We all know that the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years after they escaped from Egypt. Some claim that is because even in Bible times, men wouldn’t stop to ask for directions. But fortunately for us, in the account we’ll look at this morning, Jesus’ disciples weren’t afraid to ask Jesus for directions. And as a result of their questions we find that Jesus reveals Himself to them in the sixth of seven “I am” sayings that we find in John’s gospel account.
As we continue our journey through that gospel account, we come to a crucial pivotal point in chapter 13. After Jesus washes His disciples' feet and they celebrate the Passover meal together, Judas leaves to betray Jesus. From that point forward through the end of His high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus is focused 100% on preparing His followers to be able to carry on after His impending crucifixion.
To me that is absolutely amazing. Jesus knows that He is about to suffer the most humiliating and painful death imaginable and He is already beginning to experience the heavy burden of all the sins of mankind being laid upon Him. But instead of being preoccupied with His own worries, He spends His final moments here on earth encouraging and equipping His followers. So it is no wonder that John begins this entire section of his gospel account with these words:
Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
John 13:1 (ESV)
With that in mind, let’s begin reading this morning near the end of chapter 13. You can follow along as I begin in verse 36:
Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
John 13:36-14:11 (ESV)
This morning we’ll begin by determining what Jesus does for His followers as the way and the truth and the life. And then, as we’ve done each week, we’ll focus on how that ought to impact the way we live our lives each day.
WHAT JESUS DOES AS THE WAY AND THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE:
1. As THE WAY, Jesus enables me to go to God
Both Peter and Thomas indicated that they did not know where Jesus was going. But that is certainly not because Jesus hadn’t revealed that to them. Not only had He just told them that He was going to prepare a place for them, but Jesus had previously spoken frequently of the fact that He had come from the presence of His heavenly Father and that He was going to return to His Father:
For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.
John 6:38 (ESV)
Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.”
John 7:33-34 (ESV)
So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.”
John 8:21 (ESV)
But it’s not too hard to imagine why the disciples either refused to believe what Jesus had told them or that they at least hoped that what He was telling them wasn’t really true. After all they had spent the last three years in the physical presence of Jesus and they didn’t want to lose out on that face to face contact that they had with Him each day.
But with his claim to be the way, Jesus is gently reminding His followers that they really do know where He is going and that the only way that they can get there is by believing in Him. In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul confirms that this was God’s plan from the very beginning:
This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.
Ephesians 3:11-12 (ESV)
It was always God’s plan that man would have access to Him through faith in His Son, Jesus. And as Jesus makes completely clear here in John 14, that is the only way that we can have access to God – No one comes to the Father except through Jesus.
That is not a real popular message in our culture today that is characterized by a wide variety of choices in every area of our lives and by the focus on our own autonomy and rights.
Since we’ve dealt with this principle frequently throughout this series, particularly when Jesus said, “I am the door”, we won’t spend much more time here. But before we move on, let me encourage you to make an honest evaluation of your own life and determine if you really are approaching God through your faith in Jesus or if you’re attempting to do that in some other way.
I am confident that right now if I were to ask everyone to take out a piece of paper and write down what way you are taking to God that all or most of us would say that we are depending on our faith in Jesus. But does your life match up with your words? Are you relying upon Jesus and someone or something else – your heritage, or going to church, or being a good person, or even reading your Bible and praying. There is nothing wrong with any of those things. In fact we ought to be doing them. But if you’re doing them because you feel like they somehow earn favor with God and provide a way to Him, then you are not completely following the one way – Jesus – who allows you to go to God.
2. As THE TRUTH, Jesus enables me to fully know God
In the movie, “The Polar Express” the conductor speaks these relevant words:
Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can't see.
Those words seem to be a pretty good summary of what Jesus is saying here when He proclaims Himself to be the truth.
Philip’s response to Jesus is probably pretty indicative of how many of us feel at times – just show us the Father and that will be enough for us. Moses had said essentially the same thing thousands of years earlier when He asked God to show him His glory.
Philip and the others thought that if they could just see the Father, then they could believe all that Jesus has told them about the Father, and then they could have peace of mind. But Jesus turns this upside down. In effect, He is saying that it is not seeing that leads to believing, but rather believing that leads to seeing. If His followers want to see what God is really like then they merely need to believe in Him because He reveals Himself to those who believe in Him.
