Apostolic Heart Change

Luke 6, Matthew 9, John 11, 14, 20

Mel Trotter was a drunk. He was such a terrible man, and so degraded that he didn't feed his family, and he had a young baby daughter.  The baby died of malnutrition because he didn't provide food.  All the money was consumed in alcohol.  Prior to the funeral, when the little body of his baby was in the casket at the funeral home, he stole into the place before the service, took the body, lifted it up, took all the clothes off of her and took them to a bar to exchange for a drink.

One can hardly imagine degradation any lower than that.  And yet it was Mel Trotter that got picked up, cleaned up and turned into a great evangelist.  This is the work of God.  He had a change of heart. This is what God does.  He doesn't need the great and the mighty and the powerful and the wealthy. He can work with a lot less than that.  This is why Jesus didn’t choose Apostles from Jerusalem and from the religious establishment. He didn’t seek the righteous, but sinners. He digs down deep to find His gems. And this treasure, as we learn in II Corinthians, is found in clay pots and when the treasure is found in clay pots, it's very clear where the power lies.  It's not in the pot. It's found in what He puts inside.

Next on the list is Matthew Levi. I don't want to say a lot about Matthew because we've already gone through his conversion back in Luke 5:27 - 32.  Jesus called him from his tax table and he left it all behind and couldn’t go back, unlike those who were fishermen. He was despised as a loyalist to the Roman oppressors.

After his conversion he gave a big reception, according to Luke 5, for Jesus.  And he had a big house because he was a successful extortioner.  Matthew himself says there were tax gatherers and sinners, because that would be the only kind of people who would associate with him.  And so, all the riff-raff, all the petty criminals, and all the petty thieves, and all the thugs, and all the prostitutes and that ilk would be reclining at the table.  They were all invited to Matthew's house to meet Jesus.  And Jesus and the apostles, according to Matthew's own account were there eating with these sinners. In Luke 18 we see another tax collector beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” who went home justified, not the Pharisee who was so stuck on himself. That takes you into chapter 19 and this incredible story of another tax collector, Zacchaeus. You’ve got to wonder if these guys had the first seed planted back at Levi’s house in our text. The story of Zacchaeus believing culminates in Jesus’ wonderful statement – ‘For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was’ – what? – ‘lost.’”

Verse 30 of Luke 5 says, "The Pharisees and scribes began grumbling at His disciples saying, 'Why do you eat and drink with the tax gatherers and sinners?'  And Jesus answered and said to them,’ and this is sarcasm, “'It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.'"  You think you're well, but I can't help you, I can only help those who know they’re sick. Verse 32: that famous statement of Jesus, "I have not come to call the righteous," sarcasm again, "but sinners to repent." 

That's really all we know about Matthew.  What is amazing about it is if you go back to Matthew 9 and just take Matthew's account since we already looked at Luke's account in detail.  What Matthew is writing he's writing thirty years after the fact, 30 years after his conversion he wrote this gospel.  And as he looks back he remembers that Jesus came along and saw him there, sitting in the tax office.  It had been thirty years since he sat in the tax office, but it probably even to this day, thirty years later, was a stunning reality to him, that Jesus would call as an apostle a tax collector.

What caused him to drop everything?  You would think he was a materialist.  You'd think religion wasn't that important to him if he would link up with idolatrous Romans.  The best answer I can give you for that is that he had a change of heart. Matthew was a Jew and whatever his tortured soul may have experienced because of the profession that he had chosen to be in, down deep inside he was a Jew who knew the Old Testament.  We know he knew the Old Testament because in his gospel, the gospel of Matthew, he quotes the Old Testament ninety-nine times.  That is more times than Mark, Luke and John combined.  He may have had to sort of pursue his understanding of the Old Testament on his own, since he wasn’t allowed to go to the synagogue which means he couldn't go and hear the exposition of the Scripture, so perhaps he was a student on his own.  When Jesus came, he knew about Him because sitting on the crossroads in a tax booth he would have heard information all the time about this miracle worker who was banishing disease from Palestine and casting demons out of people and doing miracles. The tax booth had as much gossip as the salon.  And the reputation of Jesus had grown greatly.  And when Jesus showed up and called him to follow Him, there was at least enough faith in Jesus as the Messiah, or as the prophet of God to drop everything and follow.

That's really all we know. But really, it's enough to tell us that the Lord picks the rankest sometimes for the highest callings, the Mel Trotters of the world, if you will. Matthew, by the way, was, according to tradition, burned at the stake for his faith in Christ.

Now that brings us to the next familiar name, Thomas.  Now when I say that, what's the first word you think of?  Doubt. Isn't that interesting?  I mean, that's universal.  He's really gotten bad press.  He was a better man than history has allowed him to be perceived as.  He's the last name in group two, that second group of Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas. He was a negative person.  Thomas Hardy said, "They can find the manure in every meadow."  They just go through life with this sour, negative approach to everything and they are the pessimists.  They anticipate the worst all the time.

He's identified as Thomas, called Didymus, which means "the twin."  Thomas is Aramaic for twin.  Didymus is Greek for twin.  We could speculate that Matthew was his twin, because they are often listed together.  But we don't know.

Back in high school I dated a girl who had a twin and I had the hardest time telling them apart.  One day it dawned on me:  Her brother was slightly taller than she was! So he had a twin brother, or a twin sister we don't meet in the Scriptures.

Remember when Lazarus was sick and Jesus is called by his sisters to come to Bethany and be with him?

