The Way, The Truth & The Life | John 14:1-14

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Man, you got everything covered. Thank you. Welcome friends. My name’s Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. If you’re visiting, if you’re watching online it’s really great to have you here. And because we’re an elephant in the room, church let’s just talk for a second about second services and how that works.

If you’re an introvert. You maybe walk in, you’re like, oh, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I got my own role. I’ve been waiting for this forever. And if you’re an extrovert like me, you’re like, oh man. I just loved it when we had to put out more chairs when we didn’t have room for anybody. Both of those are okay.

If you’re an extrovert, we’re in Latin. And we’ll talk about that in a moment, and this might be a good season for you. And if you’re an introvert. Enjoy it while you can. This isn’t an airplane. The rows are not supposed to be empty. That’s not the maximal good. And so we go and thank you for your resilience.

’cause one of the things I love about South is its ability to navigate through different things. We do that together because as always, the way we do things is not the point. We’re not addicted to models, we’re just interested in the mission that God has given us. I was just away. I wanted to share with you a picture ’cause it exemplifies to me England in February, sunny, green flowers, all of those things, it took 39 days of straight rain to get to that point.

And so you have to decide if that’s worth it. But I was home and it was beautiful to be back. With people, but so glad that the team here is so good and hell everything together in a beautiful way. I’m gonna start with a question. And it might seem strange to start with, but I think as you get into it, you’ll feel like the value of it.

Have you ever ended a friendship by or on accident? If you ever just woken up one day and said, you know what? I think somewhere I lost a friend. This happened to me last year, and this is why I asked this question. Had a friend from a different state and we connected in a way that I don’t usually connect because he was very similar to me.

Most of my friends are different to me, but this guy was really similar. We both connected with people really easily. We were both the sort of people that would walk into a coffee shop and have a new friend and we loved doing things like reading, coffee, all those kind of things. But since I moved, we just ended up stopping communication and I came to this realization that maybe we’re not friends in the same way anymore, but, but also that it was probably my fault.

I moved, I was bad at communication. I’m not great with those texting things and all that kind of thing. I tend to leave responses longer than I should. I was the one that got too busy and in the end I was the one that couldn’t be man enough to text and say, Hey, I’m sorry it’s been so long. So at the end, I just got to this point that maybe the friendship may, maybe it’s just kind of over.

And around September, October, I just felt particularly sad about that. And as we got to Christmas, I remember thinking, I hope somewhere at Christmas this just guy, guy just drops me a text and says, Hey, been thinking about you. Would love to catch up. Just like everything’s normal, like there’s nothing to apologize for.

But he didn’t, so I kind of just accepted. Well, there it is. It was great while it lasted and now it’s gone. If you found that a friendship relationship just changed out of no way, you’re probably not alone. Look at these statistics. This has been like a study for a lot of people that do research because friendship in America has changed.

It’s called the friendship recession. In 1990 3% of Americans would put their hand up and say, you know what? I don’t have any friends today. It’s actually 12% in 1990. 33% of Americans would say, I have 10 or more friends today, only 12. 13% of Americans would say, I have 10 or more friends. The way we interact has changed.

This is all going on. While Facebook and other mediums assure us that we have thousands of friends, people desperate to be friends with us. And yet somewhere people find the relationship is lacking. It’s one of the reasons that we say that Jesus’ greatest miracle might have been the miracle of having 12 close friends in his thirties, something that seems particularly rare.

And now in the passages that we’re reading over the next few weeks, Jesus has gotten to this point that is telling his friends he’s leaving from now on the relationship will be different. So as we get into this passage that Isaiah read for us. Let me just cover a couple of other things. We’re entering a season called Lent.

I wrote this and then realized I should have said Wednesday. We entered the season of Lent. It began on Ash Wednesday, just a few days ago, and Lent is a very particular season in the church calendar. It’s a season of acknowledging that at times we feel distant from God and would like to be closer. Now, I know there’s a theology that says, well, we’re always close to God.

And to a degree that’s true, but I think at the same time, in awareness, no, I feel distant and would like to be closer, would like to experience God in new ways, is a brilliant thing. In fact, what I’ve found over and over again is guys, in particularly guys who are active and feel like you know this thing about just everything’s good.

I don’t need to do anything. I just need to show up. That find that hard. They love Lent. ’cause Lent done Well is a demanding process of intentionally entering into activities that seek out the presence of God. It doesn’t mean they’re achieved easily, but it does mean it’s an active season. It occupies this space over on the, the, the top right corner.

Lent is a season where we think about what God has done for us. And in the midst of that desire, we hope that God shows up and reveals himself. In a new way. Someone once described Lent as this season of bright sadness. The sadness, because in the midst of looking for God, we put up our hands and say, you know what?

