Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

John 14, and I want to read verses 1-6.  These are the words of Jesus.  “‘Let not your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God; believe also in me.  2In 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?  3And 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.  4And you know the way to where I am going.’  5Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?’ 6Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.’”  Now, we are nearing the end of our study of the “I AM” statements of Jesus.  We’ve been in this series called “Why Jesus”, asking the question, why is He still the One and Only?  And every week when we’ve come across one of the seven “I AM” statements, we’ve found that they’re very provocative in and of themselves.  Jesus laid claim to the idea that He is the bread of life and the light of the world and the door of the sheep.  He said, “I am the good shepherd.”  Last week, we looked at the time that He said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” He said that after He raised His friend Lazarus from the dead.  That’s something to read about in John 11.  But of all the seven “I AM” statements—and we’ll finish up next week.  This is the sixth in a series of seven “I AMs”—this is the one that I think is the most provocative for our culture today, because Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No man comes to the Father but by me.”  He didn’t say, “I am a way, a truth, and a life.”  He didn’t say, “I’m one among many to follow or to believe in or a life to live out.”  He didn’t say, “I’ll show you the way.”  You can get a travel agent to do that.  He didn’t say, “I’ll tell you the truth.”  A philosopher might wax eloquently about his philosophy of life and tell us truthful things.  He didn’t say, “I give you life,” even though He is the creator of heaven and earth and He is the giver of life.  But a physician can do that.  Or maybe your mama said what my mama said to me on occasion.  “I birthed you.  I gave you life,” right?  No, He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  There’s no degree of separation between Himself and these concepts or these abstractions of the way, the truth, and the life.  Buddha said, “I am a guide to way.”  Mohammed said, “I am a teacher of the truth.”  Jesus said, “I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life.”  Again, no degree of separation between the two.  And then He adds this thorny little bit that, in our culture, just rubs so many people wrong.  He says, “And no one comes to the Father except through me.”  And when Christians stand up and say that Jesus is the only way and the only truth and the only life, we have people in our culture who bristle at the idea.  And they say Christian are narrow-minded, they’re intolerant, and they’re bigoted.  And those are the nice things they say about us.  But let’s just remember that when, you know, Orthodox Christianity makes this claim or the statement that Jesus is the only way and the only truth and the only life, it’s not because we made it up or the early apostles made it up and we’re just, you know…this is just a nice thing to say.  These are the words of Jesus.  He said these things.  So if you’ve got problem with it, take it up with Him.  Not with Christians or Orthodox Christianity.  Jesus is the one who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; and no man comes to the Father but by me.”

0:04:39.5

Now, before we dive deeper into each of these abstractions or these concepts, I want us to understand the setting in which He said this.  John 14 is in the middle of one of my favorite sections of scripture.  It’s known as the upper room discourse.  It’s the conversation from John 13-17.  It records the conversation that Jesus had with His disciples on the night before He was crucified.  Think of Holy Week, the final week of Jesus’ life.  They gather in this undisclosed room somewhere in the city of Jerusalem, an upper room the Bible tells us.  And they shared a Passover meal there.  And it was during that Passover meal that Jesus began to disclose even more about the cross.  And He began to talk to His disciples about the fact that He was leaving the.  And, naturally, they grew troubled in their spirit.  They’d been with Him for three years, and the sense of loss, this looming sense of loss, was coming over them there in that room.  I want you to feel the tension in the room even as Jesus is talking.  And if you had less than 24 hours to live as Jesus did, what would you say to your closest friends and followers and family members?  Well, what Jesus said to them, in part, was, “Guys, let not your hearts be troubled.  You believe in God.  Believe also in me.”  Again, not an ounce or a degree of separation between Himself and God.  And then He goes on to talk about heaven.  You have a troubled heart?  No better way to calm your heart than to think about your eternal home.  He says, “In my Father’s house are many rooms.  If it were not so, I would have told.  And 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.”

