Then Thomas (called “twin”) said to his fellow disciples,
John 11:16
“Let’s go too so that we may die with Him.”
This is an easy verse to overlook. It comes after Jesus has told the disciples that He is going to Bethany in Judea to “wake up” Lazarus. They warn Him that there are people in Judea seeking to kill Him. (Like He didn’t already know that!) They assume this mission to Bethany is unnecessary because, as they say, “if Lazarus is asleep, he will get well.” Jesus has to clarify that Lazarus is, in fact, dead.
So from the disciples point of view, Jesus is headed out on a suicide mission to try to awaken a dead man. This is the context for Thomas’s words.
It is a testament to Thomas’s devotion to Jesus that he was willing and felt compelled to go along on a journey with Jesus that he felt sure would result in all of their deaths. Or was Thomas being sarcastic? We know from the events after Jesus’s resurrection that Thomas was the one who required tangible proof that Jesus was really risen from the dead.
But one of the Twelve, Thomas (called “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, “If I don’t see the mark of the nails in His hands, put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will never believe!”
John 20:24-25
The suggestion that they accompany Jesus on the trip to Bethany also seems to include a sense of pessimism characteristic of Thomas. By this time, Thomas had personally witnessed Jesus do many miracles. He’d seen Jesus walk on water, heal the sick, give sight to the blind, cast out demons, cure paralysis, restore a withered hand, feed thousands with only a serving or two of food (not once but twice!), and evade those seeking to kill Him repeatedly. Thomas had seen all this with his own eyes! Yet despite seeing all that, still Thomas thought himself capable of predicting what would happen. He was sure that if Jesus went to Bethany, He and all with Him, would be killed.
I wonder if Jesus or anyone else who heard Thomas’s words challenged him for this prideful attitude? Did anyone say
“Hey, Thomas, don’t be so negative? Where’s your faith? Your predictions don’t work when you’re talking about the Messiah. Remember how He…”
Scripture doesn’t tell us but I wonder. Of course, we do know that Thomas continued to doubt until he touched the Savior’s wounds with his own hands. That means even after Thomas saw Jesus raise Lazarus from death, Thomas still doubted!
How often have I been like Thomas? It’s so easy to look at a situation and think I know what will happen or look back on the past and think the outcome could have been different. I hear people say things like “if only I hadn’t made this mistake or committed that sin, my life would have turned out so much better than it did”. But really, would it? You can’t know. For all you know it might have turned out worse in a million possible ways! Or we say “if I hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt” or “if I hadn’t gone to the doctor when I did” or whatever as if we can really know what would have happened. People survive without seatbelts sometimes, and sometimes they don’t. People survive without doctors sometimes, and sometimes they don’t. You simply cannot know how it would have worked out no matter how sure you are that you do know. And you cannot know how things in the future will work out either. To assume either of these things based on our own knowledge contradicts scripture.
Psalm 139 tells us that all of our days are written before we even exist. Job 1:21 and 1 Samuel 2:6 declare that God alone is in control of when each person dies. And in Deuteronomy, God Himself, speaking through Moses, says
“See now that I alone am He; there is no God but me. I bring death and I give life; I wound and I heal. No one can rescue anyone from my power.”
Deuteronomy 32:39
These scriptures and others like them make me think it is foolish to believe I can predict the outcome of any situation. I do not know what God has planned and His power is infinite. His will is sovereign. I can try, of course, but God’s will is going to prevail.
Knowing this could lead me to a sort of fatalism if I let it. If the outcome is controlled by God, as scripture clearly states it is, then what difference does it make what I do? The answer, of course, is that I belong to God. My every action should be motivated by the fact that I am His! If I am His, I show my love for Him by obeying Him. My actions shouldn’t be driven by my desire to create the outcome I think is best. My actions should be controlled by obedience to the Father and deference to His will. He knows everything. I do not.
We humans are bad at predicting the future. Try this. For the next seven days, write down your predictions about how things in your life will turn out. It can be completely ordinary things like what time you will have lunch, what you’ll eat for dinner, or how your evening will be spent or things like which team will win a sports event or how some political thing will go. So many times what looks like the inevitable outcome isn’t what happens at all. Unexpected things happen every day – accidents, people reacting differently than we anticipated (have you ever gotten unexpected forgiveness? or anger?). Car accidents, broken appliances, weather events, various surprises both pleasant and unpleasant change the way events unfold all the time. Add to that the fact that I don’t even know what I don’t know!
Thomas expected to go to Bethany, encounter angry Pharisees and Sadducees, and watch as they imprisoned or killed Jesus and then came after the disciples next. But that is not at all what happened! Instead, Thomas was privileged to witness Jesus’s biggest miracle yet when He raised Lazarus from death back to life. Thomas definitely didn’t have a dead guy getting up and walking out of a tomb on his BINGO card for that day.
So if we can’t predict the future, God knows everything, and God’s will is sovereign, what is our best course of action? Seems to me the smartest thing to do is to obey whatever God tells me to do even when I don’t understand it. Think of it this way, who do you want driving the car, the One who knows where you’re supposed to be going and how to navigate every obstacle along the way? Or yourself who has no idea what the complete plan is, the destination, or where the potholes are and is wearing a blindfold? It should be an easy choice but our pride keeps wanting to put us back in the driver’s seat. Don’t let it.
a surrendered life 