John 14 No.2 Jesus the way to the Father

Before we read these words, I'm reminded of the psalmist's prayer. May we make it ours, open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. John chapter 14, do not let your hearts be troubled, trust in God, trust also in me.

In my Father's house are many rooms, or abide in places. If it were not so, I would have told you, I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am.

You know the way to the place where I am going? Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way? Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.

From now on, you do know him and have seen him. Philip said, Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us. Jesus answered, don't you know me, Philip? Even after I have been among you such a long time, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

How can you say, show us the Father? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just mine own, rather it is the Father living in me who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.

He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father, and I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. May God bless the public reading of his precious book. The Lord of my soul, praise ye the Lord.

This chapter is part of the great Paschal address of our Lord Jesus. The word Paschal is a Jewish word. It comes from the concept of the Passover.

And when our Lord Jesus was with his disciples, Judas having taken leave, he gave to them some of his greatest, most compressed teaching. There is really hardly anything comparable in the whole of Scripture to this address. It really is quite unique, outstanding.

Someone has called it, as I quoted it last week, a heart-melting address. Our Savior taking his leave. Can you imagine? I'm thinking now of my dear mom and dad-in-law taking the leave of their daughter down there in Cape Town.

Well, can you imagine taking your leave of someone you love? Maybe you've got an hour or two hours in their company as you say goodbye in the airport or what have you. And you compress into those two hours, because it's more or less your last general statement of what you want them to know. So you pack into that time all the things that are most important.

Now that's what our Lord Jesus is doing in the upper room with his disciples. And they're hanging on to every word. They're doing that because, well, he's taught them such a lesson in humility, hasn't he? He washed their feet.

He, the Lord of Glory, stooped so low to wash the feet of the disciples. They're absolutely amazed. And he has the congregation, as we would say, in the palm of his hand.

As he starts not to be comforted, as I pointed out last week, but to comfort his disciples because he is going away from them. And do you remember how in the opening verses we saw especially three things? The trouble that he takes. Don't let your hearts be troubled.

Why? Well, because I've taken your troubles away. The trouble that he takes. The assertion he states in my father's house in heaven are many mansions.

And I'm going to prepare a place for you. And then the promise he makes, if I go and prepare a place for you, I'm going to come back. Why? Well, because he can't abide being where you are not.

Isn't that remarkable? Some of us know that in human relationships. With those whom we love, it's hard to be away. Take a distant journey from the tab and I'm homesick within three or four days.

That's not being sentimental. That's being quite true. People grow very, very dear to you, don't they? Well, here is our Savior and he says, I'm having this place prepared for you.

And I'm going away, but I will come back. He'll come back, of course, in his resurrection as far as the disciples are concerned. He's going to come back to them in a very remarkable way when the Holy Spirit comes into their lives, as I shall show you in future series.

He's going to come to them when they die, because I believe that our Lord Jesus meets us at that point. And he's there as we go through the valley of the shadows. I do believe that.

But he's speaking absolutely of that great day when he will return and set up his government. That's the grandest of blessings, but there are anticipations of this. So there is the promise that he makes.

Well then, let's proceed. Some of you are school teachers. Do you have difficulties with your children? You do? Well, I've got a word for you this morning.

Just keep on listening. Because as we proceed, I want to show you these disciples who really are, if you like, in a classroom situation reacting to what the Lord Jesus is having to say to them. And the first thing I bring to your attention from verse 5 and onwards is that here is a comprehension that was partial.

A comprehension that was partial. Now, back to you teachers. Do you have difficulty with your boys and girls? They don't always hang on to every word, every pearl of wisdom that drops from your lips.

It's an utter waste as far as you're concerned, but the truth of the matter is they don't absorb everything that you share with them. Well, when you come to write reports at the end of term, how do you cope? He could have done better. About average.

Fair. Only fair. Do you use those expressions? Maybe these days you've got to give a more full-arbed report than I had to in the days when I was a school teacher.

