Welcome to our resurrection celebration.  What a beautiful day God has given us, what a wonderful gift.  And I do also want to say that you all do look really great.  Let me say, women, what you chose to wear today was the right outfit.  And no, none of you look too fat.  You all look great.  Some of you guys look a little sketchy but other than that, I want to thank all those who helped put this together.

I want to thank our Lieutenant Governor for being here today opening in prayer.  I want to thank our staff and so many volunteers that helped set this up and put this on.  I want to thank Phil Wickham and his band for coming out from San Diego to be a part of this.  I want to thank you for getting up this morning and making it a priority to worship the Lord early in the morning, to come out and give God what is rightfully due His name and that is the praise for giving us hope that we also can live again.

And because we are able to meet in a venue so nice as this and have the freedoms that we have in this nation that we often take for granted, I'm especially grateful for those men and women that wear a uniform and are representing us overseas, many of them in harm's way so that we can live freely.

I'm going to be speaking to you this morning out of the Gospel of John Chapter 20, looking at a very unique individual in the Bible by the name of Thomas.  Somebody once described a pessimist as a person who's always seasick in the voyage of life.  There were two pessimists that met at a party and instead of shaking hands, they both shook heads.  I even heard about a farmer.  He was always optimistic, always happy, always up, but he had a neighbor who is always a pessimist.

And the optimist would wake up on a day like this and say, "What a glorious, beautiful, bright sunny day."  And the pessimist would say, "I hope the sun doesn't scorch our crops."  The next day would rain and the optimist might say something like, "How good God is to give our crops a drink of water."  And the pessimist would say, "If it keeps raining, it's going to flood and we're all doomed."  

Well, this kept going on and on until one day the optimist thought, "I'm going to get this guy.  I'm going to show him something that he can't say anything bad about."  So, they both went duck hunting one day and they were in a boat and the ducks came up and they pulled their shotguns out and they fired and the ducks fell into the lake, into the swamp and the optimist told his dog to go out and get the ducks.  So, the dog of the optimist walked on top of the water to get the ducks and bring them back to the boat.

And the optimist turned to his friend the pessimist and said, "Ha!  What do you think of that?"  And the pessimist looked back at his friend and said, "He can't swim, can he?"  You know, there are some people that are just like that and it reminds me of a personality in the New Testament by the name of Thomas.

You could call him the apostle from Missouri, the Show Me state.  I won't believe it until I see it.  You see, Thomas was not with the rest of the apostles on the very first appearance that Jesus made to them in the upper room.  And so, he missed out and he missed out on all the joy.  And to Thomas, the crucifixion was the end of the road.  He thought, "This is it.  There's nothing after this.  It's all over.  

Whenever we speak of Thomas, we associate him with doubt.  In fact, we'll call people that we think are skeptical.  We'll give them the term doubting Thomas as if Thomas is somehow the patron saint of all skeptics.  Typically, when we find Thomas in the Bible, he is sort of on a downer.  He's always singing in a minor key.  He sees the dark side of life.  And we all know people that are like that.  Every time they're given any situation, they always see the dark side.  They have a skeptical personality.  You tell them something and -- like, the farmer who was a pessimist ago.

"I don't know.  I don't think it will ever work.  I wouldn't try that," on just about everything.  There was a woman named Helen Hayes.  It was her first Thanksgiving dinner that she was cooking for her family.  She had never made a turkey before.  Her mom showed her how to do it.  She went home and she announced to her family.  "Look, this is the first turkey I've ever cooked for Thanksgiving.  I think it's going to turn out good but just in case it doesn't, I don't want to hear any words from you.  If this thing is burnt or it's not right, I don't want you to say anything.  We're just going to get dressed and we're going to go head out of the door and go to a restaurant.

She went in to the kitchen to get the turkey.  She came back with the turkey and sitting at the table where her husband and her son with their coats and their hat.  Now, if this scripture we're about to read in John 20.  If this were a Winnie the Pooh episode, Thomas would be who?  Eeyore, always the donkey on a downer.  If this were a House episode, I suppose Thomas would be Dr. House, the skeptic.

