[0:00] Our passage today is John 14 verses 1-7.
[0:19] ! Let not your hearts be troubled.
[0:40] Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.
[1:00] And you know the way to where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life.
[1:15] No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.
[1:26] This is the word of the Lord. Would you pray with me? Father, we love you so much. We rejoice that we get to be here today. We thank you for your word, which is powerful and true. God, we ask that you help us.
[1:38] Help us to not just be those who hear your word, but also, Lord, those who keep your word. We're here for your purposes, Father. Help us to think on your word today and to honor you in all that we do.
[1:49] It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. I felt led to preach this text because recently I was on the island of Borneo for my work.
[2:06] And Borneo is a tropical island in the South Pacific. And we went hiking, and that was a terrible mistake. Shouldn't have done that. So we're being led on this hike through these jungle mountains.
[2:21] I've never done this before. I am not in shape for this. And we hiked for hours. And then we got lost. And this hike would not end easily the most difficult hike of my life.
[2:38] We're going up and down these mountains that are just covered in jungle. And the more we hike, the steeper the mountains seem to become. And the more narrow the path we're walking on seem to be.
[2:52] And our guide is this really, really cool believer. He turned and he looked at me because the path is only a few inches wide at this point. And on one side is the mountain going up in its sheer jungle.
[3:06] And on the other side is a fall. And you're going to go into the forest and you're disappearing down there. And he said to me, this gives a new perspective on what it means that the way is narrow, doesn't it?
[3:22] I said, yeah, man, it does. And it stuck with me. And I haven't been able to shake that moment. And so I started thinking about the way, the path, the road. And it led me to our passage today.
[3:33] Again, one that's familiar to all of us. Now, Christ is that narrow path for us among the difficult mountains and jungles of life.
[3:46] So we need to think about him today as we read our text. Now, I divided our text into three sections. Firstly, we will examine our father's house, which we see in verses one to four.
[3:58] Then we'll talk about Jesus, our only way to the father in verses five to six. And finally, in verse seven, we'll talk about Christ, the revelation of our father.
[4:09] But firstly, we see that Jesus alone takes us to our father's house. We see this in verses one to four. The scripture reads, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God.
[4:20] Believe also in me. In my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also.
[4:36] And you know the way to where I'm going. Now, in context, our passage comes from the second half of John's gospel. The second half of John's gospel is focused on the last night of the Lord's life.
[4:55] Tonight, as the Lord says this, he will be arrested and he will be killed the next day. So this is his farewell discourse to his disciples. He's giving them final instructions.
[5:08] In a sense, he's telling them goodbye. But he's also telling them how he wants them to live, how he wants them to treat each other. He tells them that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, will soon be coming.
[5:19] There's a lot that's packed into this chapter and the next few. But he also gives them some really, really hard truths.
[5:31] First off, he tells them that one of the 12 will betray him. You've got to remember, this group of 12, they've been together day and night for three years.
[5:42] And they were just told one of their numbers a traitor. And they all look around. They don't know who it is. They get one of us. What? But then Jesus adds to their discomfort.
[5:54] And he says again, I'm going to leave you. Now, think about how that would make them feel. They have been with the Lord again, day and night through thick and thin for the last three years.
[6:06] And he says, I'm leaving you. And where I go, you cannot follow. And this grieves them because they're going to be separated from their Lord. But then Jesus makes it even harder.
[6:19] Peter, hearing he's going to be separated from the Lord, says at the end of chapter 13, Lord, why can I not go with you? I'll lay my life down for you. And Jesus looks at Peter and says, I tell you the truth today, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.
[6:36] So now we have even the leader of the 12 is being told that he will fail Jesus that very day, that very night. There's a lot going on here. It's really, really hard.
[6:48] And it's in the midst of this that we see our first verse when Jesus says to his disciples, let not your hearts be troubled. Now, in context, this is a particular command to the disciples, but it teaches us a spiritual principle that's for all of us for all of time.
