Sermon for Saturday
But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. John 20:24
I had other things to do that evening, so I opted to do them instead of going to the midweek prayer meeting. I succeeded in getting my tasks done, and felt I had made the right choice. But the next day, one of the Christians called to tell me about the meeting. Instead of the prayer meeting, they had held a missionary meeting. It turned out that a missionary we had been supporting was in town for a visit and had offered to give a report. I was disappointed, because I had missed hearing the report from the missionary. But I had actually missed an even more important Person who was in attendance.
How many meetings of your Assembly does the Lord Jesus attend? According to Matthew 18:20, He is at every one of them. At most meetings, one person or another is not able to make it, because of illness, work, or being away from home. And sometimes, some feel the meeting is not as important as other things they can do. Those people miss out on the presence of the Lord. We don’t know why Thomas failed to attend the first meeting when Jesus appeared to His disciples, so we can’t cast too much criticism at him for not being there. But we can make note of what he missed by not attending. Had he known that Jesus would be there, he would undoubtedly have made a great effort to attend. If we allow the realization that the Lord Jesus is going to be at each Assembly meeting to grip us as it should, we will miss very few of those meetings.
Our text identifies Thomas as one of the twelve. He was definitely within the fellowship of that special group. He had participated in all of the activities that the disciples engaged in during Jesus’ ministry. He had taken part in the discussions during and after the crucifixion. He must surely have known all about the gathering that night. There is no reason to believe that his doubting the resurrection was something that applied to him alone. If it had been another disciple who had missed that meeting, that other disciple would probably have done the same as Thomas. So it wasn’t a matter of who missed the meeting, but it was the fact that a meeting was missed.
Missing meetings can cause us to miss out on some very important events. Like Thomas, we should have been there. – Jim MacIntosh