0:06:29.0

Now, what’s not evident in just a simple reading of the text is the ancient near-Eastern wedding imagery that Jesus is drawing upon here.  In an ancient near-Eastern wedding, it’s all about the groom.  Now, we say, “Here comes the bride.  Here comes the bride.”  No, in an ancient Near East…it’s, “Here comes the groom.  Here comes the groom.”  Because when the bride and the groom get engaged or betrothed—and that had a little bit more of a legal, binding nature to it than just a simple engagement like ours—but when the couple was betrothed, the groom would literally go back to his father’s house, because that’s where they were going to live after the wedding ceremony.  So he would travel back to his father’s house.  And for the next, oh, I don’t know, six months, eight months, a year long during the betrothal period, he would add rooms to his father’s house so when he brought his bride back and they had a family together and all that, they would have a place to live.  And so Jesus is saying to the disciples, the troubled disciples in the upper room, he says, “I’m your heavenly groom.  And in my Father’s house are many rooms.  If it were not so, I would have told you.  I’m going to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”  Here is one of the places where we get the idea of this great Bible prophecy idea of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  As Christians today, we await our savior, our heavenly bridegroom, who is right now with His Father in His Father’s house, building on room after room after room.  Because “in my Father’s house are many, many rooms,” Jesus says, “and I’m coming again to get you, the bride of Christ—that is the Church—so that you can be where I am and we can live together forever.”  That’s, that’s the imagery here.  And with that, Jesus comforts His disciples.  And He says to them in verse 4, “And you know the way to where I am going.”  And that’s when one of the disciples named Thomas spoke up.  Remember Thomas?  We call him “doubting Thomas”.  “5Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?’”  I think Thomas has gotten a bad rap over the years, you know, doubting Thomas.  I think he’s more like honest Thomas.  He’s just asking an honest question.  He’s not the kind of guy that will sit there in ignorance when he doesn't completely understand something, and remain silent in his ignorance.  Aren’t you glad for the Thomas’ out there that will ask the question you’d like to ask but you don’t have the courage to ask?  Right?  We’ve all been there.

0:09:15.6

By the way, this is a safe place to ask hard questions.  God can take it.  Christianity can take it.  There’s not a hard question that’s been asked or that you want to ask that hasn’t been asked about Jesus and His person and His nature and Christianity for 2000 years.  And believe me, there are good and reasonable answers to those questions.  So ask your questions, and doubt your doubts along the way.  Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  And that’s when Jesus said, “Thomas, it’s simple.  I am the way and the truth and the life.  And no man comes to the Father but by me.”  Powerful, powerful words, and words that cut across the grain of our culture today that wants to tell us, “No, let’s be inclusive.  All religious roads lead to the same place.  Don’t be so intolerant and so narrow-minded, you Christians out there, to say Jesus is the only way.”  How do we respond to something like that?  And how do we respond to these words from Jesus?  I want to give you just three simple responses this morning.  If you’re looking for something that is so profound that you scratch your head a little bit and say, “I don’t understand what the pastor said this morning, but it was sure good,” you might be a little bit disappointed.  This is simple stuff, all right, because I don’t want to confuse the very simple response that Jesus gave.  This was not a time for, you know, pious platitudes.  The disciples, and especially Thomas, just needed the straight stuff.  “Thomas, I am the way.  I am the truth, and I am the life.  And no man comes to the Father but by me.”  It doesn't require a whole lot of, you know, Greek exegesis to figure out what Jesus was saying here.  What He said in Greek is the same as what He said here in English.  So let’s just keep it simple, right?

0:11:16.4

Number one, follow the way.  Follow the way.  Now, when Jesus talked about the way, the truth, and the life, the Jews had been thinking about these concepts or these abstractions for many, many centuries.  Every thinking Jew thought about the way.  They thought about the truth.  They thought about the life.  And Jesus gives answer to much of this.  The Jews talked about the ways of God, for instance, and the way we should walk in them.  For example, they would remember Deuteronomy 5:33, how the Lord spoke and said to Moses, “You shall walk in all the ways that the Lord your God has commanded you.”  You shall walk in the Lord’s ways.  A little bit later as Moses was having conversation with that generation that would move from this side in the wilderness, across the Jordan River and into the Promised Land…Deuteronomy is a series of speeches and encouragements that Moses gives to that generation.  He warned them.  He says, “I’m afraid that when I’m gone, when I’m dead,” he says, “that you will turn aside from the way of God’s commandments.”  And that was certainly part of Israel’s history as time went on.  Isaiah the prophet in chapter 30 and verse 21, “And your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, ‘This is the way.  Walk in it.’”  The way that God would direct Israel for those 40 years in the wilderness.  The psalmist David in Psalm 27:11 cries out, “Teach me thy way, O Lord.”  And then a little bit earlier in the Psalms, Psalm 1, one of my favorites.  “Blessed is he who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners.”  In the way of sinners.  Maybe you’re like me, and you have one of those smartphones that make you feel dumb once in a while.  And I have an app on my phone called Waze.  It’s a real-time GPS.  And it’s a really good app.  I use it all the time because, if you ask my wife she’ll tell you, I am directionally challenged.  I don’t know this way from that way.  If you tell me to go north, I’m lost before I leave the parking lot.  I mean, I just have no sense of direction.  I can’t even find the way out of my house.  My wife on the other hand, God just built her with…she’s got a GPS somewhere in her.  She can drive into a city she’s never been before and, like her father, just say, “No, we need to go this direction.”  I mean, I’m just all turned around every which way.  I need somebody to show me the way or to tell me the way.  Better yet, just take me by the hand and take me there, okay?  That’s what I’d really like for you to do.  Jesus doesn’t show us the way.  He doesn't tell us the way.  He is the way.  Again, no degree of separation between Him and this…what may seem like an abstract concept.  And this is why the earlier followers of Jesus in the book of Acts were known as “people of the way”.  Read through the book of Act and through the writings and the defenses that many of the earlier followers made of their faith, especially the apostle Paul.  And they often referred to the way.  Why?  Because Jesus said, “I am the way.”  And the early Christians were known as people of the way.

