Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through John 14:1-7, emphasizing Jesus' comforting message to His troubled disciples. He highlights that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, urging believers to trust in Him amidst life's uncertainties. The sermon encourages practical application by reminding the congregation that while troubles are inevitable, they can find peace and assurance in their relationship with Christ, who has prepared a place for them and promises to return.
Housekeeping and Introduction
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, young people, for leading today and helping us out with that.
It's always a blessing when we have Youth Sunday. Today, John chapter 14 is where we're going to be at this morning. John chapter 14, as we continue our Abide in Me passage,
and excited about what I've been learning, and hopefully you have been growing and learning as well as we've been walking through this passage,
through these couple of chapters. We'll be in it for just a couple more weeks, and looking through it just as the Lord leads. And so John chapter 14, we're going to read the first seven verses today, and we'll read it.
And I've got some time today as well. So let's all stand as we read John 14, 1 through 7.
Jesus is teaching his disciples, and he starts out this passage by saying, Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms or mansions. Yours may say mansions.
If it were not so, I would have told you that I'm going to prepare a place for you. And if I go away to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, you may be also. You know the way where I'm going.
And Thomas, I believe, can be every one of us here in this room. He said, Lord, we don't know where you're going.
How do we know the way? Jesus told him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And if you know me, you will also know my Father.
And from now on, you do know him and have seen him. Father, we love you. We love you.
Thank you for what you've done for us. We thank you for the wonderful service that you've given us so far with the youth leading and praying and worshiping together with us. And the lesson that Scott gave, what a blessing that is.
I pray, God, that you would be with our children's church as the teachers in there work with our children and teach them the gospel. Help us in here as we study your word. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
I want you to imagine driving on an unfamiliar road on maybe a mountainside or through a dark valley and you are sort of in a place where you don't know.
When we were 14 or not 14, 10 years ago, 11 years ago, we made our trip from Idaho back to North Carolina and we were on some roads that we were unfamiliar with.
And we tried driving during the day with the kids, but imagine the moon's not out. It's dark.
You don't know where you're at. You're just following this GPS that we have on our phones because no one has paper maps anymore. Right? How many of you still have a paper map in your car? All right.
More than I thought. Good. My dad tried giving me one a while back. I told him I didn't need one. And this thought came to my mind. Imagine driving down a road, dark. You don't know where you're going. All of a sudden, your phone beeps and says, lost service.
You look down, the map that you're trying to follow is now gone and you begin to panic. You begin to, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know if I missed my turn. You're going down this road and you begin to try to look ahead, try to find some signs.
Maybe I remember I'm supposed to turn. And as you begin going slower and slower, you begin to just panic on the inside.
And all of a sudden, in the darkness of this night, you meet some headlights. You sort of flash them down.
You get to a turnoff and an older gentleman comes up beside you and says, can I help you with something? And you say to him, do you know where I'm at? Do you know how to get me from where I'm going? And he gives these wonderful words, I do, just follow me.
Imagine the comfort that sets in in that moment. You found someone who knows where they're at, who knows where they're going, and they're now going to lead you to a safe destination. You drive for a couple of miles, the panic's not there, the anxiety of not knowing what's going on.
Jesus Guides the Lost Disciples
It's still dark outside. You still don't have self-service, but yet you're following the person that knows the way that they're going. This is what we're looking at today in John chapter 14. The disciples are lost. He's telling them, I am leaving you.
There's going to be someone that betrays me. Judas has now left the room.
Peter, you're going to deny me. And all of a sudden, the cross is approaching, and you can feel the sensation of what's going on here as they get closer to this moment. And ultimately, for each and every one of them, their hearts are beginning to feel uncertain.
Their hearts are beginning to feel with fear. They begin to ask questions. As we walk through this, you're going to see the questions that are asked. And in that anxiety, in that fear that the disciples have, Jesus doesn't just hand them a map.