If this were an American Idol episode, I guess Thomas would be Simon Cowell.  I'm going back a little bit in your episodes.  But Thomas was one of the apostles who didn't show up at the tomb on that first resurrection morning.  He didn't rise up you might say to go see if Jesus was resurrected.  But in this story, he does rise up to the occasion and he comes to believe.

So many of you have come this morning, you've already risen up out of your bed and you've come to this stadium.  And I hope that like Thomas, you rise to the occasion and that you believe in Jesus.  If you don't already, you will have an opportunity this morning before you leave this place to make peace with God and the most important decision you could ever make.

Now, looking at Thomas, there are four ways that we can rise up this morning.  Number one, we can rise up and be honest just like Thomas did.  He was an honest person.  We read this in John Chapter 20, beginning in Verse 24.  Now, Thomas called the twin, one of the 12 was not with them when Jesus came.  The other disciples therefore said to him, "We have seen the Lord."

And so he said to them, "Unless I see His hands and the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and put my hand into His side, I will not believe."  Thomas wanted something substantive to believe in.  Now, the other said, "Well, we have seen the Lord."  But Thomas couldn't be sure, yet they had seen the Lord.

They said, "These guys are so emotional.  You can't be sure that this isn't anything more than just a mystical experience."  Those thoughts were going probably through Thomas' mind.  I remember my earliest days as a Christian.  We're in college and I was surrounded by atheistic and skeptical professors and classmates and they challenged my faith.  And it sent me into a dark period, but a good period of searching and finding out, "Is this stuff really true?"

And probably, some of the apostles around Thomas began to have their own doubts as Thomas started bringing up his.  Now, let me tell you just a little about Thomas and what kind of a guy he was.  Earlier in the Bible story, when Jesus wants to go back up to Jerusalem to Judea, He makes that announcement, "Let's go back up to Jerusalem."  And some of the other apostles say, "Lord, they've tried to kill You every time You go up there.  I think we should stay right here."

It was Thomas who spoke up and said, "Let's go that we may die with Him."  What's up with that?  What kind of a positive thing is that?  "Let's go that we may die with Him"?  But that's Thomas and that shows the courage and the loyalty of this man as well as the honesty of this man.  He was never a pretender.  Then, there was the Last Supper.  When Jesus said to His disciples, "Where I am going, you know.  And the way, you know"

And they are all looking at Jesus not saying a word and Thomas pipes up and says, "Excuse me.  We have no idea where you're going and we don't know how to get there."

He was the only guy that spoke up and said that.  Negative, yes.  Pessimistic, yes, but he was an honest person.  He was in the kind that just say, "Oh well.  Okay, cool whatever."  That sounds spiritual.  There was a Sunday school teacher who is teaching her class about the Good Samaritan story in the Bible and how the man was beaten up and left by the side of the road.  

And so, she asked her class, "What would you do if you saw a man lying by the side of the road beaten and bloody?"  And one little thoughtful girl raised her hand and she said, "I think I'd throw up."  That's honesty.  Thomas was an honest person.  He wasn't faking.  Cynical?  Yes.  A little bit hard-boiled?  Yes, but honest. 

Now, here's the deal.  The apostles at this point wanted rational faith.  Not just mystical, they wanted rational faith because though they had been with Jesus, seen His miracles, heard His words, Jesus had died on a cross a few days before and everything they believed in was completely shattered.  And so, there in that upper room despondent and especially Thomas, why?  Because all of the claims that Jesus made at this point did not seem to be substantiated by rational evidence, but the resurrection changed all that

When they saw Jesus Christ alive, now they had reason, they had proof to believe.  And I want you to know something.  Christianity always appeals to the objective facts of history.  Now, someone once said, "The heart cannot delight in what the mind rejects is false."  And you should know something.  God is not asking you to take some blind leap in the dark.  He's asking you to take a balanced leap into the light and there's a big difference.

One cynic, one skeptic who came to faith wrote these words.  "I took all of the evidence that I could gather and I put it on two sides of the scales.  The scales tipped the way of Jesus being the Son of God and resurrected from the dead.  It was so overwhelming, leaning to Christ that when I became a Christian, it was a leap into the light.  It was not a leap into the darkness."  But honesty is always the first step.

