought for the truth.I don't know. I guess my mind has always just worked that way. I needed to know all the details I needed to understand. Maybe you can understand my desire to understand. But before we get too far towards the end of the story, I guess I need to back up just a little bit and talk to you about. Kind of the beginning of my walk with Jesus.I remember it like it was yesterday. It was an early, early in the morning and, and several disciples, me and several others had been following him for a long time. Usually in those days, you would get up and you'd rummage around and try to get everything ready for the day and, and then at some point we would take off.We'd go here or there, or listen to him teach. But this morning was different. This morning as I lay asleep, I was awakened by a commotion, and as I opened my eyes and I could still barely see, I, I behold Jesus. And I didn't, I didn't know what was going on, but I could tell that he had been through something.His appearance was kind of disheveled. You could tell by his clothes that he hadn't been to bed, he had not slept, and he was still in the same clothes from the day before. We didn't know it at the time, but he had went up on that mountain that night and he had prayed all night. He prayed all night because he was about to appoint his 12 apostles.And there was a great number of us disciples there, but lo and behold, he picked me and 11 others to be his closest apostles to follow him. And I, I can tell you, nobody was more shocked than I was. I mean, I guess if I was picking apostles, I, I wouldn't have even picked us. But you see, Jesus always had that ability.He always could see beyond what other people could see. He could see inside to hearts and potentials. So I didn't argue when he asked me, will you follow me? Yes, yes, I will. And for the next couple years we did our very best to just soak it up to hang on every word to. To take in every lesson that he taught us.And I would love to tell you that we were perfect students, but we weren't. I'll never forget the day we were walking up the road, and I don't know how the conversation got started, but somehow or another the conversation landed on who was gonna be the greatest apostle in the kingdom. I didn't say too awful much, but.I'll admit to you, I wanted to have, I wanted to rank above the rest of them. And I'll never forget that afternoon, that evening when we, when we got to where we were going, Jesus looked at us and said, what were y'all talking about going up the road? My heart sank like a little child. It'd been caught doing something wrong.But even with all our failings, even with all our failings and all our mess ups. He still loved us. He still encouraged us. He still poured into us, I think back on so many times that he could have been frustrated and just throw his hands up and say, you know what, I'm done.But he didn't do that to me. He didn't do it to any of us, and I'm thankful because that's the kind of God that we have. That's the kind of God that we serve now, I think back to all the years and all the stories, and I could probably sit here all day and tell you one after another after another, but I don't want to keep us here all day.So you think about as we get close to that final Passover, things really become intense and chaotic. I.You know, we were in the temple one day and he began to teach and they literally, they literally took up stones and tried to stone Jesus. And we, we basically run out of town for our lives, dragging Jesus with us, trying to keep him from, from getting killed. And we were outside the city for a while, but then one day the news came that Lazarus was sick, sick unto death.And we all figured that, that Jesus was going to take out right then and, and go heal him. We figured that's what he was gonna do, but we didn't wanna go back to Jerusalem. We, we were afraid that, that we die if we went back. But Jesus did the most confusing thing instead of just loading up right then and saying, guys, pack your bags.Let's go. He sat and he waited and he waited. We kept kind of whispering and murmuring among ourselves, or we're not gonna go and help Lazarus, Lazarus. And Mary. And Martha. Their home was just a couple miles from Jerusalem, and they so many times had opened their doors to us so many times they had refreshed us and helped us in any way that they could, and we're just sitting here not doing anything.And then the news came that Lazarus had died.And at the time that we thought that we would now just move on and do something else, Jesus shocked us all. He said, we must go back to Judea. We must go to Lazarus house. And we are like, wait a minute. We don't understand. Not to mention that we're scared for our lives. But he's talking about that Lazars only sleeping and, and he's the, the resurrection.And we just, we didn't get it. But as he pushed us on, we're gonna go back. I, we don't, I don't care what the threat is. Then in one of my few moments where I just kind of blurted something out, I, I couldn't help it. I. I thought if Jesus is willing to go back and to face Jerusalem and possibly death then, then I said, well, why don't we just go with him and, and that way we all can die.Now, I admit that when I thought it in my head, it sounded better than what come outta my mouth. But my, my thought was, is it wasn't fair for Jesus to go alone and us not be willing to go with it. Him,but of course as so often it was during those days that our idea, our thought of what was about to happen next was wrong. We went back to marry Martha's house and we found them weeping and our Lord asks, show, show me where you laid him. And I'll never, I'll never forget the way he cried with him, the way h...