Husband. Father. Anglican Priest.
If you have never trusted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, hear the Gospel tonight. You do not need to make yourself worthy before coming to him. You cannot. Christ has come for sinners. Repent of your sin and trust in him. Receive the mercy he has accomplished for you in his death and Resurrection.
There is also grace here. Ahaz refuses the sign, and God gives the sign anyway. The fulfillment does not depend upon the worthiness of the king. The promise does not survive because David’s descendants maintain perfect faith. The promise survives because God is faithful.
Jesus then turns the scene outward: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29, ESV). Thomas has believed after seeing, but the generations that follow the apostles will ordinarily not receive the same visible encounter.
Thomas’s words matter not because they should be ranked competitively against every other confession in Scripture, but because of where John places them. The Gospel that begins by identifying the eternal Word as God brings one of its final great scenes to an apostle addressing Jesus as God.
Lament without hope curdles into cynicism, and hope without lament becomes sentimentality. Advent teaches us to hold both together. We cry, “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1, ESV) while clinging to the promise, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5, ESV).
The kingdom has drawn near in Jesus Christ, and that means we cannot remain neutral. When the true King comes near, every rival kingdom is exposed, the kingdom of self, the kingdom of money, the kingdom of pleasure, the kingdom of political power, the kingdom of religious respectability.