Well, our Lord has got two pupils here, and perhaps they're not quite as competent as we would have liked or he would have liked. First of all, there's Thomas, the pupil who contradicted his teacher. Do you have that problem? The pupil who contradicted his teacher.

Jesus has just been saying, I'm going to prepare a place for you. Verse four, you know the way to the place where I'm going. Thomas says to him, Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way? Isn't it terrible in a classroom situation when you've got your emotional climax and then some bright spot stands up at the back of the classroom and it ruins the whole thing? Well, I'm not suggesting it was exactly like that, but there is a comprehension that's partial here.

Thomas contradicts the Lord Jesus. He denies that he knows the way to heaven. I think that Thomas really was very much like myself sometimes.

One of the things that I can lose with exquisite skill are my keys. And sometimes I've ransacked the house looking for my keys only to discover that they were in the back pocket. Ever had that experience? Well, here is Thomas, you see, and he's complaining that the knowledge that he wants is distant from him.

Actually, it's there within his mind. If only he'll recall it and concentrate on what he's heard from the Lord Jesus on many an occasion. Thomas, like the man who hunts for keys only to discover they're in his pocket.

And yet, you know, my dear teacher friend, a dull pupil can sometimes give you the opportunity of reinforcing your lesson in a way that perhaps you wouldn't have done before. And here is Thomas, and his dullness of comprehension is going to trigger the Lord Jesus Christ into letting drop one of the great gems of Scripture as he goes into verse 6. But I stay with Thomas at the moment. A man whose comprehension that was partial.

The pupil who contradicted his teacher. Let's go to his colleague, Philip. Now, if you were writing a report for Philip, you might have said he could have done better.

Here's verse 9. Verse 8, Philip said, Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us. You see, our Lord Jesus had been talking about going to heaven, had he not? And he describes heaven as his father's house. And he's now been answering Thomas' question, but Philip hasn't clearly followed the answer.

And so, he comes in with another comment. Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us. The man who could have done better.

Jesus leans over and says, Philip, don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? You see, this was one of the earliest disciples. One of the first to be called into the kingdom. One who, when he discovered Jesus, went to tell his relative and said, we found him who was the Messiah.

Now, Philip, have you been so long with me? Have you listened to all that I've said and still your comprehension is incomplete? There's a gentle rebuke there, isn't there? But let's say this of the disciples, shall we? They were a jolly sight better off in their understanding than the average Jew in Palestine, not so? I mean, Judaism, as a religious entity, it didn't rise up and confess that Jesus was Messiah. Not one from Caiaphas and his lot said, you are the son of the living God. It was a handful of fishermen who came to that conclusion.

So let's appreciate this. Having started into this epistle, into this discourse where our Lord is teaching his disciples about heavenly things, that though their comprehension is partial, they have certain advantages over their contemporaries. Now, my friend, let's apply that to ourselves.

You may not be the greatest Bible student that ever there was. You might have identified with Steve, and I certainly identify with him when he said sometimes he comes into the church and if he recalled all that he'd done that past week, well, it wouldn't be so easy for him to offer praise to the Lord. In some way, we're all defective.

In some way, we're all dull of understanding. But don't sell yourself too short. If you have some idea of what the gospel is, if you confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, then you're better off than 90% of worthy people in your understanding of Scripture.

Don't underrate the disciples, although they have a comprehension that was partial. Let's go back to this little chap in your class who ruins everything by, at the wrong moment, answering a question. And then, as you respond to his comment, you discover that you're saying something that's really getting across, really getting through.

You see, Thomas has said, Lord, we don't know where you're going, so how can we know the way? In one sense, it was an improper break into the theme of what Jesus had in mind. But we owe it to Thomas that it stimulated the grandest verse, almost, that there is in Scripture. For Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Sometimes it was the crude interruptions that caused our Lord, at the human level, to give his most concentrated and his most effective teaching. Didn't you get an example of that when we were going through Luke 15? Why did Jesus spell out the parable of the lost things, finishing with that brilliant story of the prodigal son? Well, you see, there were these churlish teachers, were there not? These rabbis who knew everything. And they were passing by, and they said, you know that man, pointing to Jesus, not only does he receive sinners, but he sits with them.

