When Truth Has a Face
The Truth Will Set You Free • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Reading from God’s Word
Reading from God’s Word
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
14 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him and exclaimed, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one coming after me ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ ”)
16 Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness,
17 for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Introduction
Introduction
Before we begin this morning, I want to ask you to turn to John 18.
Jesus is standing in Pilate’s hall, an hour or two before the cross.
In v. 37, Jesus tells Pilate why He came into the world:
37 “I was born for this, and I have come into the world for this: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
Pilate answers with three words:
38 “What is truth?”
Then he walks out of the room.
This is an absolutely tremendous moment.
It’s the most famous question in the history of philosophy, and Pilate asks it while looking truth in the face.
He didn’t wait for an answer. He didn’t think there was one.
The answer, was standing in front of him, bound and bleeding, and Pilate turns around and leaves.
I wish I could say that was only a first-century problem. It wasn’t.
It’s our problem too.
We live in a world that’s asking Pilate’s question constantly — and asking it the same way Pilate did — not as a question seeking an answer, but as a way of dismissing the whole conversation.
What is truth?
Who’s to say?
You have your truth, I have mine.
Our culture doesn’t deny that truth exists, as much as it shrugs at it. It asks the question and walks out of the room.
Now, how do we answer when the world asks us “what is truth?”
Do we answer with a list? A set of doctrines?
A list of positions? A list of things we’re for and things we’re against?
Now, those things matter … but know this: a list isn’t where the Bible starts.
When the question “what is truth” got asked in Scripture, the answer in the room wasn’t a list.
It was a Person.
Last Sunday, Hunter began our June Sermon Series in John 8:31-32.
Truth isn’t a thing you download once.
It’s something you continue in. It’s a walk you keep walking.
Today, we take the next step. It’s a big one.
And the question is, What exactly is this truth we’re continuing in? And the answer Jesus provides is going to be far stronger and better than a list.
As you know, all summer our sermons will be rooted in Ephesians 4:14-15.
14 Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.
15 But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ.
During June, the goal is to become anchored.
Before we can speak the truth in love during July, and before we can see how truth knits us together during August, we have to know what truth is.
Today, Jesus will tell us.
I am the Truth. (John 14:6)
I am the Truth. (John 14:6)
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
The Room Where He Said It
The Room Where He Said It
We have to plant the scene in our mind — because the setting makes the claim even more remarkable.
Thursday evening. Cross is tomorrow.
Jesus is in the upper room with the 11. Judas has already slipped away. Jesus has washed their feet. They have broken the bread.
And now, he is telling them he is leaving.
Going back to v. 1, it is obvious the room is heavy. Jesus is going to do his best to comfort them.
1 “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.
2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
4 You know the way to where I am going.”
Then Thomas asks:
5 “Lord,” Thomas said, “we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?”
I believe Thomas is honestly confused. To his question, Jesus answers in the most staggering way.
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
What Jesus Did Not Say
What Jesus Did Not Say
He doesn’t say: “I will teach you the truth.” or, “I will point you toward life.”
Every philosopher who has ever lived has said some version of these things.
Jesus said, “I am.”
I am the way.
I am the truth.
I am the life.
He claims to be the thing (truth) himself.
Every human philosopher chases it.
Socrates drank hemlock for it.
Universities were built for it.
Libraries are filled for the pursuit of it.
And here is a Galilean carpenter in a borrowed room telling 11 disciples the thing the whole world is chasing is sitting at the table in front of them.
Now, that should really stand out.
Truth, as we normally use it, is a collection of statements.
A sentence is true or false.
We don’t say a person is the truth.
And yet, that is precisely the claim.
He’s not saying He scores 100% on the truth test…
He’s the standard the test is graded against.
Truth isn’t a category Jesus falls into.
Jesus is the category.
Everything else is true or false depending on how it lines up with Him.
There is no middle ground.
CS Lewis pointed this out in Mere Christianity.
A merely good teacher doesn’t talk like this.
Good teachers say, “follow my teaching.”
Jesus says, “follow me.”
Good teachers say, “I’ve found something worth living for.”
Jesus says, “I am what you’re living for, whether you know it or not.”
Now, either that is the most important sentence you’ll ever hear .. or it’s total madness.
What it cannot be is just another opinion in the marketplace.
One Way, Not Many
One Way, Not Many
Notice the second half of John 14:6:
6 No one comes to the Father except through me.
Now, this is really where the world has a hangup.
