John 20:24-28 But Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples kept telling him, We have seen the Lord! But he said to them, Unless I see in His hands the marks made by the nails and put my finger into the nail prints, and put my hand into His side, I will never believe [it]. Eight days later His disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, though they were behind closed doors, and stood among them and said, Peace to you! Then He said to Thomas, Reach out your finger here, and see My hands; and put out your hand and place [it] in My side. Do not be faithless and incredulous, but [stop your unbelief and] believe! Thomas answered Him, My Lord and my God! 
	In this word picture, we have the scene of one who becomes a believer, one whose faith is tested, tried, and fulfilled in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Many have branded Thomas as weak in faith, as stubbornly unbelieving, as incredulous that the Lord could be alive. He had seen Christ crucified. He had born the pain of the tremendous loss of His Teacher, His Mentor, His Friend, watching Him nailed to the cross. Tears and anguish must have coursed through all these men, Christ’s disciples, and Thomas was probably still caught in that sense of utter dread and hopelessness. Everything He had desired and planned for was now dead with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Being completely shattered, he must have been caught in the misery of trying to build a wall of protection around himself. He had been immensely crushed and was most likely protecting what little hope was still left to him. He heard the other disciples’ telling of seeing the resurrected Christ and in his despair refused to believe until he saw Jesus, Himself. He doubted the validity of the testimony that he was hearing and wanted to be absolutely sure, positively convinced in the wounds of the One, he had so loved and followed. 
It is the same scene that we each face in our decision to come unto the Lord. We are put into that room with Thomas, filled with doubts and disbelief as we are told about the risen Lord Jesus Christ. We carry the same sense of unless He shows Himself to me, I cannot believe. There may be some in this room struggling with this disbelief, only here because it is the thing to do on Easter morning. Each of us is faced with the longing to know for sure, beyond any doubt that what we are being told about the Lord is true. We want to know that He was resurrected and is alive today. In our hopelessness, we too build those walls around ourselves. We try to protect what little we have, those fragments of self preservation with which we can shield our broken hearts and dead spiritual corpse. 
Just like Thomas, we stand before the assembled witnesses and proclaim that unless we see the Lord, unless we touch his wounds, we cannot believe. It is too fantastic, too unscientific, too against anything we know to be true. Our entire being is raked with doubts, doubts about Christ, doubts about life, doubts about death, and doubts about truth. Let us never judge Thomas, lest we judge ourselves. Any one of us would have been like him in his disbelief. Every one of us was in or is in his exact position before the Lord. I will only believe when I see Him, the crucified and resurrected One. 
This is when the Holy Spirit has done His good work in our lives. If we weren’t before Him, if we weren’t caring to find out the truth, if we weren’t hoping for something to be revealed of God, we would not even be in the place that Thomas and ourselves occupy. We would be outside the closed doors with the rest of the people, caring little for what is happening within. We would be like the chief priests and officers, denying that there was even a shred of evidence after Jesus of Nazareth. 
But praise the Lord, we are within that room, we are seeking to know the truth about Christ, we are keeping that flicker of hope alive within our beings. The Holy Spirit has drawn us unto Himself in the preparatory work that is required to bring us unto Christ. We are there, in body and soul, in order to find life for our spirit, deadened in its sin and trespass. We are waiting for something or someone to bring life into our shattered beings. That is when we hear the voice of Christ, Peace to you... Reach out your finger here, and see My hands; and put out your hand and place [it] in My side. Do not be faithless and incredulous, but [stop your unbelief and] believe!
Peace to you… Oh the joy that resonates in our hearts as our spirits awaken in the springtime of our spiritual life. We hear, we see, we believe. With our hearts, we put ourselves before the Lord, most likely in a prostrate manner of unworthiness to be so loved by God. We sense ourselves being washed clean forever by the blood of the Lamb. The chains and shackles of sin are shattered and drop from our arms, backs, and hearts. We sense the freedom and joy that is ours in Christ Jesus, and sense His life surging through every fiber of our beings. Peace to you. We hear the words of Christ recorded in John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. 
Let us give the honor to Jesus as Thomas did. My Lord and my God! Thomas may have doubted the witnesses, but he fully honored the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ with that statement of Christ’s majesty. Thomas is the only disciple, recorded in scripture, to personally address Jesus Christ as God. Peter calls Him the Christ, the Son of God, but only Thomas declares you are God! All the others addressed Christ reverently as Lord, but only Thomas gave forth verbally unto Christ, the absolute recognition of His deity. 
To quote Matthew Henry concerning this reality, He consented to him as his Lord and his God. In faith there must be the consent of the will to gospel terms, as well as the assent of the understanding to gospel truths. We must accept of Christ to be that to us which the Father hath appointed him. My Lord refers to Adonai - my foundation and stay; my God to Elohim - my prince and judge. God having constituted him the umpire and referee, we must approve the choice, and entirely refer ourselves to him. This is the vital act of faith, He is mine… end of quote  As we read in Song of Solomon  2:16 My beloved is mine and I am his!...(from Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: New Modern Edition, Electronic Database. Copyright © 1991 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.)
	This is the same truth as seen by King David, those so many centuries earlier, Ps 16:1-2 KEEP and protect me, O God, for in You I have found refuge, and in You do I put my trust and hide myself. I say to the Lord, You are my Lord; I have no good beside or beyond You. 
	This morning, this Easter morning over two thousand years from the time that this world tried to silence the Word on that cross, let us celebrate the truth. Jesus of Nazareth is not just a man in history. He is not just a good man who was unjustly crucified. He came with that purpose in His heart. He condescended to become man for our sake. The Eternal, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent God, Creator of all, became man in order to save us. He took on human flesh in order to meet the needs of humanity, lost in its wailing throes of spiritual death, decay, and corruption. He died for our sins in order to bury those sins in that tomb of death. Then, gloriously, triumphantly, and majestically, Jesus Christ arose in absolute victory over death from that grave and He brought us up from that grave with Himself. 
He is the Word of God made flesh; He is the Son of God. He is the Christ! He is God Almighty! We live because He died and rose again. Let us not be unbelieving in our hearts. Let us not be just casually aware of the story of Christ on the cross. Let us proclaim with Thomas from the highest mountaintops that Jesus Christ is both Lord and God! That He died and rose again and now lives and reigns supremely forever more!
	Peace to you! Then He said to Thomas, Reach out your finger here, and see My hands; and put out your hand and place [it] in My side. Do not be faithless and incredulous, but [stop your unbelief and] believe! Thomas answered Him, My Lord and my God!