If you're dealing with some doubts, investigate them.  In fact, talk to the Lord about them.  And then be honest about your life.  What about your life?  Could it be that you sense a need, that materialism or your career is not fulfilled?  Be honest about your past.  Have you done some things in your life that you are ashamed of?  Your life hasn't been all that it could be, it's not perfect.  Do you want to know that you can be forgiven?  Be honest about your desires.  Do you feel like there must be something beyond that which you've already experienced and you wish you could know what it is?  And then, be honest about your sins.

The Bible calls that confession.  And when a person is coming to forgiveness, they are told to forsake their sin, to repent of their sin and to come to Christ.  So, number one.  Rise up and be honest, Thomas did.  Number two, rise up and be amazed and Thomas was for we read in Verse 26, "After eight days, His disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them.  Jesus came, the doors being shut and stood in the midst and said, 'Peace to you." 

What do you think Thomas thought of that second?  Here he has this doubt where all these things are going through his mind and he is saying, "I won't believe."  And then, Jesus just shows up.  I'll tell you what he thought.  "Whoa!"  That's what he thought, like, "I didn't expect that to happen."  Now, I don't know if you missed this when I read that text to you but it says, "Thomas was there for eight days."  For eight days people had to listen to his whining.  For eight days over and over again there's Thomas over in the corner going, "I still haven't seen Him.  You guys say you have, still He hasn't shown up."

Day after day after day and then Jesus suddenly shows up and Thomas is now faced with the evidence and what he saw changed him forever.  But Thomas was like so many people who have hoped in nothing, because they don't have hope in Christ.  Thomas was hopeless.  He didn't know that Jesus was risen from the dead, until that moment that He showed up.  

There was confusion that was in his light, because if it's Jesus we have believed in is truly dead and not alive, what are we doing here?  And I would say that to you.  "What are we doing here?"  Unless this is true.  I want you to listen to these words.  I found this on a website, on an atheistic website and one young lady left these comments on the website and I quote.  

She writes, "I'm confused.  I always believed that science would be the cure all for my problems, but I don't know if I can live without eternal life.  I guess I'll just have to find a way myself to make it through this meaningless existence.  I just wish I knew of someone who could show me the path to eternal life.  If science can't provide the answers, then who or what can?"  And she writes, "Sigh.  Doesn't it seem like there is a higher power that gives our life a purpose?  Well, science says there isn't.  So, there isn't."  Did you hear that?

That's the cry of the human heart.  It's the cry that says, "If this is all there is then life is meaningless."  And that's why the resurrection of Jesus rekindled the most important thing in Thomas' heart and that is hope.  Now, here's one of the saddest truths ever.  There are actually some churches who do not believe in a literal resurrection of Christ.  Can you imagine having Easter and not believing in the resurrection?

"Okay.  Well, it's like Easter.  Like, what do we do?"  "I don't know."  There are people who don't believe in it and they call themselves Christians.  You'd say, "Well, what exactly do they believe in?"  Well, some believe that Jesus has risen in spirit.  That's what they said.  "Well, He's risen in spirit."  What does that mean?  Is that like my grandma, she's sort of looking down from heaven smiling.  That's what a lot of us think when somebody dies.  "They are up there looking down.  There's Jesus up there somewhere hopefully looking down."

Listen.  If that's all there is, is that all there is?  If that's all there is, let's go golfing.  What are we doing here?  That's ridiculous.  He's risen in spirit.  Other churches will say, "Well, He's risen in our hearts."  Like he's some concept, just an idea.  The Christ idea is alive in our hearts.  "Oh, get away from me.  That's ridiculous."

And still, others will say -- this is from Time magazine always a trustworthy source of reliable information.  "That Jesus Christ is risen in the sense that His teachings live on," sort of like Gandhi.  He's risen because we still read his stuff.  We still read the book.  What a joke.  Jesus is not some creed or some concept.  He is a real person who's alive today and alive forevermore.

And you've got to understand something.  The reason we make such a big deal out of Easter is because this is it.  This is the pivotal point.  This is the non-negotiable.  We might agree to disagree about a lot of other things, but not this one.  If Jesus Christ is not alive from the dead personally, literally then that makes Him a liar because He said that He would die and be raised from the dead.  And if He did rise physically and personally, then He's a liar.

