The Way, the Truth and the Life
Notes
Transcript
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
I don’t know who your best friend is or who you couldn’t live without.
But imagine for a moment that this person comes to you and says, “I am going away. You can’t come with me. You won’t see me again in this life as you know it.”
You would be incredibly sad. But before the sadness could even set it, you would be confused and perplexed.
You would have questions— “What do you mean I can’t go with you?”
“What do you mean you are going away and I’m not going to see you anymore?
The sadness and the confusion would leave you troubled.
That is the situation that we have in John 14 this morning. Jesus’ disciples are troubled because He is going to leave them.
They have left everything to follow Him
They are sure He is the Messiah
They have walked with Him for the better part of three years and hung on His every word
They have seen Him do things that they couldn’t forget if they tried
They love Him. They trust Him. They believe in His teaching and they want to follow in His footsteps.
And so the prospect of Him not physically being with them anymore is devastating.
Are you devastated today? Are you troubled today?
Are you filled with sorrow?
The perplexing and sad events of life and the reality that this life feels shorter every day weighs upon you.
You wonder if there is a way to live in this world with hope when you are so devastatingly troubled.
There is. There is relief. There is rest. There is peace.
And it is all offered in the One who is leaving the disciples in this passage this morning.
Let’s see what it is all about.
“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.
WE ARE TROUBLED (v. 1)
WE ARE TROUBLED (v. 1)
The disciples are troubled in this passage because of words that Jesus spoke to them in chapter 13. Let’s go backwards and see what has unsettled them so much.
Let’s see what has undone Thomas’ world.
Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’
Peter hears this and he is not a fan.
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 responds again...
Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”
And Jesus responds by predicting that Peter will actually deny Him three times before the morning comes
Keep in mind that all of this dialogue is happening on the night that Jesus washed the disciples feet and had His Last Supper with them.
It is at a moment in which their intimacy with Him as their Shepherd is at an all-time high and that is when He reminds them that He must leave.
You can see why they are having such strong reactions to His words. You can see why they are so troubled.
This wasn’t a new revelation, though. Jesus had been very clear with them.
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.”
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.”
And as the Final Passover came, Christ the Lamb knew that it was time to die and that not long after, He would leave His disciples
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.
So in John 14, Jesus is seeking to relieve their concerns. He wants them to know where He is going.
He wants them to know what He will do there.
He wants them to know how they can join Him in the place where He is going.
And as He does this, He says, “Let not your hearts be troubled.”
To be troubled means to be disturbed and to be thrown into confusion.
To be troubled is to have an unwelcome commotion in your heart that won’t die down.
On two occasions in the New Testament, the Greek word that translates to “trouble” here actually translates to “terror”
Again—I think many here today can identify with their feelings.
Your situation might be different, but trouble is trouble.
Commotion in the heart is commotion in the heart.
And trouble is not like a mosquito on an elephant.
The elephant doesn’t even feel the mosquito.
Doesn’t notice the bite.
Doesn’t miss the blood.
Instead, trouble is like an insidious disease that triggers worse symptoms and diseases in our hearts and minds.
Here is the first thing I want to us to remember this morning:
Here is the first thing I want to us to remember this morning:
1. We are troubled because we do not see things for how they really are.
1. We are troubled because we do not see things for how they really are.
Have you been in this place? This is where fear begins.
You can’t look at the facts rationally.
You are seeing them as worse than they are.
You are letting hypothetical situations that have not and may not occur eat you alive.
And with each unchecked worry, fear grows.
Then Fear causes you to become excessively sorrowful.
Listen—Christianity is not stoicism.
God gave you emotions—He doesn’t ask you to deaden them to the point of being a robot that doesn’t feel or react.
The Bible is realistic about the fact that there is suffering in this world. The Psalms are filled with praises, but over 2/3 of them are actually laments.
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
For your arrows have sunk into me,
and your hand has come down on me.
Did you know the Bible talks that way? It is honest.
The Lord knows we will have sorrows and He gives us His Word to live on as we deal with them.