There’s ways that I am terrible at that. There’s ways that I have stopped doing that. There’s ways that I’m never really intended to do that, if I’m honest. But then off guard, we get caught by the idea that all of our sadness, all of our uncertainty about who we are. The feeling that we’re not very good at following God at all is caught up in the light of resurrection.

Can’t escape it. This is Alexander Sheerman. Little by little we begin to understand or rather to feel that the sadness of Lent is indeed bright, that a mysterious transformation is about to take place in us. Lent is about transformation. Now, if you grew up in a certain sort of Christian background, you might find Lent to be a bit triggering, but I’m convinced it’s good for all of us to pursue God together during the season.

You can do that by signing up for our our prayer initiative. You’ll get text during the day. We get to pray together. Just really simple short prayers at different times of the day. You can do it by pass, participating in things like Good Friday. Because I’m convinced of this. You get out of Easter, what you put into Lent.

If you could find yourself getting to Easter and you’re like, man, it just kind of turned up and passed. Nobody just didn’t realize it was there. Lent is the season that lands you at Easter with this awareness of what God has done. So here we go into the passage, some context for you from last week. And this is what Jesus has said to his apprentices, his followers, my children.

I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me and just as I told the Jews. So I tell you now where I am going. You cannot come. Of course, one of his disciples, Simon Peter, the most famous and perhaps the most obnoxious, asked him, Lord, where are you going? And Jesus replied, where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.

The tension of the passage that hangs in the air for his first followers is Jesus impending departure. Jesus says, I’m leaving. Things will look different in the future. Depending on where you are in your family situation. You might say that the tension is familiar or has at some point being familiar. In fact, Jesus clues us in to the idea of where the tension might be in the way he addresses.

His disciples, my children, no one longs to be with someone as much as a toddler who’s been told one of his parents has to go somewhere else. I remember the first time. I, I entered into a philosophical conversation with my then 4-year-old oldest daughter around the, the idea of leaving. I was traveling for work.

I was going to Haiti, a country I’d been to before. It was after the earthquake, and we were trying to work with the church, caring for orphans. It was important work, it was really valuable. But Elena, over the week before, had started asking questions. Questions like, why do you have to go? Why do you have to go?

Why can’t you stay here with me? All of those sorts of things, and I’ve given her the normal answer. I’m going to work. But as we got closer to the time, her questions changed in Tanner, she started asking, what do you have to go for? And what are you going to do there? I caught her implication, even if you didn’t, she was really asking what kind of work could take you away from your most important task of caring for me?

What kind of invitation, what kind of opportunity could lead to the betrayal of one who is supposed to hold your heart? Didn’t say those exact words, but I understood that that’s exactly what she meant. She wanted me to stay. She couldn’t understand why I might leave. And so the night before I left, as we’re sitting talking, she finally asked me, well, where are you going?

And I said, Haiti, I’m going to this country that really needs help. It’s a place that they really don’t have anything. There’s no food. There’s very little clean water. There’s a lot of kids that lost their parents and we’re trying to help. I gave her some descriptions, not quite the brutality of the picture, but I gave her some idea of what Haiti was like.

She kind of leaned in a little and said, ah, yeah, it sounds like they really need help, but, but you already went once. Can’t someone else go now? You did your time, dad. Let someone else go. Can you imagine the disciples responding in similar ways? Jesus calls them children, right? And reality is they just want him to stay.

And any reason he should go, he is met at best by Peter’s response. Lord, why can’t I follow? Now, why not come them now? I’ll even lay down my life for you. Jesus. This is the tension of the passage. And now chapters 14 through 17, flow without a break, they run all the way through. It’s hard to teach without teaching it in one section.

It’s almost one continuous idea. In this passage, you’ll feel some breaks. The disciples will ask questions and they may be historical questions, but they’re actually foils. In the text, it just allows Jesus to represent his idea with slightly more depth. And so you’ll feel it just doesn’t stop. It just keeps going, and it begins here in one idea.

That covers everything he’s going to say. ’cause what he’s going to say is challenging and difficult for them. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Before he says anything else, Jesus acknowledges the anxiety in the room, which is good news, right? Because it means he says it for people like you and me. When we’re facing difficult situations, when anxiety catches off guard, when we don’t usually feel it, but a situation brings it up, maybe we feel it all the time and we deal with it constantly.

And Jesus says, do not let your heart. Be troubled. Do not let your heart be troubled. This fits in with this huge pattern within scripture 365 times in scripture. There’s some word that sounds something like, do not fear. Do not fear. Why? Because he’s there. He knows it’s how he begins, and then he gets into the difficult stuff, holds up there, and then he starts moving.