0:14:49.9

Now, in what way is Jesus the way?  Well, again, in the context of John 14, He is the way to the Father’s house. He is the way to heaven.  Not a way.  He is the way to heaven.  And there is no other way than the Jesus way.  Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”  Their people in our culture today that want us to believe there are many ways to God; that all religious roads basically lead to the same place.  Well, not according to Jesus.  It’s not that Christians are trying to corner the market on religion by saying Jesus is the only way.  We’re just trying to follow Jesus closely, step by step, because He said – not us, not the early followers of Jesus – Jesus Himself said to His disciples in the upper room just hours before He was crucified…He laid claim to being the way, one way, to the Father’s house, He said, “No man comes to the Father but by me.”

0:16:11.2

Burger King used to advertise their fast food service by saying, “Have it your way.” That’s great when you’re selling hamburgers and french-fries and a little soft drink.  But when it comes to eternal matters, having your way can be dangerous because your way may not be God’s way.  The Old Testament prophet Isaiah spoke the words of the Lord when the Lord said to him, “My ways are not your ways.  My thoughts are not your thoughts.  My thoughts are higher than the heavens.  My ways are beyond your finding out.”  So there is a way which seems right and feels good to the culture.  Beware.  Having it your way may not be God’s way, and your way may lead to a place of destruction.  And that’s why Jesus said in Matthew 7—listen to these words—right in the middle of His famous Sermon On The Mount…or towards the end of it rather.  He says, “Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy.  That leads to destruction.  And those who enter by it are many, for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.  And those who find it are few.”  You want to accuse Christians of being narrow-minded?  Well, accuse Jesus first, because Jesus said the way that leads to life is through a narrow gate and few find it.  The easiest thing to do is to go through the broad gate.  The easiest thing to do is to follow what the crowd says, to do the politically correct thing.  You don’t get in as much trouble that way.  You don’t feel the gale-force winds of our culture blowing against you if you say, you know, Jesus is away.  Come on, just change a little word from “the” to “a”, and everything will be just fine.  But we can do that and be intellectually honest as Christians.  We can’t say that every religious road leads the same way or says the same thing.  I mean, even people who have read the fine print in the Koran or the Bible or some other…they’re not gonna say that.  You will insult a religious leader and any major world religion.  If you say they’re all the same thing.  It’s the people who have not read the fine print that say that everything is basically the same because it’s all based on love anyway.  And they reduce truth down to the least common denominator and strip Christianity and every other religion of things that it says.