[7:09] The principle is this. The antidote to fear and doubt is belief in Christ. Now, we all of us face real troubles in life.
[7:19] Now, if growing a little bit older, actually, you know, I wouldn't say I'm old yet, but I notice every year I grow my beard out, every year it gets just a little bit more white hairs in it, you know?
[7:33] And my wife is great at pointing it out for me. It's terrible. One of my 16-year-old neighbors told me recently that I was middle-aged, and I haven't forgotten that.
[7:43] But again, if one of the things I've learned in this season is that oftentimes, actually, it feels like always, there is something that we can be troubled about. Either there's a health need or a financial need or a work issue or a relational problem.
[8:00] Now, life is full of these. I don't have to convince you of that. You know that it's true. And oftentimes, I'm finding it's not like we have one of these issues and then a long season where there's nothing and then one of these issues.
[8:14] A lot of times, it seems like these issues that could trouble our hearts, man, they all pile up on each other and they all come at you all at the same time. Life can be hard. But remember, the antidote to fear is to believe in Christ.
[8:28] But he starts off by saying, believe in God. And guys, what are we to believe in? When we think about this, we should remember that God is faithful to his people.
[8:41] And our God is a keeper of his covenants. And we should believe in him. We should remember that our God is perfect in righteousness. In all that he does.
[8:52] So much so that he is defined by his holiness. And we should believe in him. We should remember that John, in his own gospel, in the first chapter, says that we have been made the children of God, which means he is our father.
[9:09] And it means that he loves us and he takes care of us and he'll never forget us. And we should believe in him. Or think about God's wisdom. He is the one who knows the end from before the beginning.
[9:21] Is there anything that enters our lives that surprises him or that he didn't see coming? Of course not. He is the all-knower. Believe in him.
[9:33] Or think about his power. Is there anything that enters your life or mine that's beyond his ability to handle? No. This is the Alpha and the Omega. Believe in him.
[9:43] But Christ, in addition to telling his disciples to believe in God, he says, believe in me. Which, remember, this is quite radical.
[9:54] The Lord is placing himself on the same level as God his Father. And Jesus says, believe in me. But what should we remember when we think about that? We should believe that Christ is Emmanuel.
[10:10] That he is God with us. We should believe in the fact that Christ has died for our sins. Which means that no matter what we are facing in life, our biggest need has already been taken care of.
[10:24] And it was taken care of forever at the cross. We should believe in the fact that Christ has not, will not, and cannot lose even a single one of his sheep.
[10:37] And when it looks like the world is melting down. And darkness is spreading all over the face of the world. When wars, rage, and terrorism seems to be common again.
[10:50] When our nation just seems to be falling apart. Now we need to remember that Christ will win. We believe in him.
[11:02] Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God and believe in his Son, Christ Jesus, our Lord. One more point. When death comes, and it's time for you and for me to go the way of all flesh.
[11:19] Let not your hearts be troubled. Know that Christ, too, was laid down in death. But that he stood up again in victory. And because he rose again, we, too, shall rise.
[11:32] Believe in Christ. The antidote to fear and doubt is belief in Jesus. And when you struggle to believe, because I know all of us do, I encourage you to pray the prayer from Mark chapter 9, which is one of my all-time favorites.
[11:48] Because I find it is so necessary in my life. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. But we go on.
[12:00] And we see that we're describing our Father's house. Now, some of your Bibles have the word mansions in them. Or some of you have heard this word before.
[12:12] Some of us grew up singing a hymn. I've got a mansion just over the hilltop. And that bright land where we'll never grow old. It's an oldie and a goodie. But I think it kind of confuses us.
[12:24] Because when I say mansion, you probably think of a big house behind a gate, maybe on a golf course. So basically, you're thinking of Florida. And that is not what the Lord means here.