Number two, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead bodily, personally, there's no resurrection.  There is no forgiveness for our sin.  There is no salvation and there is no hope.  The reason we're here is there is hope and there is hope because He gave it to us when He got up on the third day.

Now, it says Thomas was not with them before.  That's what we read.  If you have your Bible, you go back a couple of verses, to Verse 19.  It says, "The same evening being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples reassembled for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst and said to them, "Peace be with you."  When He had said this, He showed them His hands in His side and the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

Thomas wasn't there at that time.  He missed it all.  He missed the appearance of Jesus Christ.  He missed the commission of Jesus Christ and he missed the joy that he gave to his disciple.

Hey, I bet some of the other apostles were thinking on that first appearance, "Boy, I wish Thomas were here."  Never say that about a person who's not in church.  "Boy, I wish they were here to hear his message."  I bet they were saying that about Thomas.  But here's the point.  Thomas was an out of fellowship Christian.  You might call him a believer, but not a belonger.  There are a lot of people, who fit into that category, don't they?

They say they believe in Jesus Christ but they don't really belong anywhere.  They don't really fellowship regularly.  They isolate themselves and people who isolate themselves become pessimistic like Thomas over time.  So rise up and be honest.  Thomas did.  Rise up and be amazed.  Thomas was.

Number three, rise up and be diligent.  What do I mean by that, rise up and be diligent?  Look at Verse 27, "Then Jesus said to Thomas, 'Reach your finger here and look at my hands and reach your hand here and put it into my side."  Busted.  Thomas is busted.  I know what this feels like.  I was in high school and I was talking about one of my teammates in P.E. class.  I remember it vividly.  It was on a field like this and I was bad mouth and I am then saying, "He's not good.  He's not this.  He's not that."  And he was standing right behind me.

And when I discovered that, I felt so bad.  "I'm busted."  Here's Thomas saying, "I won't believe unless I could put my finger in His side."  Jesus shows up.  "Hi Thomas.  Here, put your finger in my side and look at my hands."  And Thomas is going, "How did he know that?  He wasn't there," I thought.  He was busted, but notice how gracious Jesus Christ is condescending to Thomas' response saying, "Come on, Thomas.  Check this out.  Tommy boy, use your scientific investigative methods and actually put your hand in these wounds and you can see and you can feel that I am risen from the dead."

Jesus invites Thomas to be diligent enough to check out the evidence.  I want to challenge any skeptics here today.  Be diligent enough to check out the evidence for the resurrection and you will find plenty of it.  You'll discover that Jesus Christ has three credentials.  Number one, the impact He made on history like no one else.  Number two, all of the claims He made about himself including that He was God, including that He would die and rise again from the dead.  And number three, His resurrection itself.

Jesus Christ is the only spiritual leader that claimed a resurrection for Himself.  He predicted it, his disciples died for it, no other religious leader in history ever made that kind of claim.  And we know more details about the last hours of His life, His death and the hours following His death than any other person in ancient history.  And you can check that out.

It was Aristotle who said, "Everyone wants to know the truth."  Every person is aware that we need a bedrock of truth to base our life on.  Pilate once asked Jesus Christ, "What is truth?"  When he said that, he asked it very cynically as if to say, "You can't give me an answer.  There's no such thing as truth," but it was also the cry of his heart.  He was yearning.

He was yearning for somebody to give him the answer.  "Is there such a thing as absolute truth?'  There was a teacher, a friend of mine actually, who took a jar of marbles and set it on his desk, right in front of his students.  And he said, "Students, I want you to guess how many marbles are in that jar."  And so one made a guess, "150," "168," "221," "235," and the teacher said, "The actual number of marbles in this jar is 188.  You can count them.  It's empirical fact.  It's subjective truth.  There's 188 marbles."  "Now," said the teacher, "Which one of the guesses this morning was closest?"  And they all agreed 168 was the closest answer to being the right answer.

Then, the teacher passed out to each student those little StarBurst candies.  You know the kind?  Different flavors, different colors to each student and the teacher asked the students, "Which flavor is the right flavor?"  And they all looked at the teacher like, "What are you, an idiot?  That's a nonsensical question.  Which flavor is the right flavor?  There's no right flavor.  Whatever flavor you prefer is the right flavor."  Teacher said, "That's correct.  Now, let me ask you guys, the whole class."  He said, "Let me ask you a question.  Do you think religious claims are like the marbles in the jar or like the candies I passed out?"

