Sermon: I Am The Way,

Text: John 14:1-6

Introduction:

The 13^th chapter of John’s gospel concluded with the revelation by Jesus His death and departure from this world were imminent. They were rapidly approaching. One of the disciples, would betray Him, Judas Iscariot is identified at the table as the betrayer. Of course, Peter, in his usual brash way, declared his willingness to die for Jesus. Jesus, however, made the startling revelation, Peter was going to deny Him publicly, and more than once.

Jesus then delivered a farewell address to the disciples, recorded, at least partially, in chapter 14. His words were intended to comfort the disciples as He prepared them for what was ahead. He wanted to clear up some confusion they were experiencing then, and would later experience to an even greater degree and He made a challenge to them concerning their faith.

I. The Words of Comfort vv. 1-4

Verses 1 -4 are well known. We hear them most often at funerals. They were spoken to comfort the hearts of those who will be left behind. They were words of encouragement The apostles were confused and disturbed about what was going to happen and what their future would hold. Jesus said to them stop being troubled. In a society where there is increasing hostility and outright rejection of Christianity there is a command not to be unduly burdened.

His words were words of faith - trust in God, trust also in me. God is on the throne, he is aware of your personal situation and the what’s happening the community where you are and in the world . You are to place your faith in him. When we place our faith somewhere else, especially in ourselves we end up like Peter, jolted into reality by the crowing of the rooster realizing that kind of faith is a failed faith.

And His words are words of hope. Words of calm assurance that the events ahead — His death, resurrection and ascension to heaven were not in vain they had a purpose. That purpose – to prepare a place for His followers, that preparation involved paying the price for sin that we might find forgiveness and reconciliation.

Finally His words were words of promise - I will come back. There was certainly comfort in those words for the disciples and for us as well as we look with hope for His glorious return.

We know so little about The Apostle Thomas, but it’s amazing how often he has been at the forefront of what’s happening. We think of him as the doubter, but as we saw last week it was Thomas who was ready to follow Jesus back to Judea even in the face of death. And it was Thomas who made the great confession of Christ’s divine nature after the resurrection and here before the crucifixion it is Thomas, honest, uninhibited, pessimistic with a sense of despair who questioned Jesus, restating Peter’s question from 13:36, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?" (John 14:5) At that point the disciples had yet to comprehend exactly what was about to take place.

Jesus responded with complete authority. He described where He was going and the way there.

I am The Way

         Jesus talked about two ways in Matt 7:13-14 He said, "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it. "For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it. (NAS)

There is a Broad Way and this one isn’t in New York. It is:

               [1] The way of temptation - surrendering to it rather than resisting it.

               [2] The way of sin - being dominated, controlled, led by what we refer to as the sin nature. That predisposition we have to follow our own will rather than God’s will.

               [3] The way of bondage - being bound by sin unable to recognize good/bad right/wrong. One of the things we clearly see through out the world is the blur caused by following this broad way. The line between moral and immoral, ethical and unethical, right and wrong has been blurred. [4] The way of heartache and broken-ness - as we look at the world today it is easy to see the consequences of sin. Increasing divorce rates, immorality, abortion, violence.

               [5] The way of destruction - It leads to personal spiritual bankruptcy.

               [6] The way to hell - The way to eternal separation from God.

The Narrow Way is different. It is the road less traveled. The narrow road is Jesus Christ Himself.

         [1] Jesus is the way to the Father - restored relationship - intimate

               knowledge and relationship Jn 1:18 “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained {Him.}” (NAS)

         [2] Jesus is the way to salvation - redemption from sin no one comes but by Him

         [3] Jesus is the way to heaven - eternal fellowship with God

         [4] Jesus is the way of joy - happiness depends on situations - joy transcends situations.

         [5] Jesus is the way out of darkness of sin - because he is the light, He is the one who restores sight to the blind

         [6] Jesus is the way out of temptation - not that we will not face temptation, Jesus Himself faced temptation. Not even that we will always effectively resist temptations, but that we have the ability to overcome because he has faced and overcome.

Heb 2:18 For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. (NAS)

1 Cor 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it. (NAS)

2 Pet 2:9 the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, (NAS)

         [7] Jesus is the way out of sin - Not that we will be perfected in this life, but The Bible says, to be controlled by the spirit is not to be dominated by sinful nature. (NAS)

Jesus told Thomas He was the way He was also the truth. According to Jesus truth is objective and not subjective. He is truth embodied and personified.

I. The truth about God

Jesus is the embodiment of truth, He reveals to humanity the character and nature of God. This truth is not just the accumulation or sum total of facts about God. But in Jesus, God is explained, is revealed, and is understood to the extent that understood as much as the infinite can be know by the finite.

Jesus said to Thomas in verse 7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him." Without going into an explanation all of the Greek grammatical construction, Dr. A. T. Robertson explains what Jesus was saying was that if you had known or had learned the full significance of who I am, and the word translated “you had known,” means to know by personal experience. If you had personally experienced the fullness of me you would have also experienced the fullness of the Father. Jesus is not implying they didn’t have a personal relationship with him, but they hadn’t learned the full significance of that relationship especially as it related to God the Father, and His relationship to the Father. But, Jesus said from now on you will begin to understand then you will know Him and will understand you have seen Him.