The world is OK with Jesus being a way, a truth, a life.
He’s just one option on the buffet of religion.
Take what you like.
Notice: Jesus doesn’t offer himself as an option.
If he is truth, then there is no other truth apart from Him to get to the Father by.
Now, this is not arrogance on our part. We didn’t make this claim.
We simply believe the One who made it.
And the exclusivity here, isn’t a wall built to keep people out.
Look at it again.
It’s an open door with a universal invitation.
“no one… except” means the category of people who can come to Jesus is unrestricted.
There’s no qualifier.
The only condition is:
6 No one comes to the Father except through me.
And so the verse that sounds narrowest in all the Bible is attached to the widest welcome in the world.
Now, Let’s move on.
How can truth be a person?
Let’s go to John 1.
The Word Became Flesh (John 1:14)
The Word Became Flesh (John 1:14)
So, let’s go back to the first verse of John’s gospel.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The word. What is that?
God’s self-expression. God’s mind, God’s reason, God’s truth, eternally alive and eternally personal.
Verse 3 says:
3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
Whatever is real, He is the reason it is real.
Now, v. 14:
14 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The eternal truth of God took on skin and bone — fingernails and a heart.
“Dwelt” literally means he pitched his tent with us.
The same God who filled the tabernacle with glory in the wilderness came and tabernacled in a human body in Galilee.
Now, tie this back to the question we’re attempting to answer today.
When we say Jesus is truth, we’re not playing around.
We’re saying the truth at the foundation of the universe, the truth that every seeker is groping for, got up one morning in Nazareth and put on sandals.
Truth Ate Breakfast
Truth Ate Breakfast
Now, I put it that way because I want you to see how concrete this is. It is not abstract.
Truth has a body.
Truth got tired and sat down by a well in Samaria at noon (John 4:6)
Truth got hungry.
Truth fell asleep in the stern of a boat with his head on a cushion (Mark 4:38)
Truth went to a wedding.
Truth held children in his lap while important men rolled their eyes.
Truth stood outside the tomb of Lazarus and wept (John 11:35)
Now think about that one.
Truth is not cold.
Truth can have a broken heart.
Whatever the truth about death and grief and loss is, it isn’t a syllogism.
It literally stood at the grave and cried with two grieving sisters, and then it called a dead man out.
And, after the resurrection in John 21, the risen Lord stood on a beach at dawn, cooking fish and said to his disciples, “Come eat breakfast.” (John 21:12)
Truth ate breakfast.
Truth made breakfast, for men who had abandoned him weeks before.
These are not abstractions. These things are how a person behaves.
And that’s important on our hardest days.
When you’re sitting in the surgery waiting room for your loved one, you don’t need a true statement. You need the truth who wept at a tomb.
When the diagnosis comes back, when the marriage strains, when the prodigal won’t come home, the question “what is true” becomes deeply personal… and God’s answer to it is personal first.
He didn’t send down a memo about suffering.
He came and suffered.
Whatever you brought into this building today, the truth of God isn’t up in a file cabinet in heaven.
He has a face, and that face has been wet with tears like yours.
Why It Matters That Truth is Personal
Why It Matters That Truth is Personal
If truth were merely a list of prepositions, then knowing it would only be a memory exercise, and the people closest to God would the ones with the best minds and most degrees.
But, because truth is a person, knowing it is a relationship.
It’s available to the greatest scholar in the world and to the child in the bible class, and the person who never got past the 8th grade.
You don’t master it like a text book — you walk with Him — like the disciples did.
This is why Hunter focused on the need to “continue in the word” last week.
You can’t continue in a fact.
You can walk with a Person for a lifetime.
A preposition can sit on a page.
A Person can love you.
A preposition can be correct.
A Person can come looking for you when you’re lost.
The truth didn’t sit in heaven and wait on us to come find it.
The truth came down and moved into our neighborhood, because the truth wanted us.
Now, lets move to v. 16-17.
Grace and Truth Came Through Him
Grace and Truth Came Through Him
Notice what John says:
16 Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness,
17 for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
The law was GIVEN through Moses.
Grace and truth CAME through Christ.
Moses delivered something.
Jesus brought Himself.
The law was a gift carried in Moses’ hands — it was good, it was holy, it was from God.
But Moses was only the courier.
When Jesus arrived, he didn’t come in a package, he came as a person.
What arrived when He came?
17 for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Grace AND truth.
Together. Full of both.
Not half and half.
Not a careful balance.