Jesus knows that ancient anxious hearts is the first idea. Reminds me of Joshua one nine. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. It’s all over the scripture, but the next line is none everywhere. It’s new. It’s an idea that for the first listeners must have been shocking. You believe in God, believe in me as well.

Can you imagine how you’d feel if we got to Easter Sunday, resurrection Sunday, and I stood up on stage, nice four rooms just to remind you and said You believe in Jesus? Believe also in me. I’d hope all of you would just leave. I think you’d all say this is the point where we say, thank you, Sal. It’s been great, but we’re gonna go and find a community that isn’t deeply blasphemous.

How can you have a leader that stands up and say, now, instead of believing just the old thing, now believe in me. Imagine that from a first century perspective, it must have sounded so similar. Believe in Jesus, like you believe in God. To his first followers. Even that must have felt like a stretch after starting easy.

Do not be anxious. Jesus leads into something that must have been so hard to heal. I love the fact that Jesus goes to that place. He asks something of us more than just believing he’s a good moral teacher. If we want to write Jesus off like that, we can. Because he said these kind of things. The writer, CS Lewis talks about this idea.

He says, A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says he’s a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God, or else a madman.

Or something worse. Jesus said, no, I am my father. We’re one. He moves on My father’s house has many rooms. It’s an idea that’s been grabbed in all sorts of places, all sorts of songs, especially this idea that there is a house, a heavenly home that we are all destined for in following Jesus. It doesn’t matter how hard life is here, but there’s this place that we’re going one day.

Maybe you remember some of the wrong songs. The nineties crowd. Audio adrenaline. It’s a big, big house. Lots and lots of rooms. Big, big table, lots and lots of food. Or, or, or maybe the Elvis idea, I’ve got it here somewhere. I got a mansion just over the hilltop in that bright land where we’ll never grow old, and someday yonder will never more wander, but on streets, walk on streets that are paved with gold.

It’s this picture of this thing still to come, but is that what the passage is really about? Is it just that something to enjoy in the future? My father’s house has many rooms. If that were not, so, would I have told you that I’m going to prepare a place for you? Jesus says to his followers, I’m going to prepare a place.

Now he is not just talking about this dis abstract idea of some kind of heavenly thing. We can’t picture. He’s using language from his culture that’s really specific and it’s language we actually use too. We just wouldn’t know. It wouldn’t attach it to the kind of ideas he’s talking about. This is the wonderful Standage edge in England in 2009.

I stood on the edge of this with my wife or my girlfriend at the time, and proposed that we get married. I did it in the old fashioned way of down on one knee and all those sorts of things. At the time, it was not the romantic scene that you see here. It was as foggy as you like. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

And we were in danger of toppling over the edge and being the most romantic proposal ever told. In that moment. We agreed that one day we would get married, and I said to her, something to the effect of, let’s get married in six months. And so then she went home and I went about preparing a place for her.

We’ve been given my grandmother’s old house to live in a ramshackle bungalow, tucked in a beautiful piece of land in the English countryside. But this place was not fit for any habitation. Actually, scratch that. It was already habited by mice, by rats, and by all sorts of different creatures. And so I got to work trying to clear it out, trying to create something that somebody could dwell in.

I painted over mold, it came back, unsurprisingly, I cleaned floors, I did all sorts of work. So one day. I could bring a home and say, see, I’ve prepared a place for you that still didn’t look habitable. It still looked desolate. When we got there, we had a postman arrive and say, wow, somebody lives here. I just assumed it was derelict, but it felt like a home.

It was a place we came back to. That’s the kinda language Jesus uses in his culture. A man would go and become betrothed to a woman and he would say, I’m going away. I go to prepare a place for you. And then he would go to his father’s house in a multi-generational culture and he would build an attachment and abode a dwelling place.

And then he would come back to her one day, maybe a year later and say. I’ve prepared a place for you, and he would take aback to live in the house of his father. This is the kind of cultural language that Jesus is using. I come back and take you to be with me. It’s language that John uses in the Book of Revelation as well.

Jesus pictures himself as the groom, and the church is his bride that he will one day come to collect. It’s this eternal idea. This eternal promise. Jesus says counterintuitively to us, his absence will eventually lead to his presence. But there’s a competing idea, A question mark that I think qualifies, this is so important in this text.

’cause the question is when? When is he talking about his presence being? Is this like a distant abstract idea, like a, what would be called a future eschatology, or is it soon or even now, there’s a little clue that certain writers look in this passage that suggests there may be more at play than simply the idea of a marriage at some distant point in the future.