Not surprisingly, we find this idea that God reveals Himself to us through believing in His Son, Jesus, near the very beginning of John’s gospel:
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he [Jesus] has made him known.
John 1:17-18 (ESV)
In the words of Scripture, God constantly reveals Himself to us. In the Bible we read that God is holy, righteous, just, loving and merciful, among His many other attributes. But in spite of that revelation, because we can’t see God physically, man still has a tendency to make God into our own image rather than attempting to conform ourselves into the image of God. And when that occurs, there are as many different ideas about who God is as there are people.
But Jesus, as God in the flesh, is the antidote to that kind of thinking. We are not free to make God whoever we want Him to be because as the truth Jesus reveals God as He really is, not as we want Him to be. When we read the accounts of the words that Jesus spoke audibly to His various audiences, when we see how He ministered to people, when we see the miracles He performed, we have a flesh and blood portrayal of what God is like and we get to know God much better than we ever could just by reading about Him in His word.
The main reason that we’re spending these seven weeks getting to know Jesus better though His own words is that as we get to know Jesus, we get to know God the Father as well.
As THE WAY, Jesus enables me to go to God…
As THE TRUTH, Jesus enables me to fully know God…
3. As THE LIFE, Jesus enables me to grow with God
We see repeatedly in the gospel accounts that the disciples really didn’t want Jesus to go to the cross and die. Even after Peter proclaims that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, he turns around and tries to tell Jesus that He shouldn’t do that:
From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”
Matthew 16:21-22 (ESV)
In a way you can’t blame Peter and the other disciples. They’ve had the experience of living with God in the flesh – a God who they can see and touch and hear audibly, a God who is physically with them. And they don’t want that to change. But the irony that they can’t see from their viewpoint is that unless Jesus leaves their physical presence by dying on the cross, being raised from the dead and ascending to the right hand of the Father, they cannot experience in full the abundant life that Jesus wants to give to them.
In this passage, Jesus is calling on His followers to relate to God in a new and better way. We see this in the words of Jesus as He continues his discourse in John 14:
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.
John 14:12 (ESV)
This one verse is so rich that we can’t possibly cover all that Jesus conveys there. But Jesus makes it clear that by going to the Father, He is enabling His followers to do even greater works than He has done in His earthly ministry. While Jesus was here on this earth, He was limited by His humanity. He could only be in one place at one time. But upon his resurrection and ascension, He would equip all of His followers with the Holy Spirit, freeing up a whole army of His followers to minister in His name, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Although His followers still failed to understand what Jesus was saying right then, after His resurrection and ascension, the Holy Spirit certainly reminded them of these words and, as a result, they had the ability to experience the work of Jesus in their lives in a way that far exceeded what they had experienced while Jesus was physically present with them here on earth.
In many ways, things really haven’t changed a lot in the last 2,000 years. So many people long for the spiritual “good ole days”, wishing that somehow we could have been at the burning bush with Moses or wrestled with God like Jacob or spent three years of our life living with Jesus like the disciples. But what we find is that those face-to-face experiences didn’t necessarily do away with doubt or prevent those who went through those experiences from falling away from God numerous times in their lives.
As the life, Jesus provides a better way to live with God – a life of faith in which believing truly does lead to seeing. Even those who spoke with Jesus that day didn’t experience in full the life that Jesus offered until after his death and resurrection. It was only then that they could see what Jesus had done for them from His perspective.
As THE WAY, Jesus enables me to go to God…
As THE TRUTH, Jesus enables me to fully know God…
As THE LIFE, Jesus enables be to grow with God
As we draw the message to a close this morning, we want to answer the same question we have asked each week throughout this series: What does this mean for my day–to-day life?
IMPLICATIONS FOR MY LIFE:
1. The only way to comfort a troubled heart is to trust Jesus
In John 14:1, Jesus literally says to His followers: Stop letting your hearts be troubled. Jesus knows that their hearts are already troubled. After all they’ve heard Jesus say that one of His own is going to betray Him and then they watch Judas leave to do just that.