But we do not need to be excessively sorrowful.
We do not need to be troubled.
Perplexed and terrified.
But when the trouble eclipse out ability to see the reality of things, that is exactly what happens.
We become excessively sorrowful.
And then, Our excessive sorrows cause us to lose hope.
The Puritan, Richard Baxter, said that Christian hope is the ability to apply the Gospel to your own life.
To believe it for yourself.
Our troubles and excessive sorrows rob us of hope.
We will believe God’s promises for everyone else, but we don’t think they are true for us. They can’t be. We are convinced by our troubles.
I fear this is where many of you are at today. You are hopeless.
You believe Jesus will bless everyone but you.
You believe Easter is for everyone else, but not you.
Your troubles have convinced you that you will never be joyful again.
Your troubles have done a number on you.
Well—Jesus has a command for you. A gentle, loving command. Believe.
Believe in God. Believe in His Son, Jesus Christ.
Faith is the remedy for our troubles.
Faith is the remedy for our troubles.
It is the antidote.
This belief that Jesus is exhorting them to is not a little God and country religion.
We are not just talking about knowing facts about Jesus.
We are not even talking about agreeing with those facts.
We are talking about putting the full trust of your soul in Christ.
And that distinction is important
You can agree with something all day and not trust it.
Example: My dad is one of the smartest guys I know in understanding how mechanical things work. That being said, he will not get on a roller coaster.
He agrees that all the science and physics make sense, but he isn’t up to putting his life in its hands.
And this is how some of you are with Christ this morning.
You agree with the Bible that He is real and He did all these things, but you don’t trust Him.
If the disciples will believe in God the Father and the Son whom He has sent, they will have eternal life.
And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
And if the disciples believe, while they will have grief, they will not have troubles.
While they may have sorrow, it will not be excessive sorrow.
Faith will keep them seeing things rightly.
Faith undoes the damage that fear inflicts.
Now, in just a moment, we are going to talk about Jesus preparing a place of eternal rest for all of His people, but before we do, I want to be clear about this business of faith this morning.
We are not talking about simply believing that Jesus died and resurrected and He’s going to give me wings to fly away from here one day.
If we just believe that, our troubles will disappear.
No, we are talking about a covenant between you and God where He saves you with the life and death of Christ.
And you respond in faith by surrendering to Him. By turning from your sin and putting your trust in His Son.
LAW: God has a moral law that says:
Don’t love anything more than Me or as much as Me.
Don’t worship things that are not Me.
Don’t use my name like a curse word.
Honor Him with our rest.
Honor our mother and fathers.
Don’t murder—not just physical murder, but do not murder at the heart level with unrighteous anger.
Don’t commit adultery—which not just be physical adultery, but lust at the heart level, as well.
Don’t take things that are not yours.
Don’t lie about your neighbor.
Don’t covet your neighbors stuff, and in turn spurn God’s blessings.
We have failed this law at every point. The Bible says that the Law stops the mouth because it has no answer for the prosecution.
We are guilty. This is everyone.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
JUDGMENT: And the Bible tells us that we will stand before God as our Judge:
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
I am not trying to go all “Turn or Burn” on you, here.
I know some of you are like, “Here we go—thump that Bible, man.”
I am just telling you what the Word says and I want to appeal to your logic that it makes sense.
If I break the temporary law of the temporary state of Virginia, I will go stand before a temporary judge and receive a temporary punishment.
If I break the law of an eternal God and I stand before His eternal throne and He calls me to account for my life as an eternal Judge, what else would I receive but eternal punishment.
We are talking about the wrath of God. We are talking about forever. We are talking about the just punishment of all evil.
We are talking about Hell.
CHRIST: But God is loving and He is merciful. He abounds in these things.
So He sent His Son Jesus into the world to live a sinless life where He actually kept God’s moral law.
And then He died on the Cross. And He did this while we were still enemies with Him:
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
This is the greatest act of love the world has ever known.
The Giving of the Son by the Father
The Voluntary Death of the Son
But this was not just a nice man dying.