In response to Philip in verse 9 Jesus asked "Have I been so long with you, and {yet} you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how do you say, 'Show us the Father'? (NAS)

Jesus explained there was complete unity between Father and Son. In John 10:30 Jesus said "I and the Father are one." (NAS) For this the Jewish leaders were about to stone Him, because He made Himself equal to God. The disciples hadn’t understood that yet, but they would begin to from that time on.

All of the truth about the one and only God – all of His love all of His mercy all of His grace all of His forgiveness are made know in Christ Jesus. They are known by us by personal experience through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

He is the communicator of truth. Jesus reveals the ultimate source, meaning and end of all things the truth about mankind and the world; He shows humanity the way to truth and enables men and women to choose the truth He communicates the truth about sin. We don’t like to hear that word. In today’s vernacular it is considered a word of intolerance, it is judgmental it is bigoted. If we call immorality sin we are narrow minded, intolerant bigots.

Jesus reveals the truth about sin. Sin carries a great price. The Bible says there are none righteous (Rom 3:10-18) all have sinned. (Rom 3:23.) The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23) sin eternally separates man from God, and because all are sinners there is no way for man to restore that broken relationship.

 The Bible says He committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth;(1 Pet 2:22 ) That Jesus was “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens;” (Heb 7:26) But in Jesus Christ the ugliness of sin encounters the holiness of God. The Bible says

: “He (referring to the Father) made Him( the Son) who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

(2 Cor 5:21)

That means Jesus is the truth abut Salvation. Even though most of us have trusted Christ we need to be constantly aware of how we came to where we are so it will become second nature to us.

 We are all sinners. What gives us the hope, the expectation, the anticipation, confidence and assurance of eternal and abundant life is we are sinners saved by the grace of God through faith in the truth - Jesus Christ. We must always be aware of that. And of the fact that others need to know and experience the same grace and love and forgiveness we have experienced.

The Bible says "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved." (NAS)

Jesus is the truth about judgement. Men and women may reject him, they may renounce Him they may ridicule Him, but there is coming a day when the Bible says it will be different. Judgement is a reality In Rom 14: 10:12 Paul writes that we shall all stand before the judgement seat of God and each one will give an account of himself to God. And what is the basis of judgement? It is Jesus Christ.

In John 3:17 - 18 Jesus said: "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (NAS)

In John 8 Jesus said in v. 32 "you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" in v. 36 He said, "If the Son shall set you free you shall be free indeed"

Being set free means we are free from the wages of sin, free to experience the reality of God free to live and that life is found in Jesus Christ.

Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life.

We mention last week Jesus is the Source of our Physical Life. The very first verse of the Bible says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

When I preached this passage a couple of years ago I mentioned this bit of information I read In a sermon on creation by Dr John MacArthur it bears repeating. Dr MacArthur spoke of the work of a well-known scientist Herbert Spencer who died in 1903. “In his scientific career he had become noted for one great discovery. He discovered that all reality, all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories...time, force, action, space and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories. Nothing exists outside of those categories. It was and I guess still is considered a very brilliant scientific discovery, and it wasn’t made until the nineteenth century.”

Sr. MacArthur then gave something for us to consider. Now think about it. Everything that exists, exists in one of those categories “He even listed them in that order...time, force, action, space and matter. That is a logical sequence. With that in mind, listen to Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning," that's time..."God," that's force, "created," that's action, "the heavens," that's space, "and the earth," that's matter. In the first verse of the Bible God said plainly what man didn't catalog until the nineteenth century. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that very first verse.”

God then said let us make man in our image. All of creation, but especially Humanity as the highest form of creation is no accident. It is no freak of nature, no evolutionary process. It was by divine decree that the universe came into existence and man was intentionally and divinely created by God in His image. That’s physical life. Concerning Jesus Christ the Bible says: in John 1:3-4, “All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” (NAS)

Jesus is also the Source of True Spiritual Life. Jesus came into a world overcome by sin. He saw the best of mankind living in darkness searching for the light and for life. Perhaps one of the best men Jesus encountered, judged by human moral standards, was Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee, a good and upright man a teacher of Israel. Probably as nearly perfect according to the law as a man could get. It was to this good man Jesus said you must be born again.

The truth is no matter how good you might be, no matter how high your moral or ethical standards, no matter how frequent or how noble your good deeds you are still in complete darkness without Christ and you must experience the new birth. It is the need of every human being no matter how good or how bad, no matter what race or nationality, no matter what religion you might profess and that includes Christianity because many people profess Christianity with out faith in Christ.

Jesus is also the Source Truly Abundant Life. Jesus said in Jn 10: 9-10 that He came so that those who are saved might have life and have it

more abundantly. He came to make life worth living. The less of self and the more of Christ there is in my life the more abundant my life will be lived. Paul said in Gal 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (NKJ)

Abundant life in not having an abundance of wealth, or prosperity, or material possessions. Abundant life is finding fulfillment and purpose and worth in your life regardless of circumstances or wealth or material prosperity. Faith in Jesus Christ makes abundant life possible. It is found in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus is the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Him. Will you surrender all and come to Him today?