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
most religions are a sincere effort to make a real connection to God, Jesus alone is the way to God.
There are efforts people make toward God, there are many ideas about God, but there is only one way to God.
To be a confessing follower of Jesus Christ means to stand up to these illusions and to be willing to make the unpopular statement that we need Jesus to get to God.
Do you know why? What does Jesus alone bring to the relationship between God and man? Jesus solves the sin dilemma. The way to God is blocked because of our sin that is expressed in many ‘sins’. Since God is perfectly holy, sin cannot stand in his presence.
And there is nothing, nothing, nothing that you or I can do to fix the fact that our sin is a huge barrier between us and God. We can’t tip the scales in our favour by doing more good deeds than bad deeds. The sin is still there.
We can’t atone for our owns sins by our suffering or our sacrifices. The stain is still there. We can only embrace the Way, Jesus. The One who suffered the consequences for human sin in his own flesh by dying the death that our sins deserved.
How do we embrace Jesus as the Way. We receive Him as Lord and Saviour. “To all who received Him, to those who beleived in His name He gave the right to become children of God” John 1:12
Jesus is The way to God.
Jesus the Truth
We talk about true things. We care that people say what is accurate. We hope that when people communicate with us, they’re not just making stuff up.
Sometimes we call lies whoppers. There’s an issue that’s being talked about a lot in the American election right now. The issue is, just how much truth was being told when the world was being cajoled to go to war with Iraq.
We need to go because if we don’t Saddam will use his extensive connections with Al Qaeda and his weapons of mass destruction to destroy us.
And he can and will use them in as little 45 minutes. Remember that doozey? That’s a whopper. You’ll note that no weapons of mass destruction were found and no ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda were found. That one was referred to as a whopper with cheese.
What’s wrong with whoppers? I have to be careful here because my brother in law owns a Burger King franchise. Whoppers...lies...have terrible consequences.
Whoppers distort. Lies lead to pursuing pointless and destructive directions. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the condition the world is in today is a graphic illustration of why truth matters.
Those of us who have ever smoked probably remember some friend telling us that smoking is cool. Smoking is what the cool kids do. How many people die because they believe this lie?
And when we believe the lie, when we receive it into our way of thinking, what happens? If leads to a compromised life, a sickened life, an impoverished life.
Now Jesus just didn’t say, “I tell the truth”. He didn’t, if you’ll notice, say that he pointed to the truth. He said “I AM the truth”.
What is truth? Pilate asked that question of Jesus as Jesus stood right in front of him. Pilate stared the truth point blank in the eyes and said, “What is truth?
Apparently we need eyes to see and ears to hear the truth. We need to have an interest in the truth. We need to believe truth serves us and those around us better than falsehood.
What is truth? The dictionary defines it as the supreme reality and the ultimate meaning and value of existence. The picture we get here of Jesus is more than that He always told the truth.
It is more than that he lived in a true way. It is more than that he was an example of truth. He is, if we are to hear and embrace the Word of the living God, the very definition of truth.
To embrace Truth is to embrace Jesus Christ. To live life as God truly means us to live it is to live united with Jesus, in deep fellowship with the One who is the very meaning of Truth.
There are true things that Jesus taught...that Life is about love, that God loves you like a father. But the main point is that Jesus is the Truth and that your best possible future is all wrapped up in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus the Life
"Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life”. 1 Timothy 6:17-19
Life is the quality that distinguishes living things from dead things.
Ps 16:11 You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence,with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
The life that is truly life. Close your eyes for a minute and think about, if you can, all of the
sweetest things in your life. Think of your closest friend. Think of your spouse. Think of your kids. Think of the colours of a Canadian autumn.
Think of something that gives you so much joy sometimes that you want to jump up and down for joy. Think of chocolate. Think of deep nourishing sleep.
There is a life that is truly life...and there is a counterfeit life. A counterfeit life puts hope in
wealth, in getting more stuff and is never content with what is. A counterfeit life exchanges what is right for what feels good. A counterfeit life is arrogant and thinks itself better than others.
A counterfeit life puts stuff ahead of people, ideas of right and wrong ahead of relationships. A counterfeit life will consume us if we let it. It will complicate and rob us of joy . This counterfeit life is described in Holy Scripture pretty bluntly actually. It is called “death”.
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath”. Ephesians 2:1-3 Pretty serious stuff, eh?
And then there’s Jesus. The life that is truly life. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions––it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed
in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus”. Ephesians 2:4-7
I can’t draw to save my life. That’s ok because I can see things in my mind, and the picture that God paints in his Holy Word is a stunning one indeed.
Close your eyes and imagine yourself surrounded by the incomparable riches of God’s love. Imagine the feeling of being wrapped up in his grace. Imagine sitting beside the Way, the Truth and the Life in places so beautiful and stunning as to be beyond compare.
Imagine yourself being able to fell His warmth and love, His affection for you as His beloved child. That is God’s gift to you in Christ Jesus. It is God’s delight that you believe in Him.
It is God’s delight that you belong to Him. It is God’s desire that everyone here and everyone in this community hear of a wonderful Saviour.
And respond...in faith...to his gift of mercy to us in the person and life of Jesus, the life that He invites us all to join.
Will you celebrate the presence of the living God with me? Can we worship him and pour out our whole selves in worship to Him? You know, if we do, He will enable us and equip us to be a source of blessing to each other and to the community we call our own.
Let’s pray. Father God, thank you for your plans for us. But most of all thank you for the amazing gift of Jesus Christ to us.
You are beautiful to us, Lord Jesus. Give us hearts that are moved and changed by your beauty, by your love and kindness to us. We celebrate you, today, holy Lord Jesus Christ. In Your name we pray. Amen.