But Jesus doesn’t just tell them to quit being troubled, He also tells them how they can do that – they just need to believe in Him. In fact, Jesus uses the word believe five times in our passage – and four of those times are commands. The idea of belief is central to the gospel of John. John uses the verb “to believe” 98 times in his gospel account – far more than it is used in the other three gospels combined.
That particular verb has a broad variety of meanings and we certainly see those various nuances throughout John’s gospel account. Here in John 14, the primary meaning of believe seems to be the idea of trust. The disciples are undoubtedly confused about what is happening and even Jesus’ words are not enough to clear up all that confusion. But in the midst of that uncertainty, Jesus exhorts His followers to just trust Him.
I think that we can conclude from the text that Jesus intentionally kept His followers in the dark about all the details of what was about to happen – at least for the moment. It’s not hard to imagine what Peter would have done if he knew Judas was going to the Jewish authorities to betray Jesus so that they could crucify Him. I have little doubt he would have used his sword on Judas, rather than on the slave of the high priest, in order to try and prevent what was about to happen.
Even when Jesus was crucified, His followers still didn’t understand what was happening so they fled and went into hiding. And even after Jesus appeared to those followers after His resurrection, their understanding was still not complete. Jesus knew that the only way they were going to survive the confusion and chaos of the next several days and weeks was to trust in Him.
Nothing has really changed today. Often times we do not understand everything that is going on around us. Things seem to be out of control and we, too, experience confusion and chaos in our lives. But in the midst of those times, Jesus exhorts us to trust in Him. That is the only way that we can stop letting our hearts be troubled.
This is essentially the same message that Jesus has delivered in the Sermon on the Mount a couple of years earlier. We looked at that entire passage in some detail fairly recently, so let’s just look at a short excerpt from Jesus’ message:
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:31-34 (ESV)
When Jesus said, “Do not be anxious”, He is essentially saying the same thing as when He says, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” And the key to not being anxious is the same as the key to comforting our troubled hearts – seek Jesus first and trust in Him to provide us with everything that we need to live in the midst of whatever circumstances we are in.
Ultimately, we usually have very little control over our circumstances. But we can control how we respond to them. And when we respond by trusting Jesus, He will comfort our troubled hearts regardless of circumstances.
2. Jesus is more concerned with my eternal joy than with instant relief
There is absolutely no doubt that Jesus had the ability to rescue His followers from chaos and confusion they were going to experience over the next several days. One way He could have provided them with instant relief was to delay or avoid His crucifixion. He could have retreated with His followers back across the Jordan River to the area where He had been ministering for several months prior to coming to Jerusalem and they probably wouldn’t have been bothered, at least for a while.
But although that would have provided a temporary respite, Jesus knew that the only way to provide eternal joy for His followers was to die on the cross for their sins, and then return to His Father to prepare an eternal home for them. Jesus knew what His followers still hadn’t figured out – it was better for them to experience some temporary tribulation here on this earth and receive the eternal blessings that would come as a result than to experience instant, but temporary relief.
Many years later, the apostle Paul confirmed this principle:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (ESV)
Jesus’ promise to His followers that day before he went to the cross is the same promise He makes to us today. Whatever temporary affliction we may be experiencing right now is being used by God to prepare us for an eternity in His presence. Even though we can’t see it, He is in control. Jesus is at work behind the scenes, preparing a place for us where we’ll get to experience His physical presence, not just for a few years, but for eternity.
I’m convinced that if we could really grasp this truth, it would completely revolutionize our prayer life. For most of us, much, if not most, of our time in prayer is spent asking God to change our circumstances – God, heal me from this sickness; God, provide a job for me; God, help me with my finances, God, get me out of this relationship. There is nothing inherently wrong with those requests. But because Jesus is much more concerned about my eternal joy than He is with providing instant relief, He often allows us to remain in those circumstances in order to accomplish His purposes for our live and prepare us for an eternity with Him. So we should probably spend a lot more time praying for God to give us wisdom to understand how He is trying to prepare us for eternity through those circumstances.
Maybe you’ve been wandering around spiritually, not willing to ask for directions. But Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. If you’ll just trust in Him, he’ll enable you to go to God and to truly know God and to grow with God.