He looks at them and he says, I am giving you myself. I am going to show you the way to go. I'm going to teach you through these next couple of passages that we walk through. One wonderful theologian, Martin Luther,
in this specific passage that I was studying, he said this, that this is the best and most comforting sermon that Jesus Christ preached while on earth. He looks at them and he says, let not your heart be troubled. You're going to have heavy hearts.
You're going to have difficulties in your life. But Jesus says, trust me, I know the way.
And that comfort in our lives, that is the beginning of our trust of the Lord. And I love Jesus. He doesn't go into this big, deep theological discussion or explanation. Oftentimes, people come and we'll hang out and I'll sit and talk with them.
And we'll talk for hours and hours on the deep theological issues of the world. And I love that. I live in that world. I love the idea. I love talking through deep theological things.
But in this moment, Jesus knew his disciples were anxious. He knew they were struggling. And he doesn't go into this long diatribe of how to live life. He just simply gives them a simple command.
And the command is this, to trust me. He starts with this command. He says, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in me. He just says,
when you go through life, when you go through difficulties, when you go through difficult circumstances in your life, the question you're going to ask yourself is, what do I do? How do I go through this?
And Jesus, in this comforting moment, almost as a father coming in, as the savior of the world, he steps into these disciples' life and he says, you're going to be like this.
You're going to have difficulties, but just trust me. And we walk through two things here in this passage. The first thing we see is the reality of the troubled hearts. We see that they say, let not your hearts be troubled. Jesus does not deny their troubles.
He doesn't say, follow me and all your troubles are going to go away. He says, follow me and don't let your heart be troubled.
He begins to see this idea of troubled. And this idea of trouble, we can sometimes see it and we read in our own definition to the word trouble, but this is what it means. It means to be stirred,
to be agitated, or to be shaken like water in a storm. I want you to imagine a little kid coming up and grabbing a water bottle or a soda bottle and begin just shaking it and shaking it and shaking it and going, I wonder what happens when I open it.
Right? It's going to explode on. And this is what it's saying here. Your life has been shaken, it's been troubled, and someone's going to come along and open that bottle up. That's going to be your life. And he says, when people shake you, when you're troubled and someone opens you, don't be alarmed.
Don't be exploding like what's going to happen in your life. Even faithful followers have fear.
I've been a believer for 30, 27 years of my life. Like I said, when I was five, I'm 27. So whatever that factors out to, 32 years of my life I've been saved. Math is difficult.
32 years I've been saved. I've been following the Lord. And I can tell you that trouble's going to happen. I could stand up here for the next 30 minutes and tell you all the troubles that I've had in my 32 years of knowing Christ.
Living in Victory Over Troubles
And others could get up here and they could spend even longer telling about the troubles they've had in life. But what we have to understand is when we come to the cross, we're not defeated. We live in the victory of Jesus.
Listen to what Jesus says. He says, let not your heart be troubled. He does not say, don't let your circumstances trouble you. He doesn't say, don't let your Rome in the government trouble you.
And he even goes further to say, don't let the tomorrow of life trouble you. Listen, we, I live with three kids and my wife and my, my daughter, she's not here. She's with a friend, but Brody and Jay, they are so consumed with the future. Kids love the future, right?
They love knowing the future. We as adults do too.
And I'm coaching, I'm doing some things, but, but they'll, they'll ask questions like, Hey, what are we going to do like next year on this day?
Can we get through today? Like I'm not thinking about next year right now.
I'm just trying to figure out today. And this is where Jesus looks at him. He says, don't let your heart be troubled. He, he begins to say, don't worry about tomorrow, but just deal with what's going on today. He uses this phrase, let not your heart.
And I think it's important when he uses this because he begins to say this trouble is inevitable. We're going to go through trouble.
We're going to go through hard times. We're going to go through difficulties in life. But what he says is, don't let your heart be troubled, which means our troubled heart is optional. We have the option to allow our hearts to be troubled. He's saying trouble's happening.
You choose to let it consume your entire being. Your heart is the emoting function of your body.