John 11:16

¹⁶ Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

That’s just outside Jerusalem, where the authorities are looking for Christ in order to execute Him. They're floundering in fear. We don't want to go. We don't know what's going to happen.  He says, "Let us also go that we may die with Him."  Now that is pessimistic and that's Thomas.  But, you know, you have to admit, that's heroic pessimism, right?  Do you understand how hard it is to be a pessimist?  That has got to be a miserable way to live.  I mean, if you're an optimist you would say, "Hey, let's go, everything will work out."  Right?  Let's go. We'll figure a way, the Lord will figure a way. We'll be fine.  But if you're a pessimist you say, "We're going to die, He's going to die and we're going to die.  But let's have the courage to go and die."  I mean, if you're a negative person, that's how it is.  He could see nothing but disaster and he grimly determined to die.

It’s easy for the optimist to be loyal.  Why?  Because an optimist always expects the best.  It’s much harder for a pessimist to be loyal because he always expects the worst.  This is real courage.  He was a man of courage.

I'll tell you something else about him.  He was devoted to Christ.  Thomas didn't want to live without Jesus and for Thomas, if He's going to die, I'll die.  I don't want to live without Him.  If He's going to go, I'm going to go.  Guys, suck it up, let's go and die.  That's the best, isn't it?  Better to die and be with Him, right? 

I think he was the strength of the rest of the apostles.  I think they all sort of got their act together and said, "Okay, let's go and die."  He had no illusions. He saw the jaws of death opening ready to swallow him. 

He shows up again in John 14; it’s the night of the Passover.  Judas has been dismissed, and the apostles are troubled.  They know the Lord is going to leave in some way.  He had even told Peter he's going to deny Him.  So Jesus says in verse 1, "Let not your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me.  I am going, but in My Father's house there are many mansions, and if it were not so I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you to Myself that where I am, there you may be also.  And you know the way where I'm going."

John 14:5

⁵ Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?

This is just a few days later and again we see his pessimism.  "You're leaving, we'll never get there. We don't know how to get there. It was a better plan for us to die with You because then there's no separation."

This is a man with deep love.  This is a man with a relationship with Christ that was so strong that he didn't ever want to be severed from Him.  And his heart is really broken as he speaks.  He's shattered.  The thought of losing Christ paralyzes him.  He had become so associated and attached to Jesus in these years that he would be glad to die with Christ, but he certainly didn't want to live without Him.  I like that, don't you? 

And Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No man cometh to the Father but by Me." 

This was just overwhelming for Thomas, who would eagerly die with Christ, rather than be separated from Him.  Well, his worst fears came to pass.  Jesus died and he didn't. 

We pick up the next picture in John 20.  This is very familiar.  Jesus died. What happened to Thomas?  Well when Jesus died the disciples were in deep sorrow.  But they all got together to sort of lick each other's wounds.  They all met.  But verse 24 of John 20 says, "Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus was not with them."  That's too bad because Jesus came in, surprise!  Don’t skip Sunday nights!

Maybe he just wanted to be alone.  He couldn't take the banter.  He didn't want to be in a crowd. He had lost hope.

You know, in a sense, the other disciples, they didn't believe in the resurrection either till Jesus showed up. Remember on the road to Emmaus they were walking along and two of the disciples, they were miserable because Jesus had been killed and there was Jesus who appeared to them and finally identified Himself as alive.  Whatever might have been the sorrow of the other ten, the sorrow of Thomas was greater.

They later say to Thomas in verse 25, "We've seen the Lord."  And you can imagine, I mean, they were ecstatic, they were out of their minds, they were exuberant.  "We've seen the Lord. We've seen the Lord."

And what does Thomas say?  He's just a hopeless pessimist.  He said to them, "Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into His side, I will not believe."  He just can't quite get to the point where he believes his friends who tell the truth. This was too good to be true.

A week later Jesus came, the door having been shut, and stood in their midst. What that tells you is that He was in supernatural form, He just came through the wall and said, "Peace be with you."  I can understand why He said that. It would be a tremendous amount of agitation if you were in the room and somebody came through the wall.  And He looked right at Thomas, "Reach here your finger and see My hands, reach here your hand and put it in My side and be not unbelieving but believing."

Isn't the Lord gentle with him?  He errs because he's just kind of wired that way.  But it's the erring of a profound love.  It's the grief and broken-heartedness and uncertainty and doubt of a shattered heart.  Nobody could feel the way Thomas felt unless he loved Jesus the way Thomas loved Him.  And then Thomas says what is probably the greatest statement ever to come from the lips of the apostles, verse 28, "My Lord and my God.” Let the people who deny the deity of Christ meet Thomas. His melancholy, comfortless, negative, moody tendency forever was banished in the appearance of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is tender with him. He understands doubt.  He understands uncertainty.  He understands pessimism.  Doubt is in the mind, but unbelief is in the heart. Jesus only condemns unbelief. Be not faithless, but believing. Doubt is an intellectual problem.  Unbelief is a moral problem.

In that moment he was transformed into a great evangelist. He had a change of heart! There is some history to indicate that he may well have taken the gospel as far as India.  There is in India the Bar Toma Church, sons of Thomas, who trace their origin to him. Many Christians in the south of India have the last name Thomas. We have a missionary friend there named Sam Thomas.  Tradition says, because he would not deny the faith and would not cease preaching, a spear was run through him and he was executed.  So in the end his doubt became certainty and he was so certain of his reunion with Christ was he that he took a spear and gave his life to have the reunion that he must have longed for all those years between Christ's ascension and his own death.  God can do amazing things with the raw material, can't He?  A despised tax collector and a moody, negative, melancholy, but heroic pessimist.