Jesus is The Way

John 14:1-14

OPENING PRAYER

Lord, we confess that we pay lip service to the values of your kingdom.

We love those who love us, but we find it impossible even to like our enemies.

We are honest and faithful if the cost is not too high.

We confess that too easily we accept the standards of the world and not those of Christ.

We have settled for justice instead of caring concern and for fair play when you called us to love.

We have exchanged what is right for what seems to work and what is true for what does not hurt.

We allow the world to set the example instead of our Lord.

Forgive us, Lord, that our striving against temptation is so weak and our struggle for what is right is so short-lived.

Forgive us, renew, and empower us to stand and to strive and to struggle for Christ and the kingdom. Amen.

INTRODUCTION

Imagine you're on a journey, surrounded by endless paths leading in different directions. Each one promises to bring you closer to your destination, but which one truly leads you there? Do you know the way? Today we will talk about how Jesus is the only way. You will see the Problem, which is that we are lost and don’t know the way on our own. We’ll look at the Solution, which is that Jesus is the only way. And we’ll discuss the Application.

BODY

Problem:

In this text Jesus just gets done comforting his disciples because he had previously essentially told them He was going away, that He would die, that one of them was a traitor, that Peter would renounce Him three times, that Satan was at work against all of them, and that all the disciples would fall away. You can only imagine how dejected they became, so he comforted them in the first 2 verses. He says, “Do not let your heart be troubled” because He was going to prepare a place for them in heaven or His Father’s house. Notice though, that He is reminding them He is leaving them. However, He also promises that He is coming back to receive them and take them to heaven.

Now the disciples should know how to get to heaven at this point, and He says in verse 4, “You know the way where I am going.” Through his ministry, Jesus had been showing them the way, only, as Thomas signaled, they did not completely grasp this.

In verse 5, Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Thomas specifically uses the word “we” in his statement and question, so we can assume he is speaking on behalf of the 11 disciples. Furthermore, we know from the rest of the Gospels that they would continue confused until His death and resurrection and the advent of the Spirit. They held all the data, only they could not put it together.

Now, before we become too critical of Thomas and the disciples, let me pose a question: Were it not for Jesus and everything that comes after this verse, how would we know the way? As Jace hit on several times in his last series, we know well that in our fallen state, we’re just as lost as Thomas and the disciples. I think we’d be even more lost than they were if we didn’t already have the rest of the story.

Think about the world today. There are plenty of man-made religions that are all about lost people trying to find their way. Richard Abanes has said, “Perhaps Satan’s cleverest tool has been false religions.” I know I’d be trying out all the other world religions if it weren’t for Jesus.

Where do you think you’d be if it weren’t for Jesus? How would we know the way?

That’s the problem. We wouldn’t know the way.

Solution:

We already know the solution, and we see it in the next verse. Look with me at verse 6. Jesus replies to Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” This is the 6th of Jesus’ 7 “I am” statements in the Gospel of John. Jesus does not solely show the way or indicate the way; He is the way. In fact, “the Way” was one of the early names for the Christian faith. Edwin A. Blum (Bloom) said, “Jesus is the ‘Way’ because He is the ‘Truth’ and the ‘Life.’” Jesus is the way to the Father chiefly because his death made access to the Father’s presence available for sinful human beings. He is additionally the way to God because he is the truth: he brought the truth of God into the world, broadcasting it and representing it. Hence, when someone comes to Jesus, they come to the one in whom the truth about the Father is found.

Jesus is similarly the way to the Father because he is the life. In different aspects, the Gospel of John talks of Jesus as “the life”. In Chapter 1 verse 4 we are told, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men,” and in Chapter 5, verse 26 Jesus says, “As the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.” In chapter 6, Jesus speaks of himself as the “bread of life,” and in chapter 11, verse 25 he says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Every one of these texts exhibit the truth that the life of God was found in Jesus. Hence, when someone comes to Jesus, they come to the one in whom the life of the Fatheris found.

Looking back at verse 6, Jesus also says “no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Jesus underlined that salvation, opposite to what numerous people think, is notavailable in numerous ways. Jesus erases any other suggested way to heaven – good works, religious ceremonies, expensive gifts, etc. Only one Way exists. Jesus is the only door to the Father since He is the only One from the Father. As Colin Kruse (Kruz) stated, “No one else can bring people to God, for no-one else has seen God or made him known, no-one else speaks and embodies the truth about God as he does, no-one else shares the very life of God, and no-one else has dealt with the problem of human sin so as to bring people back to a holy God. This means that no-one can claim to know God while rejecting Jesus his Son.”

C.S. Lewis said this on the topic: “there is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him, ‘Are you the son of Brahman?’ he would have said ‘My son, you are in the vale of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked ‘Are you Zeus?’ he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked ‘Are you Allah?’ he would first have rent his clothes and (might) then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius ‘Are you heaven?’ I think he would have probably replied, ‘Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.”

All of us know that Jesus is the only way, or you probably wouldn’t be here today.

Application:

This isn’t new for most of us, right? So, what do we do with all of this? How do we applythis to our lives during this Holy Week of 2024? Jesus didn’t give us or anyone else any other option to get to the Father.

Listen to what Emil Brunner had to say about this: “All other forms of religion—not to mention philosophy—deal with the problem of guilt apart from the intervention of God, and therefore they come to a ‘cheap’ conclusion. In them man is spared the final humiliation of knowing that the Mediator must bear the punishment instead of him. He is not stripped absolutely naked.”

We know what happens next in the Gospels. We know Good Friday is coming. Here’s what I want us to take away from this passage of God’s word: During this Holy Week, with Good Friday approaching, reflect on the significance of Jesus being the only way to the Father, and thank Him for making the way known to us and available to us.

CONCLUSION

As we conclude our time together, let's revisit the image of the crossroads. In a world with countless paths, we have been confronted with the ultimate question: Do we know the way? Through our exploration today, we have affirmed that Jesus is indeed the only way to the Father.

We began by acknowledging the Problem of our spiritual confusion, recognizing that without Jesus, we would be left to wander, crafting our own futile paths. Yet, in our desperation, we discovered the Solution: Jesus Christ, who declared Himself as the exclusive path to the Father.

Reflecting on the significance of Jesus' life and ministry, we are reminded that this truth is not merely theoretical but profoundly transformative. Jesus didn't offer alternatives; He presented Himself as the definitive Way, Truth, and Life.

As we stand on the threshold of Good Friday and Easter, let us embrace the profound implications of Jesus' sacrificial love. Just as He willingly laid down His life to reconcile us to the Father, may we wholeheartedly embrace Him as the cornerstone of our faith.

You are on a journey, but Jesus is the only path. Jesus is the way.

CLOSING PRAYER

Father, you know who and what we are and what we are not.

You know our confusion and our falling.

You know our strengths and our shame.

You know our professions of hope and just how quickly we lose heart.

You know our failure to stand firm on the faith we proclaim and our criticism of others who fail.

You know our complaints when we suffer and our refusal to share one another’s hurts.

You know our self-satisfaction, our self-interest, our selfishness, and the conflict between our good intentions and our love of the easy way forward.

You know the battles we failed to win because we were never quite sure just whose side we were on.

Forgive us that we lose the struggle so easily because we insist on standing in our own strength and not in our Lord’s.

Forgive us, restore us, and reclaim us as your own, through Christ. Amen.