And so you have this option to allow your heart to be troubled or to step over here and say, God, I'm going to trust you. I don't know what's going on.
I don't know how I'm going to get through tomorrow. I don't know how I'm going to even get through today. I don't know how I'm going to get through the next hour. But I'm going to trust in you in this troubled times.
And he begins to give us the remedy here for a troubled heart is simply believe. One word, believe. He says, believe in God.
Believe also in me. Two imperatives that are directly pointed to what we do with our life. How are you believing and what are you believing in? Jesus is laying himself and putting himself at the equal footing with the Father.
And he says, I am staggeringly claiming to everyone that's listening that I am a deity of Jesus.
I am a deity of the Father. I am at one with God. D.A. Carson said it like this. Jesus was not merely offering comfort, but he was demanding faith in his divine identity.
As we go through our life, he's not saying, here's a little bit of comfort that's going to get you to tomorrow. He is saying, I'm giving you comfort because of who I am and who you can believe in.
Oftentimes, if you're like me, you begin to ask yourself, what has your heart been stirred and shaken for lately? We can all put our different definition on this. Our finances, our family, our faith, the different things we're going through in life, the difficulties of work.
Whatever it may be, begin to shake your life and begin to stir your life. And you begin to say, God, my heart is troubled. My heart is in this mindset where I don't know what to do and I don't know how to get through this.
Jesus is saying, are you fixing your mind, your heart on your troubles?
Or are you fixing your mind and your heart on the Savior? As Scotty said this morning, and I say often, Jesus looked at his disciples and he says, follow me, look at me, and keep your eyes fixed on me. As the writer of Hebrews says, when we fix our eyes on Jesus,
he's the one that directs our life. He's the one that directs our paths. And the moment our eyes fade away from Jesus and fade onto our problems, our life begins to get shaken.
Life begins to get stirred and we begin to get uneasy and we begin to say, what's going on? And why is this happening?
Because our eyes are no longer on the Savior of the universe who came into this world to live and die for us. Number two, verses two and three, we see the confidence here.
Why do we have this confidence? Jesus gives us a couple of reasons that we can trust him. Don't you love when you go to a football game or to an award ceremony and the person giving the awards gets up and says, this is my credentials.
This is why you can trust in what I have to say. Look at how many letters are behind my name. Look at all the degrees I have. Look at how you can trust in me. And this is what it's saying here. Jesus begins to say, this is why you can trust in him.
Why do you have the ability to trust in God? People are going to look at you and they're going to say, why do you devote a portion of your time to go to church? Why do you devote a portion of your money to give to the work of the Lord?
The Prepared Place in Heaven
Why are you devoting your time to serve other people? What is compelling you to do these things? Jesus gives us the why. Jesus gives us why this is for us today.
The three things. The first is this. He has a prepared place for us. Jesus as our Savior, as our Heavenly Father looks down and he says, in my Father's house. Think about this. This is an intimate relational language.
He says, in my Father's house, I'm going to prepare a mansion or a room for you. This is a beautiful picture of an abundant space that is not short of any wanting that we could have.
And he begins to use this word, manoai, which means a dwelling place, which means a permanent fixture or a permanent home.
There will not be any homelessness in heaven. Every single one of us are going to have a place prepared specifically for you.
There's going to be security. There's going to be permanence. And this is the beautiful picture. Heaven was not an afterthought.
Jesus looked down from us and he said, I am going to prepare a place for each and every believer. I'm going to prepare something that is for a prepared people.
And it's intentional because he has prepared this place for each and every one of us who believe in Jesus. And he says, I'm going to give you something that's going to be of eternal value that's going to be here for you. He goes on.
Not only is there a prepared place, but a personal preparation. Look at what it says here. If you want to look back in your verse here, it says, I go to prepare a place for you. Look at the tenderness. He says, for you at the end of verse 2.
This is one of those like beautiful things when you imagine Christmas time and you imagine birthdays that are coming up.