Most of the students said, "It's like the candies you passed out.  Everybody chooses his own way."  And the teacher, my friend said, "You're wrong.  Christianity is based upon objective historical facts of the resurrection, either the tomb was empty or the tomb wasn't empty.  And based upon the facts of history, Christianity makes its appeal.  You make sure that whatever you believe in isn't because of your philosophical outlook or your personal bias, but it's based on the facts of history."

That leads me to the fourth way we can rise up.  Rise up and be honest, Thomas did.  Rise up and be amazed, Thomas was.  Rise up and be diligent and Thomas was as Jesus presented His wounds.  He checked it out.  And number four, rise up and believe.  Rise up and believe and in a few moments I'm going to give you an opportunity to rise up from where you're seated around the stadium and put your shoes onto your faith, your feet onto your faith and show that you believe in Christ.

"Rise up and believe," Jesus said this in Verse 27.  "Do not be unbelieving, but be believing."  A better translation, "Stop becoming faithless Thomas, and become a believer."  "Do not be unbelieving, but believing."  And Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God."  Jesus said to him.  "Thomas, because you have seen, you have believed, blessed" or "Oh, how happy are those who have not seen and have yet believed."

And truly, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you might have life in His name.  I encourage you to do the same.  You know who you are.  You know what you are.  You know if you really believe in God or not, if you have trusted your life to Christ or not, if it's just a religious game or a religious thing or a ritualistic thing or if it's a reality in your life.  You know that personally.

"I encourage you to believe," as Jesus told to Thomas.  Now, a few verses ago, Thomas says, "I will not believe".  And here was Thomas believing.  Wow, what a change.  People are funny, aren't they?  If you tell a man that there are 788,635,000,000 stars in the galaxy, he'll believe you.

But if that same man sees a sign that says, "Wet paint, he wants to stop and investigate."  "I will not believe."  "Here are my wounds Thomas.  Now, believe.  Check it out, believe."  Thomas rises up.  He rises up from the lowest depths of doubt to the highest pinnacle of faith when he says, "My Lord."  That's His common title.  And, "My God."  That's His title of deity.  Jesus claimed to be God.  "My Lord and my God," and what joy must have flooded Thomas' heart at that moment realizing, "This is indeed the Lord.  He is really alive.  I'm checking it out."

What joy?  There's something else I just need to remark on as we bring this to a close.  When Thomas is introduced back in Verse 24 and almost everywhere in the New Testament, it says, "Now, Thomas called the twin."  Ever noticed that, the twin?  Do you ever wonder, "Who's his twin?  How come his twin is never named?"  We don't know who his twin is but I bet you that there's a lot of people here today who could be Thomas' twin.  

There's so much like Thomas.  They think so much like that dude.  They think so much like that guy.  They have the same kind of patterns.  And so, like Thomas, will you rise up and be honest?  Will you rise up and be amazed?  Would you rise up and be diligent and would you rise up and would you believe?  

You might say, "Well, I'm nearly not that kind of person that's predisposed to believing."  Actually, I think you're dead wrong.  You know everybody believe something.  Everyone believes.  Even an atheist believes something.  Everybody has a belief system.  Everybody exercises faith.  To drive your car requires faith and for some of you, your car requires a lot of faith.  And then once you get out on the New Mexico roads with other New Mexico drivers, it takes even more faith.  You might not understand how your car works but you believe by faith if you put your key in the ignition and turn it, it's going to work.  That's faith.

It takes faith for you to go to a bank with a check.  Somebody wrote you a check.  All that is, is a promise.  How do you know that they're true?  You have faith that that bank's going to honor that check.  You go to a doctor.  The doctor says some gibberish in Greek.  You don't know what it is, but you trust that doctor.  You place your life in his or her hands.  That's a life of faith and to go to heaven, it takes faith.

None of you will ever make it into God's presence unless you actively believe and in just a few moments I'm going to give you that opportunity to actively believe.  Rise up and believe.  Would you all stand with me this morning?  As we close in prayer.  