Not a little truth diluted with a little grace so no one gets hurt.
Full of grace and full of truth at the same time, in the same Person, without either one costing the other anything.
The Two Things We Can’t Hold Together
The Two Things We Can’t Hold Together
Grace and truth are two things we can almost never hold together. Think of it this way:
We all know people who are all truth.
Every fact straight.
Every position sharp.
Every false thing spotted a hundred yards away.
You don’t ever expose your weakness to these people — because truth without grace doesn’t heal anyone.
it just wins arguments and wounds people. truth without love can harden hearts.
We all know people who are all grace.
Endlessly affirming.
Never confronting.
Never saying a hard word no matter what’s at stake.
Love without truth misleads a soul right up to the edge of the cliff.
All of us can drift toward either extreme. Entire churches can drift. And here stands Jesus, walking down the crown of the road, full of grace AND truth.
Watch how He does it in John 8.
Verse 3-4 - an adulterous woman caught in the very act of adultery.
Scribes: want truth without grace: she’s guilty, stone her.
And notice, v. 11, Jesus gives her both, in one breath:
11 “Neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”
Neither do I condemn you — that’s grace .. full strength.
Go and sin no more — that’s truth … full strength.
He doesn’t trade one for the other.
He gives her all of both … and that combination is what saves people.
This is the Gospel
This is the Gospel
Listen … the truth about you and me is bad news.
The truth is, we’ve sinned — every one one of us — and our sins separate us from a holy God.
If God were only truth, that verdict would be the end of the story.
And if God were only grace, in the shallow way we use the word, he’d just wave sin away and pretend it didn’t matter, and his word would mean nothing.
The cross is where grace and truth meet without either one giving an inch.
At the cross, God told the whole truth about sin.
It’s deadly and it costs everything.
And at the cross, God poured out the whole of His grace.
He paid the cost Himself, in the body of His own Son.
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
Truth, full strength.
Grace, full strength.
One Person, with nails through His hands, holding them together for us.
This is why no one comes to the Father but through Hm.
It’s not that God is stingy and wants to close the doors.
It’s that there is only one place in the universe where the truth about your sin and the grace that forgives it have both been fully satisfied.
It’s not a doctrine, a philosophy, or a self-improvement plan.
It’s Jesus.
16 Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness,
Wave after wave of it … like the surf that keeps coming in. There’s no other sea to swim in.
As We Close…
As We Close…
So, where does this leave us?
When the world asks you “what is truth?” you can give a better answer than a list.
You can give the answer Jesus gave.
Somewhere soon you will run into a person who will say nobody can know what is true.
And you can say, I believe truth isn’t a “what” at all. I believe the truth is a “who” and I believe he can be known, because he went to a lot of trouble to be known. He was actually born for it.
That kind of answer will start a lot more honest conversations than a list ever will.
Our culture knows how to dismiss positions.
But it’s much harder to dismiss a person, especially for the one who weeps at funerals and makes breakfast for traitors.
And, notice, you’re no longer defending a system, you’re introducing a friend.
Hold grace and truth together, because the One you follow does.
We don’t hold grace and truth together because it is a wise communication strategy.
We hold them together because we follow Jesus, who is full of both.
You cannot stay neutral about Jesus.
If Jesus had only claimed to teach the truth - you could file him on a shelf with all the other philosophers of the past. He’d be no different.
But, because He claimed to be truth, that demands a verdict from every single person on the planet.
Pilate heard the claim, asked his question, and walked out of the room.
Thomas heard the claim, and a few weeks later was back on his knees crying out “My Lord, and My God!”
Same claim.
Same evidence.
Two different responses.
Two different eternal destinations.
Everyone here today is somewhere on the road between Pilate and Thomas — and the question is, which direction are you moving?
And so, if you’ve never come to Jesus — I want you to know how personal this is.
Becoming a Christian is not like subscribing to a list. It’s coming to a Person.
It’s believing that Jesus is who he claimed to be, the Son of God, the truth in flesh.
It’s turning from the life you’ve been living, confessing his name, and being baptized into him, to walk in newness of life.
And notice that with that baptism — it’s personal.
We’re not baptized into a position paper — we’re baptized into Him.
The way is open to you right now.
6 No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you’re already a Christian and been drifting, this is the morning to address it.
Maybe your relationship with Jesus has grown cold.
He hasn’t moved.
His fullness hasn’t run dry.
It’s still grace upon grace, and the road back is the same Person the road in was.
Come right now as we sing.
