Re-routing: Pathfinders and Trailblazers

intro

I was 11 years old and hiking the trails in the woods that surround Nosoca Pines Ranch. I even had the pathfinder director for the Carolina Conference with me navigating, who happens to be my father. Do you pathfinders in the room think you could get lost with hiking around with a master guide pathfinder director father with you? If you are saying no we couldn’t get lost…you would be wrong.

I’m not sure what color the trail was marked, it may have been Red, and for the sake of the story we will say it was red. We had walked for a while following the red marked trail, but soon we found ourselves searching for the next marker and it was not appearing. In fact it felt like the trail itself had disappeared.

I realize I am not yet even 30, but I do still remember a day when GPS was not as easily accessed. This was a time before your phone included a compass, maps, and even trail guide apps. We had nothing handy to re-route us. All I had with me was my master guide, Pathfinder director father who, like me had somehow missed the the marker. We were lost. Now while I was nervous, my father appreciated the adventure. “Son its time to trail-blaze!” (I don’t know if thats what he actually said, but thats what we did). If we were going to pathfind, we were going to have to blaze our own trail to find the path. While I was skeptical we were really heading in the right direction or not, there was a calming feeling knowing my father was leading and blazing the new trail ahead.

We obviously eventually found our way back, and had an entertaining story for the others back at the camp.

Pathfinders! Adventurers! Parents! Church members and attendees! In the path marked to your Heavenly Home, Jesus blazed a trail for you to follow, He will re-route those who have wandered off, and He will do everything in His power to help you path find and adventure through!

Today we are going to talk about the path Jesus mapped out for us! Before we begin, lets go to God in prayer.

Pray.

If you have your Bible’s with you, please turn to . We have had a full service today, so I don’t intend to spend a lot of time speaking today but lets jump into the heart of today’s message.

John 14:1 ESV

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.

Jesus’ words to his disciples were not being fully understood in the upper room as he had just described a few traumatic events that were soon to unfold. But Jesus reassures his closest followers as to where to put their faith.

John 14:2–4 ESV

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.”

Jesus describes more than just simply a mansion of refuge and haven for them one day, but prophecies his promise to one day come again.

So Jesus has given them a description of what is in store for them and where He is going....but Thomas, maybe not perceiving the events to come completely asks the natural question. He asks the question anyone would want to know before they begin a journey. He wants the map. He wants the address, and he wants to know the best route to get there.

John 14:5 ESV

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

Thomas says Lord, tell me the address so I can put in the gps. Lord give me the coordinates. Lord give me something that I may be able to find atleast the marked path.

How can we find our way without knowing?

John 14:6 ESV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus says “I am the way.”

How often are we searching, even trail blazing for the path, that Jesus has already blazed for us. How often are we working so hard trying and failing to better ourselves on our own by our own merits.

The book wonderful book, Steps to Christ, puts it this way,

“But in vain are men’s dreams of progress, in vain all efforts for the uplifting of humanity, if they neglect the one Source of hope and help for the fallen race.”

This week, I was with Mrs. Pinder’s class on a field trip at the YMCA. Atticus Fehl was our host and took the class on a nature walk over at Duncan Park. Atticus told the class, he goes their all the time and knows the park backwards and forwards. While we were walking on the path with Atticus leading us. One of the kids saw, (what I would say was a pretty sizable snake) just off the path. Atticus had the group be quiet to not startle the snake, and looked at it and calmly diverted the group into a different direction. Not to cause alarm, he didn’t tell them he believed this snake to be a venomous water moccasin. This was actually the first of 2 we saw and both times Atticus re-routed the group the to safety.

You see in this instance it wasn’t the marked path we needed to follow. It was the man who knew the park backwards and forwards. When their were snakes along the path. We were re-routed and put back on the path to our destination.

I never saw a map of the park, but if it was as simple as just following the trail, we may have encountered even more snakes. For the class, THE WAY back was just simply following Atticus.

Jesus answers Thomas’s question of how to get to this place that Jesus has described. Jesus says: I am the way.

Jesus says, “I am the truth, I am the Life.”

Speaking to the disciples, in this particular climate of tradition. God’s law was not being taught the way God intended it to be. It had been used as a chain, not a gift.

Jesus had not come to destroy the law by any means. He had come to fulfill its purpose. He had come to bring truth back to law. He was making it clear to this disciples. There was no other path leading to salvation except through Christ.

Jesus says, when you See me, you have seen the Father. Jesus, says the father is in Him and He in the Father.

Last Sabbath with the Lower Room group that met in Colbourn, we were discussing the sinner’s need for Christ. I want to make it abundantly clear, we will always be in need of our Savior Jesus. He is our path to Salvation. He’s not an excuse to do away with the Law, He is the reason we accept the gift and follow it. The law however is not what saves us. It is through Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life.

Steps to Christ alludes our passage and expounds on this idea:

“Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but here they are powerless. They may produce an outward correctness of behavior, but they cannot change the heart; they cannot purify the springs of life. There must be a power working from within, a new life from above, before men can be changed from sin to holiness. That power is Christ.”

In the youth Sabbath school last Sabbath, Reuben was talking with the group about the Israelites exodus from Egypt, one thing that stood out, even after God had established his power through the plagues on Egypt and delivered his people away in miraculous exodus He still provided his presence in the form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of glowing fire by night. He even blazed a trail through the Red Sea.

Jesus was sharing with his disciples that He was as He has always been and will be, he was the light of the world. The trail is blazed, the path is found, and while we at times have need to be re-routed. Our God in Heaven never abandons us.

So pathfinders, adventurers, and everyone else here! If you are ever feeling lost. If you don’t know where you are going or what you are doing. Maybe you have just lost your bearings.

Keep this verse with you at all time.

John 14:6 ESV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.