0:18:55.1

What Jesus said in Matthew 7 kind of reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem.  (0:19:00.1) Remember the one about two roads that diverged in a wood?  He came to that fork in the road.  And he said, “I can go this way, or I can go that way.”  I’ve thought about Robert Frost’s two roads, and I think I know the names of these roads.  One is Wisdom Way.  The other is Foolish Freeway.  Wisdom Way is that small, narrow country road that just kind of takes you through the countryside.  And it’s a wonderful drive on a Sunday afternoon.  It’s not very crowded, just one car on one side of the road.  But Foolish Freeway is a major 12-lane super highway.  It’s crowded.  You’re going to see a lot of your friends on Foolish Freeway.  It’s beep-and-creep the whole way, but it’s an easy road because the traffic flows in there on ramps and off ramps.  Jesus says again, “Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  Choose (0:20:00.1) the narrow road,” He said.  Very few will find it, but that’s the road that leads to life.  So, follow the way.  And if you’re gonna follow the way, you’re going to run the risk of somebody in our culture saying you’re a narrow-minded, bigoted, intolerant… okay, okay.  Just graciously say, “Take it up with Jesus.  This is what Jesus says.”  And either Jesus is who He says He is…Remember, Christianity rises and falls on the authenticity and the authority of the words and works of Jesus, not Ron Jones or some other religious teacher says. Christianity rises and falls on the authenticity and the authority of the words and works of Jesus.  So we can’t just kind of gloss over Jesus’ words here where He says “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Either He is, or He is a whack job or He is a con artist.  You decide.  I just say follow the way.

0:21:00.6

Secondly, believe the truth.  Jesus said, “I am the truth.”  Now, of course, the search for truth is nothing new.  It happens in every culture.  Sometimes great philosophers will wax eloquently about matters of truth, and even you and I in our daily conversations, as we are living in a culture that says truth is relative to the individual.  One of the early conversations and most famous conversations about matters of truth happened between Jesus and a Roman leader named Pilate just hours before He was crucified.  And Jesus engaged in a conversation a little bit this way.  He says, “My kingdom is not of this world, Pilate.”  He says—and I’m paraphrasing here—“If it were I could call upon my angels and my armies in heaven just put an end to all of this.”  And so Pilate responds to Him and says, “So You are a king.”  John 18.  Jesus answered, “You say that I’m a king.  For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”  Jesus said that.  He says, “I came into this world to bear witness to the truth.”  He goes on to say, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”  And that’s when Pilate responds with his famous response, a response that echoes through the centuries here.  “What is truth?” Pilate asks.  And we don’t know from the black and white pages whether that was an honest, inquisitive question, or whether he was asking the question, sort of, skeptically and scoffing at the idea of truth.  Knowing what we know about Pilate, I kind of get the sense that he scoffed at truth, like, “What is truth, Jesus?  Like You know what truth is all about.”

0:22:52.2

Well, what do we mean by an absolute truth?  We’re talking about things that are true of all people and all places and at all times.  Now, let’s talk about this just in the scientific realm and in the realm of nature for a moment.  For example, gravity is true of all places, for all people, and at all times.  Gravity is not true in Virginia but not true in California.  If you have any doubts about that, just traveled to California and the gravitational pull of the earth will be the same here as it is there.  Gravity is not true on Monday but not true on Thursday.  It’s not true for white people but not true for black people or Hispanics or some other ethnicity.  Gravity is a scientific truth that’s true for all people in all places at all times.  If you have any doubts about that, climb the tallest building, jump off.  But you will not have an opportunity to do it someplace else because gravity will kick in.  It’s true in all places, at all times, and for all people.  Well, the same is true for morality.  Our culture says that what is right and what is wrong is relative to the individual.  So your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth.  What works for you, works for you, and what works for me, works for me.  I’m okay.  You’re okay.  It’s that kind of thing.  And what it produces is moral chaos in our culture.  Other people come along and say, “No, what’s true, what’s morally right, is defined by the collective society.”  And I say wait a minute.  Be very, very careful, because there was a collective society back in World War II who believed it was right, morally right, to murder 6 million Jews.  So if we’re searching for truth, if we’re answering the age-old Pilate question, what is truth, we need to find a truth that is completely outside of ourselves.  Because I don’t trust your truth, you don’t trust my truth, and I certainly don’t trust the collective truth of society.  We can just go all through history to find bad examples of that.  No, we need a truth that is completely outside of ourselves, and that’s why we say that God not only created the universe and the scientific laws and the natural laws like gravity within that system, but He has also created moral laws within the universe that reflect His moral character.  He alone is the one that defines morality, what’s right and what’s wrong.  That’s why Jesus can say, “I am the truth.  I don’t teach the truth.”  No, Mohammed said that.  “I am the truth.  No degree of separation between Me and what is true.  And because I am truth, I also define what is false.”