Jesus suffered with purpose.
If I could take all the punishment you deserve from God for how you have sinned against Him and put it in a cup, Jesus drank it.
He drank your cup.
He committed no sin. There was no wrath that He deserved to drank.
But He drank up every drop of the wrath that should have come down upon your head.
Because He abounds in mercy and love.
And then—the big event we are celebrating today occured three days after His crucifixion.
The way sun goes away and then rises again over the hills
The way the day departs and the night comes and the night departs and the day rises again
The Lord Jesus rose from the the tomb He was placed in
And in His resurrection, He proved:
He is the Son of God
His sacrifice on our behalf is accepted by God
He is the Conqueror of Death
And then after forty days, He ascended into heaven and took His seat at the right hand of the Father
RESPONSE: And He offers eternal life to those who have ears to hear.
It is Life for a life.
He has given you His life, that you may have eternal life forever.
But He wants your life in return.
He wants you to forsake your way of living and to turn away from it
He wants you to place your trusting faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection for your salvation
THAT is the sort of faith that drives away trouble.
The faith that trusts in the promises of God.
The faith that believes they all come true in the crucified and resurrected Son of God.
Ultimately that is the reality of things.
Nothing in this world can separate us from the promises of God, if we are believers in Christ.
And that means there is no sorrow that needs to be excessive.
We must have faith. And that faith must be in Christ.
ETERNAL RELIEF (v. 2-3)
ETERNAL RELIEF (v. 2-3)
So we have see how we are troubled because we do not see things for how they really are.
We have talked about how faith is the remedy for that struggle.
But what is this eternal life that we have talked about? What is this eternal reward that we are trusting in Jesus for?
Let’s look back at the text.
Christ wants them to know that He is going away because He is going to prepare a place for them.
This is what he is saying in verses 2 and 3.
What is this place? Why should His preparation of it relieve them of the fears they have about Him leaving?
Well, the place is heaven, but I fear it is not the heaven that many of you are thinking about.
And that is because in the Bible Belt, a lot of folk theology about heaven has replaced what the Bible actually teaches.
And trust me—what the Bible teaches is much better than the stuff we have come to believe culturally.
For example, I would guess many in here imagine heaven as just a sea of clouds with people walking around in it, singing to Jesus, who sits on His throne somewhere far off in the distance
But a heaven in the clouds is much more of a Greek mythology idea than a Christian one
You can’t find any reputable and trusted teacher in Christian history who taught of a heaven with a floor of clouds.
Here is what the Bible actually teaches us about eternity.
First of all, Christ is going to return one day.
That is implied in what Christ is saying in these verses. If He is going away to prepare a place for them, it only makes sense that He would come back and get them.
1 Thessalonians 4:16a(ESV)
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God...
After Jesus resurrected, He ascended to heaven. He sat down at God’s right hand. But He will not stay there forever.
He will return. He will come back. This is what two angels told His disciples after He ascended into heaven
And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Until He returns, He gives us His Word to live by.
He gives us the Lord’s Supper table to gather around to remember His life and death for us.
He gives us baptism to show us how He is saving souls and adding to His Kingdom until He returns
And in this time, the church preaches the Gospel and calls on people to believe in Christ.
But one day, the time for preaching will end and Christ will descend and return.
Secondly, the dead in Christ will resurrect.
Any Christian who died prior to Christ’s return will be raised from the dust. Their body will be united to their soul again.
Like going to sleep and then waking up, the resurrected believer will go from the perishable to the imperishable.
Our bodies might be broken down and weary.
They might disintegrate to nothing in a casket.
If you are a believer, you don’t need to worry about all that.
Your Redeemer resurrected from the grave on Easter Sunday and you will resurrect in the same manner at His return.
Anyone who is alive when Christ returns will be caught up together with the dead in Christ and they will be given resurrected, glorified bodies as well.
And every Christian, like soldiers burning their barracks, eager to return to their homes when the war is over, will cast aside these busted up bodies for glorified bodies that are given to us by God.