And you as dad or grandma or grandpa, you gather around and you pull out the present and you say, son, grandson, daughter, granddaughter, I bought this for you. I know you wanted it. And you've been asking for it for the last 13 years.
And I went out and I prepared and I bought it and it's got your name on it and here it is for you.
Man, the kid begins to rip it open and all of a sudden their eyes light up and they're like, you love me so much. You got the Barbie doll that I've been wanting for years. Right? It's something small. It's something insignificant.
But yet because you did something personal for them, they begin to have this more of an affection for you. This is what Jesus is saying. I'm not going to prepare this place for the angels. I'm not going to prepare a place for strangers.
I'm going to prepare a place for my disciples, for the ones that follow me, for the ones that give their life to me. I'm going to prepare something for you.
He is connecting this here to the preparation for the cross that he's about to go to. He's connecting this to the resurrection and to the ascension that he's going to do. He's beginning to tell them, I am securing your redemption.
The greatest comfort that we have is not a place that we get to one day go to, but it's the person that we one day get to experience to be around. Jesus is preparing us to be around the person of himself. And the longer we grow closer to Jesus, as Scott just showed,
sometimes the Bible looks black and white and all of a sudden this color begins to flow in. And that's experienced the personliness of Jesus.
When we get to see him and experience him here on earth, we get to experience a small glimpse of heaven by being with him in a personal place. A prepared place, a personal preparation, but then he gives us number three, a promised return. He says, church, one day I will come again.
This is one of the clearest promises of Christ's return in the upper room. He gives three comforting statements. He starts by saying, I will. Jesus is declaring that this is a certain thing that's going to happen. I will. With all certainty,
with all power, with all authority that's given in him, he says, I will.
This is one of those statements that we can begin to just sit on and begin to love and say, if he said it, it's going to happen. It doesn't matter if I believe it. It doesn't matter if I think about it.
The Promise of Jesus' Return
If he says he's going to come back, he's coming back. We get to prepare our hearts and say, God, I'm waiting. I'm longing.
I'm looking forward to that day when you split the eastern sky and you come back and you call your children home. We can live in that promise of saying, if he said he's going to do it, then he's going to do it. It's certain.
It's going to happen. It's also personal. Look at it. It says, I will receive you.
Those that believe in him, those that believe in Jesus, he says, I'm going to come and I'm going to wrap my arms around you. I'm going to call you home. It's like a father that's been away as a military and he comes home and I can't watch those videos. Okay.
When the dad walks into the football game and all everybody's turned around and the dad walks in and the daughter's singing the national anthem and the dad like taps the daughter on the back and she turns and she
sees dad that she hasn't seen in a year or two years. And she just wraps her arms around him. They're both crying. This is Jesus.
He says, I'm going to come back and I'm going to rescue you. I'm going to tap you on the shoulder and you're going to see me for the first time. And you're not even going to be able to control your emotions because he is coming back to receive us.
We're trusting and we're believing that he is coming back to receive us. And then there's this relationship.
There's certainty of it. There's the personality of it. But the relationship is this. I'm going to receive you and bring you to where I am. Heaven is fundamentally about one thing and one thing only. Being with Jesus and worshiping Jesus for the rest of eternity.
We sit in here and we sing some songs and we, I don't have a great voice.
And I'm sure Allie was closing one of her ears as she was standing beside me as I was singing. But I just, I want to imagine as we stand in here today and we worship Jesus, it's just like standing in front of him face to face. And worshiping him.
And everything that's within us comes out and we begin to worship him. And we begin to see his glory for everything that he's done for us.
This is this idea that we're going to have a relationship that is far greater than the rooms that he's prepared. That's far greater than the streets of gold that we can read about. That the beauty of all that is far undervalued to who Jesus is in standing there and worshiping him.
Sometimes we can get attached to those things that we can sometimes see what heaven's going to be like.
And forget that the real reason why we're there is to worship the one that came to die for us. That came to give us eternal life so that we can live forever in his presence. A couple of years ago, sometimes my mother-in-law's listening. So I'll give an illustration about her if she's listening.