0:25:55.9

So, you go down that road as a Christian and you're gonna have people say, “Oh, you’re just so narrow-minded.”  But think about it.  And let’s just have an honest conversation here.  Truth by its nature is narrow-minded.  Here are a couple of examples.  You want to go someplace on the World Wide Web.  You get your fingers going on the keyboard.  You have to type in the exact address.  Don’t call it a “.com” when it’s a “.org” or a “.net”.  And don’t miss one letter in the key there, or else an error message will come up.  How intolerant of the internet.  Or if you’re dialing somebody on the phone, you know, those 10 digits.  You get one of them wrong, and you’re going to hear this little message that goes, “I’m sorry, we cannot connect that call at this time.”  Oh, but I had nine of them right.  Oh, how intolerant of the phone company to demand nine or ten correct digits.  Truth by its very nature is narrow-minded.  I learned in grade school that one plus one equals two.  And when I put down three or four, my math teacher marked it wrong.  We have a hard time saying what’s right and what’s wrong in society because we have blurred the lines so much because we have bought into this for the past generation, that truth is relative to the individual.  No, truth is defined by a holy God who is morally pure.  He defines what is right and what is wrong.  He defines what is true for all people in all places and at all times.  So if you run into your relativist friend who disagrees with that, here is what somebody one suggested.  Take the five fingers in your hand, curl them up into a fist, and punch him in the nose.  Hit him hard.  Make his nose bleed.  Break it.  And then when you ask him, “Well, did I do something wrong,” and he says, “Well, of course you did,” just say, “Well, your truth is your truth.  My truth is my truth.  It’s not wrong to me to punch you in the nose.  Why are you getting all upset?  Don’t sue me for assault and battery.  Oh, you live by a different reality than I do.  My morality says I can just punch you in the nose and break it in half.”  See, the relativist becomes very inconsistent when his world, you know, gets twisted around some.  We need a morality that is completely outside of ourselves, that is completely outside of our culture, even the collectiveness of our culture.  Why?  Because we are fallen, sinful creatures, and we can’t trust to know what is right and what is wrong.  That’s why the plumb line is Jesus, who said, “I am the truth.”

0:29:02.2

So, we follow the way.  We believe the truth.  These are simple things.  But, thirdly, we live the life.  Jesus said, “I am the life.”  And I think of life in a couple of ways.  First, eternal life.  John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him will have eternal life.”  Who wants eternal life this morning?  As I understand the Bible, eternal life is the free of God.  Maybe you woke up this morning and came to church, and you didn’t think you were going to get something free given to you because somebody told you there ain’t no free lunch in this world.  Well, I can think of something that is out of this world that is free.  It’s called eternal life.  It comes free of charge because somebody else pay for it.  His name is Jesus, and He died upon the cross for your sins and for my sins.  Because the Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 as it is diagnosing our human condition that, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  A few verses or chapters later it says, “And the wages of sin is death.”  That’s really bad news.  That’s like an oncologist saying to you, “You have stage IV cancer.  You’re going to die.”  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  The wages of sin is death.  But Romans 6:23 turns, and it says, “But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Jesus is pro-life in every sense of the way.  He is the giver of life.  He is life.  He purchased this thing called eternal life, and he wants to give it to you and give it to me free of charge.  It’s a free gift from God.  You don’t work for it.  You don’t earn it.  You don’t, you know, count the number of times you came to church and whether you are baptized or not or how many Hail Mary’s you’ve done.  No, none of that really matters.  What matters is the cross of Christ.  Because we were spiritually bankrupt.  We couldn’t afford this thing called eternal life.  He purchased it for us and said, “Here, it’s a gift.”  What do you do with a gift?  You receive it.  How do you receive it?  By faith.  “For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it’s the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.”  So Jesus said, “I am of the life.”  He’s the only one who can give us eternal life.  And, by the way, you do know that you were created to live forever, don’t you?  I mean, one day you’re gonna die and I’m gonna die, and they’re gonna put our body in the grave.  But our spirit will separate from our body and go into the afterlife.  And the Bible then talks about eternal life or eternal death.  Eternal death is separation from God forever in a place called hell.  And it’s eternal.  I’d rather have eternal life, especially if it’s given to me free of charge and by faith.  I’d rather have eternal life than eternal death.  And that’s why it’s good news when Jesus tells us, “I am the life.”