He goes to their house, he has a meal. It was an interruption, you see. And sometimes the best teaching comes as a result of an interruption.

And so, our Lord addresses his disciples with a description of himself that is pivotal to their understanding of his ministry and their ultimate destiny. I am the way and the truth and the life. You're interested in heaven? That's not a cop-out.

You're a fool if you're not. If you've got no concerns as to your ultimate destination, then I reject you as a wise thinking person. If you're listed with a prudential with any of the insurance companies so that you're looked after in your old age, I congratulate your forethought.

But if you have not gone beyond that, then I suggest to you that you're inept. You're not using your brain in the way that you ought to use your brain. We are not here forever, and yet there is that in you and me that is immortal, that lives on.

Therefore, I should have even greater concern for that which lives on than for that which is just temporally during a lifespan. You're interested in heaven? All right. Here's the man to whom you go.

Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth. I am the way.

You see, he's talking about his Father's house. Into the Father's house. I am the way.

He's the ladder that goes up to it. He's the way that approaches into it. He's the door that takes you through it.

Ignore him. You ignore everything in regard to your ultimate well-being. I can put it no clearer than that, and I think I have Scripture as my brief for the conclusions.

The Lord Jesus is the way, a description that's pivotal. You see, most of us are like Cain. You remember what happened to Cain? Well, after he disobeyed the Lord, after he killed his brother, we discover of Cain in the 14th verse of the 4th chapter of Genesis that he says, I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.

There are many people like that, aren't there? They love to go. Well, they're not so sure that they love to go wandering. They wander through this world.

Sometimes I must have quoted this until you're almost fed up of hearing it, but there are new people here, so excuse me once again. I find it lamentable that in a funeral, in a graveyard rather, in Paris, there is a tomb that has the inscription, Here lies the remains of a man who came into this world without ever knowing where he was going. The wanderer.

Now it's the wandering temperament that Jesus addresses. I am the way. There is a way that seems right to a man.

That's the wrong way. The way through life is the way that keeps you in sweet company with the Lord Jesus Christ. I am the way.

And at the end of life, if you stay with me, I will bring you through into my Father's house. I am the truth. Alas for Adam, he believed a lie, and since that day, men have groped in darkness.

Even the Jews only saw through a glass darkly. They didn't fully comprehend all that God was trying to teach them through the sacrificial systems of the Old Testament. But Jesus comes and he arrests your ignorance, and he says, I'm the way.

I am the truth. Pilate once stood in the presence of Jesus, and he put the wrong question. He said, what is truth? Pilate, it's not what, it is who.

And you're looking at truth? Don't you see the very teachings of Jesus are the epitome, are the essence of truth? One day, my friend, you will wish you had spent more time with your Bible than you did with your newspaper. I tell you that in the name of God. Because here is truth.

Truth that leads you ultimately into the Father's presence. Here is the way. Here is the truth.

Moreover, here is the life. You remember the prodigal? He comes back to the Father's house. And who is the Father? None other than God himself.

What does the Father say on receiving the boy who has spent such a long period away in profligate abandonment? Using the resources that belong to Father in such an unthoughtful way? This my son was lost, but he's found. He was dead, but he is alive again. You see, this is the ministry of our Lord Jesus illustrated here in the parable.

Bringing the boy out of the far country back into the Father's house. He who believes on the Son hath everlasting life. You see, it's Jesus Christ who has the title leads to life everlasting.

So here is this pivotal description. Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. Which enabled Bishop Ryle in a quote that I gave you at the beginning of notes and news for this week.

For ever let us grasp and hold fast to these truths. To use Christ daily as the way. To believe Christ daily as the truth.

To live on Christ daily as the life. Is to be well informed, fully furnished, and an established Christian. So here is the Savior.

And he's discussing certain issues with his disciples. Now you're a disciple of the Lord Jesus, are you not? Alright then, take this and apply it to yourself. They had, as you have, a comprehension that was partial.