Sometimes it can be scary. She may text me here in a minute. But a couple of years ago when, right when we were coming here, my father-in-law had gotten fired from his job. And he was right real close to retirement.
And so they were trying to find some transitional time. And he called me one day and he said, hey, things aren't working out. We're moving into your house. Amen.
That's wonderful. I can't wait. It's going to be great. We got to put a bathroom in. We got to do all these things.
And so what happened was is me and Allison and some friends of ours, we got to working and tearing down carpet and putting up walls and putting in a bathroom. But I tell the story to tell you this. We were preparing a place for them. When they got there,
they walked in our house. We took all their stuff upstairs. And I said, this is your living area. You've got a bedroom. You've got a living room. We put a kitchen in. We put a bathroom in. This is the place that I've prepared for you. And I'm intentionally telling you that you belong here.
You were expected to be here because we knew you were coming. It's not like this was like two days before. And they're like, hey, we're coming. No, they told us, hey, we're coming. And so I began to make these preparations for them.
I began to tell them that you're wanted. You're expected. You belong here. This is a place for you. You fit in this home in this way. And God in the same way is telling us, you didn't take me by surprise. I'm expecting you to be here.
I'm preparing a place for you. I've got all the arrangements made. And when you get here, I'm so thankful that you're here and that you belong here.
And I love you and I care about you. And for the first time, some of us in this room are going to say, I feel loved for the very first time. I feel cared for for the very first time. I feel expected to be somewhere.
I feel wanted for the very first time because oftentimes this world can throw us to the side and we don't care about what's going on. When we begin to ask ourselves where our hope is at,
where our hope is anchored in, are we anchored in the hope of Jesus Christ or are we anchored in this world that the Bible says is one day going to burn and be put out of its misery? God is telling us here today, church,
you have a prepared place and I'm coming back one day for you. If only you'll believe.
Number three, we begin to see the comfort. Thomas here speaks for each and every one of us.
Sometimes I want to read in the scripture and think that I would be Peter. I would be the one that would stand up and say, Lord, no matter where you go, I'm going to go with you. The more I read scripture, the more I think I'm Thomas.
The more I think that I'm Thomas by saying, God, where are you going? I want to go too, but how am I going to know the way?
Thomas' Honest Questions
Like Thomas is always the one doubting. Thomas is always the one that when we give him that bad rap for doubting Thomas, but Thomas is probably more like us than we want to agree to. Thomas is giving these honest questions.
Thomas looks at him and says, how are we going to know the way? And Jesus gives one of the greatest statements in all of scripture because Jesus is so much better than me. Right?
When my kids ask questions, then I'm like, this is a no brainer question. Allie tells me all the time. Tom, you can't be that mean to Jade.
You can't be that mean to Brody when he asks a dumb question. Right? We just want to respond like, come on, you idiot. You know this. Right? You know we're going to eat food. Well, you know these things. Why are you asking this question?
Jesus looks at him and he doesn't demean him. He doesn't belittle him. He doesn't tear him down and say, Thomas, you followed me for three years. What are you doing asking this question? He looks at him and he says, Thomas, I love you. And you may have not gotten it before, but let me reiterate this. I am the way.
I am the truth. And I am the life. Imagine the comfort that comes when Jesus gives him this statement.
When Jesus looks at him and says, I know others have claimed to be the way. And they've died and they have failed in their promise. Other people have said their truth and other people have tried to give life. And yet they have completely failed in everything they've done.
But I'm telling you here today, you're trying to find a way. I'm going to give you the way.
You're trying to find truth in this world of lies, in this world of upside downness. I'm going to give you the truth.
It may not feel the way you want it to feel. It may not feel what you want it to say, but I'm going to give you the truth in love. My mind always goes to that, the woman at the well, one of Jesus's first public professions of who he was.
The woman comes to him and Jesus confronts her and tells her some things.
