The Way, The Truth, And The Life Series

Welcome back to our 7th week in our Discovering who Jesus says He is series, studying the I am statements made by Jesus in the Gospel of John. Last week we talked about how Jesus is the resurrection and the life. We looked at how we have the victory through Jesus, because Jesus as the resurrection shows us the he has defeated sin death and the grave.

This week we look at one of the most popular and widely used verse in the Bible. This verse is nearly has well known as John 3:16. This short phrase sums up the doctrine of Salvation through Jesus and helps us to understand the character of who Jesus is.

Turn with me to John 13:31.

As you turn let me give you some background to this passage. At the time of this passage Jesus’ death is coming soon and Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples. They just had Passover with Jesus, he just washed their feet and they just had the very first communion of all time. Jesus just identified who would betray them and now they are walking after dinner on their way to Gethsemane.

Read John 13:31-14:11

Jesus is trying to explain a few important thoughts here:

1. He is about to leave the disciples: he has to die so that they could know the Father.

2. Where he is going, they could not follow…

3. He had to prepare the way for them…and that was why he was going. He had to die, he had to be the perfect sacrificial lamb

4. One day they would follow him…the way…to the place that he had prepared for them…and so will all who follow the way.

Jesus is talking about leaving them as He dies on the cross.

I want to show you something. Most of you have probably heard this illustration but it shows us so well how Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the life. And if you’ve never heard it before then this is an easy way to share the gospel with your friends.

Tell the Cross-Bridge Story.

They are starting to hear that Jesus is going to leave them. They also hear that one day they can follow him, because they know the way, but Thomas is lost…He basically says Lord, give us the directions, we don’t know the way to your Father’s house.

During Super Bowl XXXVII, FedEx ran a commercial that spoofed the movie Castaway, in which Tom Hanks played a FedEx worker, whose company plane went down, stranding him on a desert island for years.

Looking like Tom Hanks in the movie, the FedEx employee in the commercial goes up to the door of a suburban home, package in hand. When the owner comes to the door, he explains that he survived 5 years on a deserted island, and during that whole time, he kept this package in order to deliver it to her.

She gives a simple, “Thank you.” However, he is curious about what is in the package that he has been protecting for years. He says, “If I may ask, what was in that package after all?”

She opens it and shows him the contents, saying, “Oh, nothing really. It is just a satellite telephone, a global positioning device, a compass, a water purifier, and some seeds.”

Jesus is saying to Thomas, you already have everything…I’m the whole package here to save you, all you have to do is follow me. Jesus is explaining to them that HE is the way. The way to the Father…the gateway for the sheep…if we Know Jesus, we can follow him. In Jewish literature, God’s true path of righteousness could be called “the way. Jesus is the one who makes us righteous, he is the one that sanctifies us.

Jesus says I am the way, and then the next two words here qualifies to us how he is the way.

1. Jesus is the way because he is the truth. That is the revelation of God and because of the life of God that resides in Him.

Turn with me to Ephesians 1:7 Read 7-14

Through Jesus we receive the assurance of full forgiveness for everything we have ever done or will ever do. Because of Jesus’ blood, shed for you on the cross…He made the way for us to join him in Heaven, in his Father’s place. He left to prepare the place, and we can follow the way, because of what he did for us on the cross

He is the way because he is the truth. We must trust and believe in Jesus John 14:1, You Believe in God, Believe also in me. Have you ever noticed how often people believe in God, but not Jesus? One of the saddest things in the world is this. Stephen Hawking, In His book A Brief History of Time, writes that if physicists could find a “theory of everything” — that is, a cohesive explanation for how the universe works — they would glimpse “the mind of God.” Stephen Hawking, a self-professed Atheist, world renowned physicist Believed in a type of God. He is quoted to have said, "I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science," conceding that "the laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws." He believed in God, and a personal relationship with numbers, but He did not believe in Jesus. For a man so brilliant, he misses one of the most fundamental Truths of life. That through Jesus we can not only glimpse the mind of God, but that we can have a relationship with Him.