[12:38] Back in the day, I'll just say it like this. We get the word mansion from a Latin word. It came from a Greek word. So it kind of has passed through multiple languages.
[12:49] In Jesus' day, the word mansion, it really meant a room or a dwelling place. A room. Okay? Did you see that Jesus here, he's a Jewish man in the first century.
[13:01] They didn't think of things, living places, the way we do. Where when a family, like a husband and a wife got married, they moved out and started their own life together. No. They wouldn't want to do that.
[13:14] They would add on to the back of the house. They would build a mansion. That's what it was called. It was a dwelling place on the back of the house. It was an extra room. You know, the add-on. And that way, the family would just grow.
[13:25] The husband and wife would move in. And now the family just gets bigger. And as there's more generations, they keep adding on to the house, making room for more people to come. And so the point is, the family lives together in the father's house.
[13:38] They live under the same roof together. They don't want to spread out. They don't want privacy from each other. They want to be together. And this is what the Lord is telling us our destiny is.
[13:50] Our destiny is to live together with our Lord in our father's house. It's not about having a huge house or the golden streets or something like that.
[14:02] The emphasis of our Lord is the closeness that we will have with him in our father's home one day. And brothers and sisters, remember, who gets to live in the father's house?
[14:14] His children, only members of the family. And that's who we are because of what Christ has done. So when you look at this passage, think about the incredible privilege that is, that you and I will dwell eternally with Jesus in the house of the father.
[14:31] Not based on anything that we have done, but based entirely on what he has done. And there should be something here that helps our hearts.
[14:42] It should calm us. It should, again, help be an antidote against fear and doubt. This is because we know where we're going.
[14:54] We don't need to be afraid. We don't need to have doubt about the future. Everybody likes to know that they have a place waiting for them. You know that feeling when you show up and it's a crowded room and somebody saved you a seat?
[15:09] Man, that feels great. Because otherwise you can get really nervous and you're like, where am I going to sit? Is there a place for me? You know, there's indecision about the future. And this reminded me of one of the worst things I have ever done.
[15:21] And I'm going to confess it to you live. 2011, I had just graduated college. And so a group of friends and I went to a huge Bible conference in Chicago.
[15:36] And some of us were graduated. Others were still in college. So we're young and still full of hope. And we show up and all of our heroes are there.
[15:47] There's David Platt and there's Matt Chandler and there's John Piper in the flesh. They're here. I wanted to run around almost and get autographs. But this place was packed.
[16:00] There's thousands of people. And I mean, almost all of these are pastors. I mean, it is just slammed with people. You can barely get a seat when you do. I mean, you are like way back there.
[16:13] So John Piper's about this big. And so my friend says, we need to reserve seats. I was like, man, we can't do that. You know, that's just not OK.
[16:24] And he's like, watch me. So he walks up to a lady who's working at a desk. And he says, ma'am, I'm going to need you to print five pieces of paper that have reserved in all capital letters on them.
[16:37] So she does. Then he takes him. He folds him into these nice little triangles that say reserved. He walks up to the second row, center, right next to where all the speakers are going to be speaking in the next session.
[16:50] And he lays them out. Take five seats. And I'm like, this is wrong. We shouldn't do this. We're at a conference.
[17:01] I, my conscience is really bothering me. So next session begins. The hall is just slammed. People are fighting for seats. You know, they're spilling out into the lobby.
[17:12] And we just walk right up to the front and sit down right next to all the speakers. Suddenly, my conscience stopped bothering me. This was the best idea ever.
[17:25] And for the entire week-long conference, we had seats almost front row center, right next to the VIPs. And it meant that when the sessions were beginning, we didn't have to be nervous.
[17:38] We didn't have to worry because we knew we had a spot waiting for us. Now, we shouldn't have done that. I wouldn't do that now. But I think the point holds.
[17:49] We didn't have to be nervous because we knew we had a spot. And brothers and sisters, it's the same for us now. We don't have to be nervous in this life. We have a spot waiting for us.
