Jesus: The Way, The Truth And The Life

CATM Sermon - Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life - John 14:1-10

How many of you here this afternoon can draw, or paint? I can’t draw to save my life. It takes all of my creative energy to put together a very sad looking stick-man.

You’d think with my dad being an artist, some of that would have rubbed off on me, but I’m here to confess that it didn’t. I can’t draw worth beans.

But I hope to paint a kind of picture with you today, to help us see more clearly the God-man, the One in whom the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells; to paint a picture of the Great I AM; the one who calls Himself the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Now when you can’t paint or draw to save your life, you need to rely on imagination, to let pictures take shape in your imagination. We can and should do this with the Holy Bible, too.

Have you ever been lost? Have you ever started out confidently on a journey, only to become less and less sure as you progressed? I’m going to ask you to picture yourself at a crossroads.

You’ve come a certain distance so far, you’ve made so much progress, you’ve have some good experiences and some bad ones. But you now stand at a fork in the road. You’re kinda lost. One clear path has forked into two or more paths.

So pause for a second and think about one of these crossroads that you’ve been at. Which way will you go?

How can you decide when all you can see before you are two equally unknown paths, two ways of moving forward. They are both mysteries to you.

Jesus the Way

What does it feel like to be lost? You’ve just imagined a time when you were unsure where to go or unsure where you were? What did you need more than anything when you faced this struggle?

Your biggest problem in a sense was you...your limitations, your inexperience. You stood in one place, on the same plane as the problem you were facing. What did you need?

You needed another perspective, another way to look at the situation. You needed a way to see clearly, a means to get to where you wanted to go.

Jesus said that he is the direction to end. He is the means to an end. What end?

The Way to a Better Life:

Jesus said, John 10:10b: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more

abundantly”.

What does a better life look like? The picture Jesus paints for your life, the picture that the Holy Bible makes clear for your life is that of a life story overflowing with colour and hue and contrast and brightness.

Abundance. Richness. Depth. Meaning. Jesus is the way to experience life in its fullest and clearest, to know God in His fulness, to know joy in its fulness.

Jesus is the Way, because he was in your situation, he stands above your situation, and he triumphed over your situation. Jesus was a person like you and me. We talk about Jesus being fully human.

That means that Jesus knows all of life, including its limitations and deep frustrations. Jesus was tempted in every way, we see in the Scriptures. And in His humanity he overcame those temptations. On earth He laid aside the broad perspective He had as God, He laid aside His full majesty and struggled, as a man, to live well.

We talk about Jesus also being fully God. That means that He has all the power necessary to help you on your way, all the knowledge you need to go the next mile. That’s the main reason why we pray. It’s not to get stuff.

There are three answers to prayer: “Yes, now”, “Yes, later”, and “No, but my grace is sufficient for the”. The reason yo pray is to be in touch with the Almighty Way, the One who can get you where you need to go.

This is part of the painting we’re discovering of God. A picture of God’s good intentions for your life and your family’s life - pictures of prosperity, hope and future.

The Way to Forgiveness of Sins

There are many illusions we share in our nation. Some illusions get a lot of airplay, and we get patted on the back for talking about some things that are just not true.

One example is that in our pluralistic society, if we want to be considered alright by the mainstream, we need to believe that there are many ways to God and that all religions lead to God.

If we are to hear what Jesus has to say, and to believe it, we need to affirm that although all or