Jesus is the truth - John 14:6 Millgrove United Church, April 6 2003
John 14:1-6
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God ; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going."
Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
This is a pretty radical thing that Jesus is saying “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”
What he is saying is that there is no other way to get back to God, he is the only way! He is the TRUTH!
Is what Jesus says true?
Is Christianity really believable?
Jesus said some other really amazing things
I AM...
The Bread of Life (John 6:35)
The Light of the World (John 8:12)
The Resurrection and the life (John 11:25-6)
He also said... Come to me (Mat 11:28-9)
Follow Me (Mark 1:17)
If you welcome me, you welcome God (Mark 9:37)
If you’ve seen me - you’ve seen God (Jn 14:9)
He says that he wants all our love (Mat 10:37)
and that he can Forgive our sins . . . and only God can do that
(Mark 2:5-7)
He claimed to be:
The Messiah (God’s anointed one) (Mark 14:61-62)
The Son of God (Mark 14:61-62, Jn 8:58)
These are amazing claims! But just because someone said them doesn’t mean that they have to be true - I could tell you that I’m a little teapot as many times as I like, but it doesn’t make me a teapot.
Since he said these things, he can’t be just a good teacher, or a nice guy. . .
C. S. Lewis says “A Man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make a choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman, or something worse … but let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Which was Jesus? A Mad Man? An Evil Man? Or… The God-Man
I believe he is who he says he is!
Evidence
His teaching - (e.g the sermon on the mount) Matthew 5, 6&7
His deeds (John 10:37-38 Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.")
His Character - tempted in every way, but without sin
His fulfillment of Old Testament Prophecy Luke 24:44 - every part of his life fulfils prophecy - it’s hard to organize your death, but impossible to organize you birth!
His Resurrection
The resurrection is a pivotal point in our Christian faith - it is what we are celebrating in a few weekends - it is the reason that most Christians meet to worship on Sundays - to celebrate the resurrection!
Paul says in 1 Corinthians that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then we might as well all go home, because our faith is meaningless. In fact, without the resurrection, life is pretty meaningless, so we might as well live selfish lives because we’re just going to die anyway.
But Jesus did rise from the dead.
There are a few ways people try to explain the Resurrection away.
He didn’t actually die (he only fainted on the cross, woke up in the tomb, and came out)
- he had been whipped almost to death, could barely walk to the crucifixion site, he was crucified for 6 hours - the executions didn’t break his legs because he was already dead, they stuck him in the side and blood and water came out - the blood had separated - he was dead
But even if he had only fainted, could a man that was brought to the edge of death move the stone away that was lodged against the tomb? And his grave clothes were left behind - you think that the guards would have noticed a half dead naked man trying to sneak past them.
One lady wrote in to a question and answer forum. "Dear Sirs, Our preacher said on Easter, that Jesus just swooned on the cross and that the disciples nursed Him back to health. What do you think? Sincerely, Bewildered.
Dear Bewildered, Beat your preacher with a cat-of-nine-tails with 39 heavy strokes, nail him to a cross; hang him in the sun for 6 hours; run a spear thru his side...put him in an airless tomb for 36 hours and see what happens."
The Disciples stole the body - they snuck past the sleeping guards and rolled the stone away, and took Jesus away. And then they told everybody that he was risen from the dead!
Tricky - but you have to understand that pretty soon after the resurrection, the disciples were being thrown in jail and even killed for talking about it. You would think that if it was just a hoax, when they said “stop talking about the resurrection, or we’ll kill you,” Peter would have said, “hey, we were just joking - Ha Ha - it was John’s idea...” But they didn’t - people died because they believed in the Resurrection.
The authorities stole the Body - why I don’t know, but you would think that as soon as the disciples started to say, “Jesus is risen from the dead” They would say, “no he isn’t, here’s the body!”
At least 550 people saw Jesus in different occasions, over a period of 6 weeks.
The only logical conclusion is that Jesus rose from the dead!
The only logical conclusion is that he is the truth - he is God’s Son come in the flesh.
When Jesus died on the cross, he took away the cause of death - our sin, and his resurrection proves it - death could not hold him, instead he broke through the wall of death and he is alive now!
Jesus is true, and he is the truth!
But we need to do more than just know the truth in our heads, we need to experience that truth in our lives.
When I first saw my wife Pam across the room at University, if I was a shy guy, I could have asked one of her friends about her, and they would have told me that she is athletic, and smart, and really sweet, they could have told me about her family, and her friends, the things she likes to do. They could have told me everything that there is to know about Pam, but that is not good enough - I wanted to experience all those things! So, I walked across the room and introduced myself. And I experienced the wonder that is Pam.
It is the same way with Jesus - it is not enough to know about Jesus, he wants us to experience his truth - we need to meet him, through prayer and the power of his Holy Spirit working in our lives.
We need to experience God’s truth in Jesus, but it goes farther than that - we need to act on it. If I was going to have a romantic relationship with Pam, I needed to act - I had to ask her out!
Acting on the truth
In the movie, “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” Indy and his dad are searching for the Holy Grail. The bad guy shoots Indy’s dad and the only way to save him is to get him a drink from the grail, which is located in this cave full of booby traps. The only way to get past the traps is to follow the answer to specific riddles.
After passing a few traps, Indiana comes to a great chasm, and he is standing beside a carved lion. The riddle says that he must take a leap from the lion’s mouth. What Indy doesn’t know is that there is a bridge there that you only see when you step on it. He figures out that he needs to take a leap of faith.
We need to take a step of faith. - leap from the lion’s mouth
Indiana could have said I believe that I won’t fall if I step out, and then turned around and his dad would still have died - he needed to act on his belief - to step out in faith. We too must act on the truth we find in Jesus.
The way that we act on the truth of Jesus is to step out in faith and to give him our lives - to say my life is now yours - and I know that you will take care of it.
Maybe the truth of God has become very real to you today, but don’t just sit there with the knowledge - make that step of faith into God’s arms, he won’t disappoint you.