[18:01] Our destiny is to live eternally in the house of our Father. But Jesus also says that he goes to prepare a place for us. Now, I'll confess.
[18:11] When I started looking at this sermon, I guess I had this weird vision of Jesus kind of like leading a remodel or something like that, you know?
[18:24] I don't know why. I just never thought about it. How else does he prepare a place for us, you know? That's not actually how the Lord prepares a place for us. The commentators helped me see that Jesus prepares a place for us not through adding bedrooms or hanging drywall, but rather through his sacrificial death.
[18:46] D.A. Carson, the great commentator, says, It is not that Christ arrives on the scene and then begins to prepare the place. Rather, in the context of John's theology, it is the going itself via the cross and resurrection that prepares the place for Jesus' disciples.
[19:08] And of the same point, Charles Spurgeon says, Jesus has gone by the way of Calvary up to his Father's house. All his work and warfare done.
[19:21] He is rewarded for his sojourn among men. All the shame which his work necessitated is now lost in the splendor of his reign. You people of God, be no more troubled, for your Lord is King, your Savior reigns.
[19:36] Men may still scoff at him, but they cannot rob him of his glory. They may reject him, but the Lord God omnipotent has crowned him. They may deny his existence, but he lives.
[19:49] They may rebelliously cry, Let us break his bands asunder and cast his cords from us. From Psalm chapter 2. But the Lord hath set his King upon his holy hill of Zion, and none can take him from the throne.
[20:03] Hallelujah. So the cross and the tomb are the way that the Lord will prepare this place for us as people. So we've seen that we have a house.
[20:17] We've seen that it's been prepared for us, and we've seen that we should not let our hearts be troubled. But let's now look at our way to this house. In fact, it's our way to the Father in verses 5 and 6.
[20:29] Scripture reads, In my opinion, Thomas asks a pretty reasonable question.
[20:49] He's understanding that his Lord is leaving. Things are changing. And Jesus always has the right answer, so he needs the answer from the Lord. He needs the Lord to teach him something so that he'll know what to do next, how to get to God when Jesus isn't there anymore.
[21:06] But Jesus chose Thomas, and by extension us. That's not about just the Lord's teaching. It's not about knowing that. It's about knowing Jesus personally.
[21:18] Jesus is the way, and relationship with him is how we access his Father. Now verse 6 is incredibly famous. It's been memorized and recited forever.
[21:32] Now many of you in this room memorized this verse 50, 60, maybe even 70 plus years ago. And this verse is still true, and it's still power, and it is still offensive to our world.
[21:47] It hasn't changed. It hasn't lost any of its force. Jesus is making a radical claim here. He is saying that the only way to access God is through him and through him alone.
[22:00] We confess, along with our Reformation brothers and sisters, sola Christos, Christ alone. Now our Lord here begins with, I am.
[22:12] It says, I am the way and the truth and the life. So this should make us think about where else we see I am in the scripture. It should make us think of the burning bush in Exodus 3, when the Lord introduces himself as I am that I am.
[22:31] And when Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, there's absolutely a connection there. In fact, all through the Gospel of John, the Lord will use I am statements to describe himself to his people.
[22:46] He says, I am the bread of life in John 6. He says, I am the light of the world in John 8. He says, I am the door.
[22:57] And he says, I am the good shepherd in John 10. In John 11, he says, I am the resurrection and the life. And in John 15, he'll say that I am the true vine.
[23:11] These I am statements are incredibly important for us, but they connect back to the Lord's introduction of himself in Exodus chapter 3. But today we have these three nouns, way, truth, life.
[23:28] So we're going to look at these together, and we're going to learn together what they tell us about Jesus, our Lord. Something that's important to know. Jesus is Jewish.
[23:41] In his culture, men don't yell to emphasize a point. They don't have a highlighter. They don't underline things. They repeat themselves. This is called parallelism.