And then he looks at her and he asks her this question, who is your husband? And she said, well, I'm not married.
And he says, you have said the truth, but you have lied. You have said that you're not married, but you're actually been married multiple times. And the man you're living with is not your husband. And Jesus looks at her with truth and with love and tells her the truth on one hand.
But then on the other hand says, would you like to have life giving water that you're never going to be thirsty ever again? And Jesus gives her the truth, but also with life. And the same thing with us, Jesus calls us to truth. He gives us the truth.
But in the other hand, he begins to give us life and life giving power the more. So what can we see when we begin to trust in Jesus? The first thing we see is we can trust his presence.
He says, whether I go, you know, you know where I'm going, you know these things.
And in this moment, you can see that this, the confusion that the disciples had, the confusion of Jesus, where are you going? I gave up everything. I gave up tax collecting. I gave up being a zealot. I gave up my fisherman's license.
I can't go fishing anymore. I sold all my boats. I sold everything I've got. I can't, I can't do what I was doing before. And I'm following you now.
Jesus in this moment is beginning to guide them and lead them in a way that they didn't even thought possible.
Most commentaries say like this, the disciples knew more than what they were even realizing because they knew about Jesus.
They had spent time with him and they were confused. They had these blinders up because they were just seeing Jesus for who he was right there. And Jesus had been teaching them intimately for three and a half years.
Oftentimes, you may know the path, you may know which way to go, but are you truly trusting in the shepherd who is leading in that path? We must ask ourselves, am I truly knowing the person of this path?
Hudson, as four years old, every once in a while, he'll leave a bottle or he'll leave his water bottle or he'll leave something in the car at nighttime or in the Jeep. And I'll say, Hudson, you know where it's at. It's outside.
It's in the driveway. Just go out there and get it. And he'll say, Dad, it's dark out there. I can't go out there.
And I'll look at him and say, Hudson, you've been out there a million times. You know the way.
You know how to get there. I said, there's going to be a camera that's going to come on and a light's going to light the entire driveway. Why don't you just go out there and get it? He says, I'm scared, Dad.
I don't want to go out there by myself. Knowing the way doesn't give security. It's when I stand up and I go, hey,
son, let's go out there together. And I grab him by the hand and I walk him out there. It's not that he didn't know the way. I wasn't showing him some new path.
But the Father was with him and was bringing that security and was bringing that comfort and was bringing out the idea that now you have this security.
Jesus is saying from heaven, listen, I am here and I am with you and I am holding your hand no matter where you go. I'm giving you that comfort that you so desperately need in life.
Where in your life do you need to trust his nearness? You see, I'm not always going to be there for my kids. I wish I could.
Unfortunately, I have three kids and I'm only one person. And so I can't be there for all three of them at the exact same time everywhere they go.
But I know that there's a heavenly father that says I'm going to be with them no matter where they go. Even when they walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Even when they walk through the fields that are going to be full of robbers.
And they walk around the mountain and there's people there that are going to hurt them. I know that the heavenly father is going to be there with them. And when do we need to trust in Jesus to be close to us and trust that he is there with us? Trust his presence.
Actually, we can see we can trust his promise. He says this, I am the way. He gives this beautiful statement that says it is exclusively through me.
Now the world doesn't like this. Oftentimes, I don't like this, right? I don't like people telling me one specific way to do things.
I want to know a hundred different ways to do something, right? In school, we teach people how to do math or how to write a certain way. And you can do it this way. You can do it that way. We don't like exclusivity in our life.
But Jesus says that the only way to heaven is by trusting in him. He says there's not a way. There's one way. He says there's not, this is not one of many options.
He says this is the only option. And then he says this is not just a philosophy that you can live by, but it is the way to live by. Leon Morris, a commentator, said it like this. He uses the definite article and he says Jesus is claiming absolute exclusivity.
He is saying I am the way. I am the only way to the Father. This is offensive in many areas.