But it enabled our Lord Jesus, as a result of Thomas' interjection, to engage in a description of him and his ministries that were pivotal. Now look, if he is the way and the truth and the life, then there is a deduction, thirdly, a deduction that is logical that follows from this. No man comes to the Father except through me.

You see, he's back again with the concept of the Father's house. He's so concerned that people ultimately go there. So here is his conclusion.

The deduction that is so logical. If he's the way, the truth, and the life, then there is nowhere else that you can turn. If there's only one motorway from London to Edinburgh, then there are no other options open, assuming there are no subroads whatsoever.

Now, of course, modern man doesn't want this in regard to the Lord Jesus, does he? I listened with increasing frustration to Gerald Priestland some year or so ago in his religious broadcast, Priestland's Progress, one of the most outstandingly successful things the British Broadcasting Corporation has done in years as far as getting an audience was concerned for the radio. The man received 24,000 letters as a result of the program. But I went beyond his program, looked through his book, and then I bought, at the same time, the copy of an article that he wrote in The Listener.

And the article was headed, Are my Muslim and Jewish neighbours second-class citizens? And what he dealt with, if I can summarise him just in a few words, was what he referred to as a scandal of particularity. What does he mean? Well, simply this. Think it through and you'll understand.

Here are these evangelicals, and they turn to a text like this, and it suggests that the only means whereby a man can be saved is through Jesus Christ. Now that's not very popular, because it sounds so very narrow, so very rigid, so very authoritarian. And it is all those things, you see.

And we cannot apologise for this, despite what Mr Priestland may have said, and I don't question his tender heart, nor his ability as a broadcaster whatsoever. You cannot, as he endeavoured to do, rephrase this particular verse, because in the very rephrasing of it, as he did, he changes what the infallible Son of God said. There is only one way.

There is no other name given amongst men whereby they must be saved. Mr Priestland, if we misunderstood that one, well, will you so skillfully also reinterpret Acts chapter 4? And then can I take you to 1 Timothy chapter 3, where the Apostle Paul says there is no other mediator given amongst men. The man, Christ Jesus.

No other mediator between man and God. The man, Christ Jesus. You see, if you're concerned as a thinking person about heaven, I have to say this to you.

You must come to the Lord Jesus. Now, you could be a very honourable person, and there's nothing wrong in being honourable. We need honest people.

You may be a great philanthropist. You may give away quite a lot of money. You may have always lived a decent life, but neither your honesty, nor your philanthropy, nor any other virtue, not even sincerity.

Are you hearing me? Not even sincerity will get you into the Father's house. It needs him. The way, the truth, the life, the Lamb of God, slain because of your sins, because of the things that you have done that were wrong.

You see, people think lightly of God because they have an utter misunderstanding of the abhorrence of sin. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. And it was His blood that can make the foulest clean that was shed on Calvary.

And through His blood, says the writer to the Hebrews, we have access into the holiest place of all. But outside that shed blood of Christ being applied to you, there is no way into the Father's house. Here's a description that's pivotal.

I am the way, the truth, and the life. Here is a deduction that's logical. There's no other way to the Father but by me.

Are you going through Him, my friend? Or are you thinking that having lived decently here in Worthing, that assures you of a place in the Father's house? I put it as strongly as this. That notion is a lie from the devil. Let's conclude.

There's one further thing that our Savior will teach us. There is a relation that is fundamental. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.

From now on you do know Him and have seen Him. Philip said, Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us. Jesus answered, Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you for such a long time? Have you lost track of what our Lord is teaching? Here were these disciples with a partial comprehension.

They didn't fully understand. As a result of this, He's able to show them a description of Himself that they haven't grasped sufficiently. Then He goes down and indicates, as I spent some moments in doing, in saying that He's the only way to the Father.

A deduction that's logical. But now here's a relation that's fundamental. Why can't Jesus show them the way to the Father? Because He represents the Father in the most remarkable and intimate fashion it is possible.

Philip has in mind, you see, probably Moses' experience on Sinai where one day he had a theophany. God passed by in a sort of corporeal sense. Lord, show us the Father like that.