[23:53] So typically, you'd repeat yourself, so it would be two. But if a Jewish man used three of something, it was understood to mean the total of something. So Jesus is describing himself with three nouns.
[24:07] And we can boil that down to say, Jesus is the answer. He's completely the answer. Now, the first word is road or path.
[24:17] Makes me think of Borneo again. This is something that you walk on. So we translate this as way, and that is a good translation. But the word is road or path.
[24:29] And it's something to think about. What is a road or a path? It is that thing that you walk on. It is that thing that takes you to your destination. You don't just stand on the road. You walk on it.
[24:40] You're moving. And in the same way that 75 takes us to Tulsa, Christ takes us to his Father. But notice here, brothers and sisters, that he says there's one way.
[24:58] You guys ever heard the phrase or the saying, all roads lead to Rome? That's not what we're talking about here. It's not like every road will take you to God.
[25:10] Jesus is saying that there's exactly one right road that will take you there. Now, this was at odds with the religious context of Jesus' day, and it's at odds with our context today.
[25:27] Let me explain. Jesus is saying this in a time when for him to say, I am the way to the Father, would have enraged the Jewish community.
[25:40] He's not pointing them to the temple or to Jewish ritual. He's pointing to himself. Oh, man, that is just not acceptable. Remember, this is a Roman context.
[25:54] These are pagans all over the place. And good Romans respected the gods. Which gods, you ask? All gods. So in the Roman world, it was considered a good thing to affirm equally all gods.
[26:13] And anyone who would say, oh, this god's better than these other gods, or who would say, those gods aren't even real, that was considered one of the worst things that you could do. That you were supposed to accept everything equally.
[26:26] It was a pluralistic religious environment. And this meant that Romans, especially in this period, they might worship Roman gods on one day, and the next day they're worshiping Egyptian gods, and the next day they're bowing down to an image of the emperor.
[26:39] Everything had value to them. And you think about this. It's like, wow, that's a unique context. I feel like that's passed away.
[26:50] And it's like, no, it's not. It's still with us today. Because if you asked a Jewish person, how do you have a relationship with God? He would have said that he had it either because he was born with it, or because he was a good person.
[27:02] If you look in Luke 18, you see a Pharisee describe himself. And he talks about how much he fasts, how much he tithes, how much he prays. It's his good works.
[27:14] Guys, have you ever run into that person today? Have you ever run into that person who thinks he has a relationship with the Lord because of either something he was born with?
[27:25] You know, like, oh, I'm Catholic. I don't need that. Just something so simple like that. Or he points back to his good works. But man, this continues on.
[27:36] He's just like that Pharisee in Luke 18. And personally, I find these to be some of the most difficult people to witness to. Because I feel like in witnessing to them, first you have to convince them that they are lost.
[27:48] Man, that ends up being more than half the battle. But also, we know that we live in a context where this Roman pagan idea that all gods are equal, man, that's everywhere.
[28:02] How many times have you heard people say, you know what, there's all these different religions, but they're all equally good. They'll all take you to God. You know, you hear people describe them like, I don't know if you've heard people say, we're like a bunch of people in a dark room feeling different parts of an elephant.
[28:19] And we don't know what it is. But one day we will, and we'll see we're all feeling the same creature. You're just like, oh, no. We're all getting dumber. But this is everywhere.
[28:32] This is everywhere in our culture. We are being taught to say that to say there's only one way is exclusive, is hateful, is inappropriate.
[28:46] And nice people say that everybody's beliefs are just as good. This is not a new idea. This idea was in force when Jesus was on the earth. And I think that these two categories of people, those trusting in their good works, and those who think that all roads lead equally to God, are still with us.
[29:07] And the words of our Lord, that he alone is the way, are as radical now as they were 2,000 years ago. Now to this point, our old friend Charles Spurgeon says this, See then how my text shuts out of all acceptance with God all those who do not receive Christ to be the Son of God, the mediator.