0:32:10.1

Now, you can be a possessor of eternal life by faith in Jesus Christ and never experience what others refer to as the abundant life in Christ.  Anybody here want to live an abundant life on this earth before we get to the afterlife?  I certainly do.  Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come,” – in one of His great purpose statements – “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.”  Now, does that mean, you know, more cars and bigger houses and a bigger bank account?  No, I don’t think so.  It may be, if God blesses you with that.  And, great, be a good steward of it.  But I think the abundant life is pictured in Galatians 5 when Paul talks about the fruit of the spirit, this bountiful basket of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.  A life is characterized by that.  A life that is not characterized by the other list known as the works of the flesh – sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like that.  I mean, which list defines your life?  One is all about the abundant life and the other describes a very self-destructive kind of life.  Jesus says, “I came here to give you the kind of life you were meant to live.  I came to give you eternal life and, while you’re still on this earth, to experience abundant life,” also known as the deeper life or the higher life or the victorious Christian life or— some even say, based on the words of the apostle Paul in Galatians 2:20— the crucified life. Listen to this.  Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  If you’re a possessor of eternal life, how do you live the abundant life?  Well, it has something to do with the crucified life.  Paul says, “I identify with the cross of Christ.  That’s my identification in life.  Not what I do for a living, not my family history.  I am crucified with Christ.  The old me is dead and gone, and He has birthed new life in me.”  And he says, “The life that I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  Totally different way Paul lived.  Some call it the exchanged life, exchanging that list of self-destructive behavior and sinful behavior for a list and a basket of bounty called love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.  Imagine that spilling into your life and your relationships and the way you work and your family and your marriage.  That’s the abundant life that Jesus wants.  He says, “I came to give you that, and I also came to give you eternal life.”

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So that’s what I say very simply follow the way, believe the truth – not the lies of the culture.  The culture is always going to press up against Christianity and push it back.  And, you know, I talked about the gale-force winds that come against us any time you say Jesus is the way, the truth, and no man comes… Oh yeah, you’re going to get spit upon verbally or otherwise.  It’s not gonna be easy.  And, thirdly, live the life you were meant to live.  You know, the early followers of Jesus experienced no ambiguity about who Jesus was.  They took the words that they heard in the upper room on the night before Jesus was crucified, and later as they told the story of the early church.  In the book of Acts 4:12 they wrote these words.  “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”  It’s talking about Jesus.  No one else.  It’s pretty clear.  A little bit later the apostle Paul writes to Timothy, one of his protégés in the ministry, and he says, “For there is one God and one mediator also between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”  When Mormons call Jesus the spirit brother of Lucifer, that’s not the Jesus of the Bible.  When Islam says that Jesus never died on the cross, that Allah rescued Him and somebody else died in His place, that’s not the Jesus of the Bible.  There’s one God.  There’s one mediator between God and man.  There’s one way.  There’s one truth.  There’s one life that’s really worth living.  And it all flows through this person named Jesus, who also said, “I am the resurrection and the life.  And I am the bread of life.”  You see, He can make those claims because He went to that cross.  And then three days later He rose from the dead.  You go to His grave today in Jerusalem, it’s empty.  I’ve been there.  I’ve spoken words in that tomb, and it’s echoed because of its emptiness and hollowness.  My Redeemer lives.  And because He does, He can make claims like this.  And rather than bristling over the claim that He makes, as somebody told me years ago, I’m just glad that He gave us a way to the Father’s house.  Because He could have said to us, wayward sheep and sinners that we are, “I’m done with you.”  “But God so loved the world,” – and you can insert your name there – “that he sent his only son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”  That Son that He sent said, “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.  And no man comes to the father but by me.”  Couldn’t be any simpler.  My job this morning is not to complicate what Jesus made so simple, but to speak the truth in love and to encourage you to make your decision today.  Let’s pray together.

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Father, thank You so much for Your Word.  Thank You for the words of Jesus.  Thank You for preserving this book we call the Bible.  And I pray that if there is anybody here today where there is a degree of separation between You and them because their sins have separated You, that today they would run to the cross of Christ, kneel as a sinner who needs a savior, and humbly say yes to Jesus and by faith receive and then possess this free gift called eternal life.  Father, only You can do that work in a person’s heart.  There is no amount of persuasion that I can add to talk somebody into it.  I can't make the decision for them.  But You can draw men and women and young people to Yourself.  And I know that You’re in the business of doing that, so I ask You to do that this morning.  And we will give You the glory for all that takes place, because it’s all about You .  It’s not about me.  It’s not about us.  It’s about the work that You are doing.  And we thank You that You give us an opportunity to be a part of it.  And I pray this in Jesus’ name and for His sake, amen.

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