Lord, in this great stadium that we're in this morning on a beautiful day, an unusual day, an extraordinary day, a gift from heaven.  We have come to honor You and to praise You.  We have given you songs, our time.  Some of us are treasure, but what You want more than anything else is not our money.  What You want more than anything else isn't just our time.  What You want more than anything else isn't just for us to sing a song.  What You want is our heart, our very life.  You want us to believe, to rise up in honesty and diligence and to place our faith in the only one You gave to take away our sin, that is Jesus Christ.

I pray that many hundreds of people, who up to this point have just trusted in themselves or trusted and their philosophy or trusted in their religion, would now trust in Jesus Christ personally.  Amen.

Remain standing.  Now, we're going to give you an opportunity and there are thousands of people.  We figured about 124,000 this year.

There are a lot of people here, but we have made provision for each and every one of you who has a heart that is searching after truth, meaning, purpose, forgiveness from your past to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

I believe you're not here by accident but by appointment.  God knows your name.  God knows your heart.  God knows your needs.  God knows your losses.  God knows the emptiness you've been feeling and He wants to fill it.

But you've got to do something.  The Bible talks about acknowledging that Jesus is the only way to bring you salvation.  You have to be willing then to repent of your sins and to turn your life over to Christ personally.  And, you must do it now, because the Bible always said, "Now is the accepted time.  Today is the day of salvation."  Whenever God calls, we must respond and if you're gathered this morning and you don't personally know Jesus, or you haven't been walking with Jesus, maybe a commitment was made a long time ago but you're not in fellowship with Him and you need to come back home to Him.

As we sing this last song, I'm going to ask hundreds of you who are in this stadium to get up out of where you're standing, find the nearest aisle, come right down here on the field and say a prayer with me to receive Christ as your savior.  As we sing this song, you get up and come.  Some of our councils will show you the way down.  You come.  Come on down.  Come and stand right here. 

Come right over here. 

Come and stand right up here.

This is going to take a few minutes.  We have a few minutes.  Everyone in this stadium, from the far corner to the very top, all the way across, are you sure?  Are you sure that if you were to die tonight that you would be in heaven?  You need to make sure if you're not sure.  You get up and come.  This is the day God has brought you into a relationship with His son.  Bring your family.  Bring your friends.  Come and stand right up here.  We're going to all squeeze in together a little bit.

Come on over.  There's plenty of room. 

There's young, old, in between, some of you are newer to life, some of you have been around awhile, some of you are jaded.  Some of you might even be thinking, "I've tried everything."  I will guarantee you by the authority of heaven that Jesus Christ can save you from hell and give you eternal life.

And, He sealed it in His own blood.  He died on the cross, so that you would never have to be separated from God and He will give you the hope of heaven as a free gift, but you have to receive it if you have never done this.  You get down here.  We'll wait just a few more minutes because people keep coming.  Let's bring everybody closer together here.  We have a lot of you.  Don't put it off. 

There's room for everyone of you at the foot of the cross.  Nobody's too bad to be saved.  Nobody's too good to be saved here in this big, throng this morning but God knows you by name.  Even you way out in the first corner behind that bush, and you think nobody can see you, God sees you.  Don't hide from Him.  Don't try to run from Him.  Run to Him.

God bless you guys.  Let's make a little bit of room right here at the stairs.  There's more who are coming.  Thank you.  God loves you so much. 

Those of you who have come forward, I don't know the circumstances of your life, good or bad.  I don't know what you've done.  You don't need to know what you've done.  You don't know what I've done and God forgave me and God will forgive you.  I'm going to lead you in a prayer this morning.  It's just an honest prayer where you will ask the Lord to come into your life and to be you master, your Lord to rule over you.

If you're giving Him permission to come inside and take charge, I want you to say this prayer out loud after me and I want you to pray this from your heart as you give your life to Christ.  Are you ready?  Everybody here, let's pray together.  Say this.  Lord, I give You my life.  I admit I'm a sinner.  I'm sorry.  I believe that Jesus died and that He rose from the dead and that He did it for me.  I turned from my sin.  I turned to You as my savior.  Help me to live for You as my Lord.  Fill me with your Holy Spirit.  In Jesus' name, Amen.  Come on.