[29:30] Listen to this. He wrote this in 1850. Men sometimes say, all men are right. Whether they are Jew or Gentiles, whatever they may be, they are all right.
[29:44] Now be it understood once for all that the religion of Christ gives no heed to such a fancy. It claims for itself alone the solitary throne in the kingdom of religious truth.
[29:58] The religion of Christ is exclusive in this. It declares that other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ. Now, talking about roads, I have a friend from the state of Maine.
[30:17] And little known fact, apparently people from Maine think that they're better than everybody else and look down on them. So I thought about it and I was like, are people from Maine the Texans of the north?
[30:32] And I'm from Texas, so I can say that. So he told me a joke and it went something like this. A man from New York was driving through Maine and got lost.
[30:45] And he came to a crossroads and didn't know which way to turn and he saw a farmer. So he rolled down the window and he said, excuse me, sir, can you tell me how to get to Portman? The Maine farmer, listening to the man's out-of-town accent, said, it doesn't matter to me which way you go.
[31:06] And then just walked off. And you hear that and you're like, wow, that's terrible. He wouldn't tell them the right way. But brothers and sisters, think about us.
[31:18] We know the right way. We know that Christ alone is the way to God the Father. Now, who are we telling this to? Because think of the cruelty of knowing somebody is on the wrong road heading to destruction and not calling them back, not pointing them to the right road.
[31:39] I don't want us to be like this Maine farmer. I want us to be those who point people to the right way, who point people to life. We've seen that Christ is the way.
[31:57] He's the only way. He's the way that we need to tell others about, but we also see that he is the truth. Now, the dictionary defines truth as reality or fact.
[32:08] truth is not the thing that we wish. The truth is the thing that is. And Christ is the true reality of God.
[32:20] Jesus is what you can rely upon when all else feels like an illusion. He is a sure foundation in the midst of a flood, the rock of refuge, and the storm of our lives.
[32:31] Now, three thoughts for us on Jesus being the truth which should impact us. Firstly, in our evangelism. Secondly, in our daily walk.
[32:42] And thirdly, in our study of the word. In our evangelism, telling people hard truths is never easy, but it's usually the hard truths that are the most important for us to hear.
[32:55] If someone has cancer, is it loving for a doctor to tell him, you're doing great. Be warm and well fed.
[33:07] Go on your merry way. Or is the loving thing for the doctor to do to look this person in the eye and say, you are being attacked by a vicious disease, but there's hope.
[33:18] You know what's loving. And brothers and sisters, again, we live in a culture that wants us just to equally affirm everything and never dare to make an exclusive claim.
[33:30] The problem is, the scripture will not give us that way out. Christ alone is the truth. And we need to tell them that even when it's hard. But also, this should impact how we live in our daily lives.
[33:45] Christ is the truth of God. He is reality. Which means that when I am faced with a question of what to believe, the loud, always changing voices of my sinful culture, or the truth of Christ, then I should quote what Paul said, let God be true and every man a liar.
[34:07] This means that what the world tells us only, that we accept what the world tells us only as far as it aligns with what Christ has told us. We do not put the lenses of the world on to come and look at Christ.
[34:22] We put the lenses of Christ on to know how we should look at the world. And thirdly, Jesus is truth incarnate, which means that everything that he says is undiluted truth as well.
[34:38] Now just like pure water flows from a mountain spring, pure truth flows from Jesus, the source of all truth. This means that we owe it to study the words of Christ in scripture, to know what he said so that we will be able to follow him better.
[34:54] We should be those who love the truth because we love Jesus and he is the truth. Now remember what Jesus said in John 17, it'll be in just a few chapters. He prayed that his father would sanctify them, meaning his people, in the truth.
[35:10] And he said, your word is truth. So brothers and sisters, in a world full of lies, cling to the truth, cling to Christ.