Thirdly, there will be judgment.
Young and old will be judged.
Every nation and people group will be judged.
For those who do not know Christ, they will be judged in their sins. They will be judged by God’s law, which is not just written in His Word but on their hearts.
They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
God judging everything in your life, from the secret to the public, should utterly terrify you if you are not a believer.
You have no payment for your sins. You will have to pay.
But judgment will not just be for the unbeliever. Believers in Christ will be judged as well. It will not a heaven and hell judgment. We have eternal life in Christ. He already suffered that judgment for believers.
Instead, there will be a judgment of our converted, Christian life.
Everything we did for Christ will be our reward.
But all the time and health and intelligence that we wasted on our flesh and on sin will be burnt up before us like wood, hay and straw before the eternal age begins.
And then finally, God will be our God and His people will be His people on the New Earth.
When you think of heaven, this is what you should think of.
The place where the souls of Christians who have already passed away are currently residing is only a Waiting Room.
It is a glorious Waiting Room that is described as a paradise.
To be there is to be with the Lord.
But it is not the place that Jesus is going to prepare.
That place is even more glorious.
That place is the new temple, the new Jerusalem, the new heaven and new earth.
And Jesus assures His disciples there is plenty of room for them there.
There are many rooms in His Father’s house
John tells us all about this in Revelation 21:1-11
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
No more tears.
No more death.
No more mourning.
No more crying.
No more pain.
No more of the former things that beat on us and left us like a bruised reed
And no more sin or even temptation to sin.
I know sin is not there because God is dwelling with His people in His holiness without any hindrances.
God’s people have Him as their God with no filter between them
It is just as He meant it to be in His creation from the beginning
It is restored by His Son
So we do not need to be troubled by the pains and the sorrows of this world.
I am not talking about a faith free of tears.
No. Mature faith mourns and receives God’s comfort.
Mature faith rejoices in suffering, but still sees suffering for what it is.
What I am saying is that when the glory of the end reward is held out in front of us, it should change the perspective we have about what we endure in this world
And many of you are troubled because you are not considering this in the same ways that the disciples were not.
So this is the second thing for us to remember today.
2. Jesus promises heaven to our troubled hearts (v. 2-4).
2. Jesus promises heaven to our troubled hearts (v. 2-4).
Can I gush about the new heaven and new earth for a moment? Maybe the gushing will lead you to count it as a treasure that you will give anything to get.
It will bring your soul immediate rest that is total and complete.
The second your glorified foot steps onto the property of God’s expansive new creation, you will never have commotion in your heart again.
It will bring saints of all the ages together.
We will not be there alone. Every wonderful believer who has passed on before us will be there, marveling with us over the astounding, expansive global mansion that God has built for His children.
It will be perfect.
Randy Alcorn says the best of this life on earth is a glimpse of heaven.
The things we love—music, food, friendship, recreation, work, humor, worship, serving—all of these things will be perfected.
Symphonies will play to the glory of God with perfection.
Painters will paint for the joy of God with perfection.
Servants will carry out their tasks for the Lord with perfection—without the ground fighting back as we work for Him.
Relationships will be harmonious and joyous, without all the thorns and thistles that come along with them in the here and now. They will be perfected.
It will be forever.
The age of our suffering is finite. It is a a vapor compared with the age of eternity.
Heaven will be forever. It will last as long as the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
Those who are citizens of heaven have eternal life.
As the old song says, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we’ve first begun.”
It will be all about Jesus Christ.
Oh, to think of heaven without Christ! It is the same thing as thinking of hell. Heaven without Christ! It is day without the sun, existing without life, feasting without food, seeing without light. It involves a contradiction in terms. Heaven without Christ! Absurd. It is the sea without water, the earth without its fields, the heavens without their stars. There cannot be a heaven without Christ. He is the sum total of bliss, the fountain from which heaven flows, the element of which heaven is composed. Christ is heaven and heaven is Christ.703
Charles Spurgeon, “Forever with the Lord,” Sermon 1136
Charles Spurgeon
All of the Bible is about Jesus. All of history has been about the glory of Jesus.