Jesus: The Only Way
It was offensive in Jesus' day and it's offensive today.
But when we begin to live our life in this way and understand that Jesus is not just a way, but Jesus is the only way to heaven, is the only way to have eternal life, is the only way to have this comfort that we talk about.
When we go through difficult times and you begin to see someone who has went through heartache and hurt and they begin to have a sense of joy about them. Why is that? Because they're believing in the one that gives comfort.
They're believing in the one that gives joy no matter what. Look at the emphasis here.
He says the way is the access to the Father. You want to have access to God? You want to have access to the one who spoke the world into existence? I tell people all the time that this is one of those verses we read through so quickly in the Old Testament.
When we begin to read our Bibles in the beginning of January and we go, you know, I'm going to read through the Bible in a year. And we read through the creation account.
And in Genesis chapter 2, he says that, chapter 1, he says he made the sun and the moon.
And he created the sun to rule the day by the greater light and the moon to rule the dark by the lesser light. And then he gives these five little words and he created the stars also.
It's like I'm going to spend this time talking about the sun and the moon and we see that. And then I'm just going to, with the flick of five words, I'm going to create the stars as well. The billions and billions of stars.
We look up at the sky at nighttime and we say, man, look how awesome this is.
Look at the different constellations. And Jesus in this moment is saying, yeah, I created that as well. This is the Father.
This is the one that we have access to through the way. And he says, if you believe in me, you have this access to the Father. He says, you have the truth, the accuracy about the Father.
And you have this life that is given the vitality of your life. The sense of meaning, the sense of purpose in your life. When the world doesn't know what to tell you. When your own emotions don't know what to tell you. Jesus says, I'm coming to give you life.
Life and life more abundant. These are not principles necessary to live our life by. But a person to devote our life to. And to say, God, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. But I know I'm going to trust in you.
And I know I'm going to trust in the Son who came into this world to give himself for me. And I want to have this gift of the Holy Spirit to be able to live my life for you. Are you resting in the finished work of Jesus?
Or are you just trying to be a religious person? It's two different things.
Resting in who Jesus is, is different than just having a religious idea of life. But it is every day,
every time we walk through our life, every moment we live, are we living and thinking and breathing for the glory of God and saying, God, I want to make this moment count for you. The conversation that I'm about to have with my coworker, I want it to glorify you.
The places that I go tomorrow, I want it to glorify you. So you can trust his presence.
You can trust his promise. But lastly, you can trust his person. He continues on by saying, no man comes to the Father but by me.
This is both a comforting but a confrontational. Jesus is giving lots of confrontation. People argue over this passage of scripture more than any other passage because they don't like exclusivity. He comforts us by saying, salvation is clear. But the confrontational part of this is, it excludes every other way.
He says, if you think that by doing these other things is going to get you to heaven or by doing these other things is going to allow you to live in glory for me one day, you are wrongly
mistaken because I am the only way and you only come to the Father through me. This is one of the strongest exclusivity claims that Jesus gives in all of scripture. He says, no man will ever come to the Father except they come through me.
The only way we get to God is through Jesus Christ.
It's the strongest claim that we can look at. And Jesus is not literally saying, I'm a prophet. He's not saying, I'm a teacher. He's not saying, I'm a God.
He is saying, I am the bridge from one area of life to the future of life. And you can only cross this bridge by coming through me. You can only cross this bridge by coming to the one who knows it all.
Verse 7 drives it home like this. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. To know Jesus is to know God.
I'm watching a documentary that I just finished. I'm a history guy. A lot of the things I give is based on history. And I'm watching this documentary. It's called The Men Who Built America. They walk through J.P.
Morgan and Carnegie and Rockefeller and all these, Henry Ford, all the ones that built America.
It's a wonderful documentary, probably skewed in a couple different areas. But they give one illustration that my mind has not stopped to think about.
And it was when the country was trying to figure out how do we connect the East Coast to the West Coast. There's this little river in the middle of the country. It's not a big, insignificant river. It's called the Mississippi River. They called it the mighty Mississippi for a reason.