[35:23] So we have the path and we have Jesus' true reality. Now we also have Christ saying that he's life. This means he is the opposite of death.
[35:35] In his ministry, Jesus walked around rolling back the curse of Genesis 3, wherever he went. John says, in him was life and the life was the life of men.
[35:47] We see Jesus bringing life wherever he goes. He comes to miraculous life in the womb of a virgin. He heals the sick and restores the disabled to fullness.
[35:58] He drives out demons and he calls out the dead. He dies and comes to life again. Life flows from Jesus and wherever Jesus goes, death is driven away.
[36:09] In fact, he said this of himself, that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. In John 10, Christ is the fullness of life.
[36:23] So believe in him and also pattern your life after his. Seek the things that he did and do them because in this, we know what it means to truly be alive, regardless of what our culture says.
[36:39] And I was thinking about this, things that are alive and things that are dead. And I could not help but think of smells. The things that live, man, they smell like something. Hopefully they smell like flowers.
[36:51] The things that are dead, man, they don't smell the same way. And this just came to my mind as terrible. I went quail hunting a couple of months ago. And you all can just know I'm a terrible shot.
[37:02] The birds are safe with me. But I did hit one or two and you put them in your vest. And at the end of the day, we cleaned out our vests and we were getting ready for the hunt the next day.
[37:15] I did not clean out my vest very well. I accidentally left a quail in there. And that thing went into the cooler overnight. It is extraordinary how fast decay takes over.
[37:30] We opened the cooler the next day and I about fell over dead. Unfortunately, I had to wear that vest the rest of the day. You know, that was my penance. And just that smell of rot, man, overpowering, overwhelming.
[37:43] That's the smell of death. But I think about the things that smell of life. I think about family devotions. It might not be the most exciting event.
[37:54] It might be difficult. We might not succeed at doing this every night, but it points us to Christ. These things smell of life. I think about time spent with His people.
[38:07] I'll be honest with you. Sometimes, guys, I want to stay home. But I'm blessed every time I come here. Because being here, it smells of life. I think about energy given in service to other people who cannot repay.
[38:22] Sometimes it is exhausting, but it smells of life. And something I can say, Katie and I have been members here for three years now. I think three years this month, actually.
[38:34] In that three years, we've had our car fixed. We've had our dryer worked on. We've had, I don't know, how many meals brought to us. We've had our dog watched. These and so many other acts of kindness to us from members of this church.
[38:49] Now, all of this cost the giver something. And I was blessed by it. These things smell of life. And what about repentance from sin?
[39:01] And oftentimes, this is embarrassing, but it smells of renewal. It smells of life. It smells of life. But this means that Christ, if he's life, that means that which is not Christ is death.
[39:19] That means that there's a million different things that are all around us that smell of death and destruction. And in our culture, I think of greed, never-ending thirst for more money so that you can buy more stuff.
[39:33] Man, your house might just be full of things. Boy, you upgraded your cars again. Smells to me of death. Man, I think of lust. We live in an adulterous generation.
[39:46] And I think of how constantly we are bombarded with the things of this world driving us towards sins of the flesh, the smells of death.
[39:58] And I think of vanity, especially for our young people. I feel so badly for them. They live in a culture that is trying to train them. The most important thing you can do is make a fake version of yourself online, put it on the internet, to compete with the fake versions of other people online.
[40:15] It's a massive waste of time. And it can suck your joy. It smells to me of death, not life. I think about pride, about how a deep-seated belief that you really are an exceptionally good person and that you don't need anything that God can give to you because you can do it all on your own.
[40:35] This is common in the United States, unfortunately. Man, this smells to me of death. So we've seen that Christ is the way. We've seen that Christ is the truth.
[40:48] And we've seen that He is the life. But believe it or not, our passage still has more for us to learn. Leandra. We're going to learn that in addition to these three, Christ is the revelation of God our Father.
[41:07] And you'll find this in verse 7. And the scripture reads, If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.