Is this term my father’s house? Every other place that gets used by Jesus in scripture, it means the temple, this place in Judaism that, that, that seemed to be the center of God’s presence on earth, but completely inaccessible to every single person except one wants a this internal heartbeat, this holy of holies where they believe God dwell.

And yet no one could go in. For a lot of writers and John. They think when Jesus says, I go to prepare a place to you, he’s actually talking about that idea that now instead of an abstract, distant. Being God is now deeply present with his people in new ways. He’s talking about access. The idea that if he becomes the temple, if his work, his death and resurrection mean that you can be in constant relationship with God.

Well, that would change everything. It reminds me of this picture, one of my favorite pictures from history. This is John F. Kennedy sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. A place where you can only go by strict invite, where the number of people who can enter is controlled and the when of their entering is controlled as well and underneath.

Hidden under the desk. His son, little John, Jr. Breaking all the rules, coming whenever he wants. That’s this picture of how Access works to the right person. Anyone, they can come whenever they want. The idea behind John 14 is this, that we can all be the right person. Now, there is no controlled access to God.

It’s anyone who comes in Jesus’ name has access to his father. That’s where the rest of this passage goes. It goes into that idea. Is the passage about the future? Is the passage about the present? I tend to think Jesus is so brilliant. It’s probably about both. Sure there’s this future thing that’s going to change everything one day that will be with God eternally forever.

But I also think this passage is about the idea that God is present with us today as well in a way that wasn’t true before these words were spoken. The passage addresses both future and present. And that’s where Jesus continues to go. You know the way to the place where I am going. And of course one of the disciples, Thomas, this time speaks up, Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?

And Jesus gives his famous words that Isaiah read and proudly has on the back of his jacket, which I love. What a fit? I’m the way, the truth and the life. First passage I ever memorized. My cousins got $20 for memorizing it. I thought I would. If I did, I didn’t, but it was still worth it, just for the passage.

I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. Access. Same idea. This touches on a point that I find really difficult to talk about with people, and maybe you feel the same. It’s especially true whenever I talk to people in every situation about the faith, and because I’m a pastor and people ask what I do, it ends up being a regular conversation, perhaps more than it would if I wasn’t.

It’s this question of the exclusivity. That Jesus demands I, I would contend that Christianity is the most exclusive of all faiths. It’s the one that puts its hand up and says, this is the only thing. Everything else is outside of the way that gets you to God. But Christianity is distinctly the one way that can be hard to talk about.

I dunno if you found that like I do. It’s one of those things that comes up that seems to grate against our culture in a particular way. It’s true even when you try to help create a church culture where the church can own up to some of the ways that it’s been on the wrong side of history. That’s one of the things we’ve tried to do at South.

We’ve tried to create this culture where we can look at the ways that the church has been complicit. Perhaps in some of the ways society has broken, look at things from history like the Crusades and say, man, the church really got that wrong. Look at our early response to slavery. Some of our responses to things like abortion.

Some of our responses to things like immigration say, we have not always got this right. In fact, we’ve regularly been wrong. But even when you can do that and say, we have not been what God shaped us to be, and that that call is always to those that need us the most, that’s what loving your neighbor means, even when you do that, the idea that Jesus says, I am the only way still greats on society, that isn’t a flaw in the system.

Jesus said that’s how it will be. But here’s something that I think might help you as you navigate that. Not only is Christianity the most exclusive faith, it’s also the most inclusive faith. It’s this faith that says anybody who wants to get involved in this is so welcome. You can bring your cultural backgrounds all of the way your particular culture works, your lineage, all those things.

And Christianity celebrates almost all of it, and it just changes. The way of Jesus party invites you into this way of living that is distinct, that’s celebrated across all cultures and will be opposed by all cultures as well. The way of Jesus is exclusive. The way of Jesus is inclusive. But here’s the second idea that maybe helps you as well.

I always feel people heard this as the idea that there were many doors to have a relationship with God, and at some point when Christianity came along, someone said, you know, those old doors, they used to work just fine, but they don’t work anymore because now this is the only door. I don’t think that’s what it says at all.

I think what Jesus claims is that no door existed. Everyone tried to find one. Jesus was the only one that can make them whatever you want to escape in terms of what the gospel, blacks, the, the, the exclusivity seems inescapable. Jesus says, I created a way whether is no way. And that’s what he’s unpacking here.

And now he moves on to this second conversation. If you really knew me, you will know my father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. It’s the idea that he almost began with, but he didn’t fully get to. He says, the father I’ve been talking about and I with the same person were one. And again, another pushback from his disciples, Philip, this time says, Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.