It would only make sense that heaven would be all about Him as well.
And there is nothing more glorious than Him.
If Christ is of heaven and heaven is of Christ, then heaven is the most glorious place you could ever imagine.
The sufferings of this world are terrible. They bear down on us without relenting.
Death looms, reminding us that this life is finite and that it will come to an end.
We have doctor’s appointments on our calendars that remind us we are not healthy.
We have graveyards we drive past to remind us that this life is a mist.
And all of this will trouble us to the point of hopelessness, unless we understand heaven.
Unless we would count Christ and His heaven as so glorious and wonderful that we would leave everything for it.
When we view heaven in this way, we will change our view of our troubles.
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.
We will be amazed when we get there, that our souls, which were once perplexed by crying and hurting and dying, will in a moment be flooded with joy so pure, your glorified heart will barely be able to contain it.
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE (v. 6)
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE (v. 6)
Going back to the passage, we see in verse 5 that Thomas objects to what Jesus has said. In verse 4, Jesus says that they know the way to where He is going.
He says that because He has taught them extensively about the Kingdom.
But Thomas is not recalling those lessons and he says, “Lord, we do not know…How can we know the way?”
And Jesus respond by saying that He is the “way, the truth and the life.”
3. Jesus is the only Way our troubled hearts find rest.
3. Jesus is the only Way our troubled hearts find rest.
There is no other way to heaven. There is no other way back to God. There is no other way than Jesus.
Do you know why Jesus is the way?
Because Siddartha Gautama founded Buddhism around the same time the Jewish people were being carried off into Babylonian Exile and then got sick and died.
That does nothing for your sins and guarantees you nothing after your death.
Because Muhammad founded Islam in 610 AD and then on June 8th, 632 he got sick and died.
The five pillars of good works he taught will do nothing for your sins and guarantees you nothing after your death.
Because Joseph Smith founded Mormonism, but then he got in a fight with the government of Illinois and tried to incite a war against them with a militia and got killed for his troubles.
His silly false teachings will do nothing for your sins and guarantees you nothing after your death.
But Jesus Christ, the way of God because He is the truth of God and He is the life of God.
He embodies God’s truth because He is the supreme revelation of God.
He says and does only what the Father tells Him to say and do.
He is the Word made flesh.
God has revealed the truth about who He is in the Word incarnate—Jesus Christ.
And He is the only way to heaven because He is the Life.
He has life in Himself. He doesn’t need anyone else as a source of life.
This is why He can take His life and lay it down and take it up again
Do you know why Buddha and Muhammad and Joseph Smith did not resurrect after they died to prove their truth claims?
Because they do not have life in themselves
Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Because Jesus is the truth and the life, if people believe in His Words and trust in His life, death and resurrection, they have found THE ONLY WAY to God.
And that is what He is telling Thomas.
Thomas says, “We don’t know the way.”
Jesus is saying, “Sure you do. I am standing right here.”
So if having your troubles chased away by thoughts of eternal glory sounds like the life you want today, then you need to believe in Jesus Christ.
He is the way to God.
He is the One who secures eternal glory for you.
Without Him, you will be hopeless.
You will think of death and you will say, “Death equals darkness and sadness. Death equals the end. I am terrified.”
Sorrows in this world will leave you gripped with fear, unable to cope with the prospect of existence.
You might think the Bible is true and God is real, but you won’t believe anything is says about heaven is for you because you have no promise to stand on.
Jesus changes all of that.
He is the way, the truth and the life.
And when you turn from sin and trust in Him for salvation, you will begin to have different thoughts on the troubles of this world.
When they come, you will say, “This is hard, but this is temporary. I believe God. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If not, Jesus would not have told me there are. I know Him, therefore, I can trust that His promises are not just true—they are mine.”
As long as you have faith that the promises of heaven are true for you, you will have hope.
And hope and faith are a strong guard against our troubles.