Sermons on Biblical Characters | Page 4

You have moved to strange places. Your life has been thrown in great cities. And you have missed the fellowships of yesterday out of your life. It may be that to-day you are no longer found regularly among the worshipers in God's House. You are missing something. Don't deceive yourself. As the saints of God meet together Jesus still manifests Himself. And seeing Him, there comes to us a new joy and peace, a new sense of the purpose and worthfulness of life. Seeing Him there comes to us a new power for battle and for conquest.
But if we have missed Him, whatever else we have won, we have missed about all that is worth while. Oh, there is one thing of which I am absolutely sure, and that is that if I have Jesus, if His presence is a gladsome reality to my heart, nothing else matters much. But if I miss Him everything goes wrong and everything is disappointing. Darius is in the palace and Daniel in the den of lions, but there is restlessness and wretchedness in the palace and peace and joy in the lions' den. It is the presence of God that makes the difference.
Thomas, because he missed receiving, also missed the privilege of giving. When the other disciples came from that meeting, how radiant were their faces! What a spring they had in their step! What joy bringers they were! What a marvelously thrilling story they had to tell! Freely had they received and freely did they give.
But Thomas. He had received nothing, therefore he had nothing to give. He was a disappointment to his Master. For a whole week he went doubting Him, mistrusting Him, when it was his privilege to have walked into His fellowship and been as sure of His reality and of His nearness as he was of his own existence.
In the second place, he missed the privilege of helping his fellow disciples. What an encouragement he might have been to them! How it would have strengthened the faith of those Christians who had not yet seen the vision of their risen Lord to have seen the light even upon the gloomy face of Thomas! But Thomas missed the privilege of giving. I cannot rob myself without robbing you. I cannot starve myself spiritually without helping to starve you. I cannot sin alone. If I do that which lowers my spiritual vitality, by that very act I help to lower yours also. "Thomas was not with them when Jesus came," and he missed a double blessing, the privilege of receiving and the privilege of giving.
But Thomas, in spite of his failure, succeeded in the end. Tradition tells us that he died a martyr for his love and devotion to his Lord. How was he saved? How was he brought to the joy and usefulness that are born of certainty? Thomas, you know, was a doubter. A very thoroughgoing doubter he was. How then, in spite of his doubts, did he find his way into the fulness of the Light?
First, Thomas was not proud of his doubts. He did not look upon them as blessings or as treasures. There is a type of doubter to-day who does. I have heard men speak of "my doubts" as if they were very priceless things. But no man is of necessity the richer for his doubts. I know that doubt may become a doorway to a larger faith. Still, I repeat, no man is of necessity the richer for them. For instance, no man is the richer because of his social doubts. The man who does not believe in his fellow man is poor indeed. The man who has doubts about the inmates of his home suffers something of the pangs of hell. And the man who doubts God can hardly consider himself the possessor of a prize to be coveted. Thomas doubted, but he was not proud of his doubts.
Thomas was not only not proud of his doubts, but was thoroughly wretched on account of them. And being thoroughly wretched because of them, he was willing to be set right. He wanted to believe. It seems to me that any man would. Thomas was eager to be made sure that the Christ he loved was really alive. He yearned for certainty.
Thomas was not only willing, but Thomas was reasonable. When he sought to be sure of Jesus he put himself in the best possible position to learn the truth. When he wanted to be made sure of Christ he did not seek knowledge at the hands of the enemies of Christ. He did not ask information of those who were confessed strangers to Christ. So often we do. We get in the grip of doubt and straightway we turn from the fellowship of