Because the power of this river is so vast and so phenomenal that every time they would put a bridge on there, the Mississippi would just rip it apart. And they're like, how do we get things from one side of the country over to here? How do we get things apart?
And people were trying to figure these things out. And Andrew Carnegie stepped onto the scene and became a steel magnet of the world.
And he said, the only way we're going to do this is by spending billions and billions of dollars to connect the St. Louis Bridge across here.
And you can drive carriages on top and railroads underneath the middle. And he said, every design that came back, and Carrie tells me all the time, she helped all these bridge engineers in school. They're not really smart.
But Carnegie, he said, the only way we're going to do this is by spending millions and billions of dollars on this structural steel that's coming out to be able to build this bridge. And everyone laughed at him and said, you can't do it.
And after years and years and almost going bankrupt once and coming back and saving the project, he built this bridge. And after it was built,
he said there would be people that would stand on one side and look across and no one would step on it.
They were like, every bridge we've ever seen, the moment people get on it and the weight of people getting on it, it falls apart. And I'm not going to be the one that sacrificed my life. And so Carnegie did something that was phenomenal that no one had ever done before.
He was reading a book and he said that elephants would not cross something that wasn't safe.
And so he bought an elephant or rented an elephant and got on top of the elephant and got on top of the elephant and began to walk across this bridge that he had built.
And he got across the other side and said that there's a camera, you can look it up. But behind him was hundreds of thousands of people that had followed this elephant across to the other side.
But one man had to bear his life on top of that elephant and walk across this bridge to connect these two countries, the two sides of the country together in one.
Jesus as Our Bridge
Jesus is that bridge for us. He came down from heaven and he, if you can imagine, he got on that elephant and said, I'm going to go across this bridge. I'm going to create this bridge so that you can have access to where you're at, to the Father. But it comes through me.
And we have to ask ourselves, are we trusting in the one that knows how to have access to the Father? Are you truly putting your faith and trust in him?
As Terry comes and closes down here for a moment, I want to give us some couple of challenges because this is where we live in our world. Troubles still exist today.
Just because we believe in Jesus doesn't mean all of our troubles are taken away. You're still going to get cancer diagnosis. You're still going to have loved ones that don't trust in you.
You're still going to have loved ones that pass away unexpectedly. We're still going to go through difficulties in life. Jesus is not saying, just because you trust in me, your troubles go away. Uncertainty still fills the loom of the world.
We begin to feel the uncertainty of life and the uncertainty of what's going to happen in the Middle East and what's going to happen in the West and what's going to happen in the North and what's going to happen in the South. All these uncertainties can happen.
Questions still rise in our hearts. Just as Thomas looked and said, Lord, how am I going to know the way? Lord, what am I going to do? These questions still happen. But the answer has not changed. Trust in the commands that Jesus gave. Rest in his confidence.
And church, one of the things that I can tell you to do more than anything else is walk in his comfort.
When things don't go the way you think they should go, begin to walk in his comfort, not our own.
The way is not a map. I can't give you a piece of paper and say, hey, this is the way. The way is a man. His name is Jesus. And he says, I'm coming into this world.
Lord, I came into this world 2,000 years ago to die on a cross for your sins of the entire world so that if you believe in me, you'll have access to the Father. He doesn't say I'm going to give you this fancy path.
It's simply believe and put your faith in the one that can change all eternity.
What he's saying today is are you believing in him? As he ends this verse, he says, if you know me, you know the Father. Do you know the Father today by knowing who the Son is?
Closing Prayer and Reflection
Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for what you've done for us. Lord, help us to trust in you more.
Help us when we have these troubled hearts. We're going to have them. We're going to have troubles in life. We're going to have difficulties in life. But you have given us a solution.
You have given us this way of comfort that we can trust in you. And I pray that if there's anyone here that doesn't know that comfort this morning, that today would be the day they come and trust you. In your name we pray. Amen.
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