Philip, don't you understand that what you are experiencing outpaces the experience of Moses? I am in the Father and the Father is in me. There is no greater revelation of the Father in this world than the one who is standing in front of you. You say, don't you, at the human level, of some sons and their fathers, when you've seen one, you've seen the other.

It goes sometimes, that little adage, in regard to preachers. You get a young preacher who's tutored by a famous older preacher, and you'll hear the older preacher living on through the younger man. Now, those are just illustrations of what I think is impossible for us to fully comprehend in the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the viceroy of the Father. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him. Says John in the prologue, that's the first chapter of this Gospel, we beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father.

What is Father like? Look at the Lord Jesus. How does Father react? Look at the Lord Jesus. Father has no further word to say to this world than that which is illustrated in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so when the disciples ask, and it's plural here, Jesus says, don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you? That's a plural use of the pronoun there, so our Lord is assuming that all the disciples have the same problem as Philip. Don't you know me, even though I have been with you such a long time? Anyone who has seen the Father, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Our Savior is the only one through which the Father can be known.

Our Savior reveals the Father's glory. Our Savior performs the activity of the Father. Verse 10, don't you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own, rather it is the Father living in me who is doing his work in a very extraordinary fashion.

You can say of the Father and of the Son, they are of the same essence, even though their respective positions in the Trinity remain separate. And it's because our Lord Jesus has so much of the Father demonstrated through his personality, through his being, that he can claim this relationship that's utterly fundamental to what he is doing in his ministry. So let's try and take that rather complicated aspect of teaching and give it practicality.

You can't get to the Father outside the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't enter Father's house without the ministry of the Lord Jesus. You can't even pray to the Father without you coming the merits of the Savior.

Whatever you ask, verse 13, in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father, you may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it. Now, my friends, here then is this beautiful teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, talking to the disciples who didn't fully comprehend. Their understanding was partial, but their incompetence led him to state one of the grandest things about himself.

He is the way, the truth, and the life, which continues to the deduction that the only way into the Father's house is through him. And our Lord Jesus has this unique relationship with the Father. The very image of God is upon him.

He declares the Father. He stands guard, so to speak, over the Father's house. And only those who have come to him and the merits of what he has done can ultimately enter heaven.

Now, do you find yourself in that condition? Because if that's the case, then, my friend, why do you get so troubled? Why do you get so agitated? There is really no reason, because all the problems and difficulties of life are just momentarily. And Jesus said we are to face the present with a glance as to what the future is going to be. Don't let your heart be troubled.

Do you believe in God, the Father? Believe in me, for I'm his representative. The Father and I are of same standing. I go to prepare a place for you in my Father's house and many mansions.

If that's so, I'm coming back. To receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Jesus Christ, the way into the Father's house.

There is no other. Let's pray. Father, there are some here who listen to this address as though their very life depended upon it.

And in one sense it does. Now we pray that what was from yourself by the power of the Spirit may be indelibly etched on the mind for recall. We pray for the application, not just to have heard, but to have responded to what you challenge us to do through your word.

Enable us to trust the Lord Jesus and to find ultimately eternal rest in the Father's house. And this we ask for his name's sake. Amen.

Let's sing. G I get the impression that there is someone here who's been very troubled by what I've said this morning. Probably the first time that they've been in the tab.

I don't know. I just want to say to them that if they will phone my office during the week and ask me to call and see them or fix an appointment for them to come and see me, we can talk through those things so that they can have that assurance of salvation that they've not known heretofore. I've never stopped and said this at the end of a morning service in 17 years.

Take that, whoever it is, and make some contact with me and let's just help you into such a situation in your religious experience that you can face the end of your life with confidence. Father, we ask your blessing to be upon us again. Send us from this place into the rest of this day knowing your blessing.

And any troubled souls that yet have not found the rest that there should be in Christ Jesus, then just minister to them of your grace and help them to discover what it really means to trust the one who is the way, the truth, and the life. And this we ask for his sake. Amen.