Jesus disciples, it turns out, have still been waiting for this moment when they experience God for themselves, still think it’s a thing to come. Jesus says, it’s not a thing to come. You’ve already experienced it. Jesus answered. Don’t you know me, Philippe, even after I’ve been among you such a long time, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

How can you say, show us the father? Jesus says that revelation, that idea, that experience of God that people had looked through all through your Old Testament and the one you still feel like you’re waiting for, you already have it. You’ve seen it. It’s me. It’s why Paul says the son is the firstborn of the invisible God.

First, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. And so one of the reasons that I say this to people, God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There will never be a time when God is not like Jesus. When you encounter conversations in the world where people say, I love Jesus, I love who he is in the world.

I love the way he operates, but I struggle with this idea of God, the simplest answer is, Jesus came so we know that. We’ve seen what God is like. He’s exactly like Jesus is. Exactly how Jesus lived in this world. He continues, don’t you believe that I’m in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words I say to you, and I don’t speak on my own authority.

Rather, it is the father living in me who is doing his work. Believe me, when I say I’m in the Father, the father is in me or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. And then he finishes this section with this idea. That for these followers is revolutionary too. Says the reason I’m going is that, see, you guys can do the work.

I’m going to release you to do all of the things I’ve been doing in the world. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing and they would do greater things than these. And across history, there’s been all sorts of ideas about what exactly that means. If you go to the Pentecostal church that I grew up in, they’d say, well, you are all supposed to go out and do miracles.

And if you go to the Amish community, they’ll say, we’re all supposed to be really like living the sermon on the mountain and look exactly like Jesus looked like Kerik to wise, and everyone’s had different ideas, but somewhere is this central idea that the way Jesus lived, we get to live that way too.

The idea of great doesn’t necessarily mean bigger. Doesn’t mean that the works Jesus did, you should be better at. But it just means that a whole world of people living like Jesus would be extraordinary. Imagine that in every environment you live, if someone lived like Jesus lived, the change that would bring like in a church, if someone living like Jesus lived would be a wonderful thing.

This is what we’re invited into. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will do what the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the father and then he finishes with this last idea. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it.

What do you mean by that? Have you ever prayed a prayer and feel like it wasn’t heard or certainly wasn’t answered? Maybe you remember the first extraordinary prayer you prayed eight or nine or 10 for some absurd thing to be given to you and it didn’t happen. And maybe you’re old enough to know that this verse existed and there’s this sense of like, protest and angst.

Aren’t you supposed to give me whatever I ask for in your name? And, and I’d hope every single person in this room has asked for something and found that it didn’t happen. ’cause it’s an almost universal experience. There’s so much to unpack there that I’m gonna have to push it to our podcast and leave you hanging.

But I think there’s this one idea that I’d like to land on, and it’s the idea that if all we see in this verse is what God can do for us, we’ve missed the heartbeat of the verse. ’cause it’s not actually about that at all.

This is what I’d like to finish with. If we see prayer as a button to be pushed, that’s not what John 14 is about. Prayer. How Jesus describes it is a relationship to be pursued, not a button to be pushed. When we see Jesus invite to ask for whatever we want, the instant response is, I’m just gonna start asking for things.

And yet what Jesus has hoped we take from this is this lifelong relationship where we know his presence. Day by day. Jesus’ answer to our current anxiety is actually his continued presence now and way into the future and beyond time itself. On January 2nd, I got a text message from my friend. Who just said, Hey, I’ve been thinking about you a lot over Christmas.

We’d love to catch up soon. Nothing about the long time that we hadn’t talked. Nothing about just my sense of like, I don’t text back and I don’t respond to things just simply hey, I’d love to catch up. None of the guilt that I’d expected. Just simply an invite. It was actually the thing I’d been hoping for all along, and it finally turned up at a time.

I didn’t expect it just when I’d given up on the relationship. If I’d honest the friendship, if I’d, I was honest. I think that’s how Jesus is with us. This passage expresses his longing for this continued relationship, this idea that we would walk with him, one that in Lent we may not experience yet. But I just love it to be a colonel that says however extraordinary might, might be.

You would experience God in that way. This land, we would long for it. Wait for it, and be caught up in Easter together. Jesus for South, this community going through change. You know us, you know every person. Their feelings today, their experience of this moment, this shift. You know us and our relationship with you, a sense of uncertainty.

Our angst, a feeling that we at times feel like people looking through a window, seeing a lot of other people, experience something, and we feel right, like we’re on the outside.

Thank you for this offer you make. Of continued presence. Think about all the things that we value, how some of them would seem unimportant in the light of your presence.

Thank you that you loved us enough to leave so that we could be present with you. Amen.