[41:20] Now, I know lunch is calling. I know we've been here for a bit. Please buckle in with me for just a little bit longer. This is going to get a little abstract, but there's a lot that we can learn here.
[41:32] Because here we learn that if we have seen and known Jesus the Son, then we have seen and known the Father. If we have seen and known Jesus the Son, then we have seen and known the Father.
[41:49] But, there's actually a mathematical principle here. We can reverse that. It means that if we have seen and known the Father, then we have seen and known the Son.
[42:02] Let me explain. And to explain, let me quote Hebrews 1 verse 3. The Scripture reads that He, Christ, is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.
[42:20] And He upholds the universe by the word of His power. The exact imprint of His nature. That's who Jesus is in relation to His Father.
[42:31] The exact imprint of the Father's nature. The idea that the Scripture is teaching us is one of those old school Roman signet rings. They would take soft wax and a man would press his seal into the wax and there would be an exact imprint.
[42:47] That is who Jesus is in relation to His Father. Their natures are the same because they share the same nature. They are not divided. Now think with me on this point.
[42:58] When I say God the Father, I want you to think of Him, His person and His character. We know that He's all-knowing. And we know that He is holy. That He dwells in unapproachable light.
[43:11] That He is a consuming fire. We know that He's righteous. And we know that He shines in glory. We know that He's all-powerful. We know that vengeance belongs to Him.
[43:26] And we know that He is the judge of all the earth. And think with me then about Christ, the Son. Think about His humility.
[43:38] Think about how He came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. Think about the patience of our Lord Jesus.
[43:49] I mean, just for example, how many times do we see the Lord bear with His disciples? Think about how gracious Jesus was. Think about how merciful He was to those who came to Him broken and mired in sin.
[44:03] Think about how profoundly kind Jesus is. But sometimes I think we do a disservice to God the Father and Christ the Son because we can pit their characters against each other.
[44:19] When we do this, we make our Father distant from us. He becomes scary and fierce. The disciplinarian.
[44:31] But Jesus, He becomes the nice one. The one I'm more comfortable with. This is not to be. Because when we look at the Scripture here, it says when we have seen Christ, we have seen His Father also.
[44:47] They are so alike. They share one divine nature and they cannot be separated from one another. Of this point, the great church Father said, for through the Son, we have been led to know who the Father is.
[45:01] And not only have we known, but we have also beheld and seen. This means that when we look at God, we should see also the kindness, the gentleness, the goodness, the mercy, the forgiveness of His Son, Christ Jesus.
[45:18] Because that's the heart of our Father also. The one who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. But in the same way that when we look at Christ, we should not see a lower form of God.
[45:32] Just because Jesus has chosen to identify with sinful men and women like us, it does not mean that He is any less divine, that He is any less holy, that He is any less powerful.
[45:44] He is co-equal with His Father in majesty. And it means He is worthy of all of our reverence and respect. I remember being a kid about 20 years ago.
[45:57] There were hats and t-shirts floating around summer camps. Maybe you guys saw them. Maybe you wore them. But they said, Jesus is my homeboy. And even as an eighth grader, I remember thinking, you should not wear that.
[46:11] Because remember, when we look at Jesus, we see also the face of His Father. But that also means that when we look at the Father, we see the face of the Son.
[46:23] Jesus is worthy of all of our devotion, all of our reverence, all of our honor, all of our obedience. Our God is three in one.
[46:33] They're not divided from each other. They are united. And again, co-equal in power and in glory. Now, I know that we've covered a lot today.
[46:47] But I want to try to apply it for us just a little bit. If you are a believer, then our passage today teaches us that you have an eternal home waiting for you in your Father's house because Christ, the true and living way, has made a way for you.
[47:06] We also have learned that Jesus reveals that we have a Father who is both loving and merciful. Now, this should be a cause for rejoicing.
[47:18] Knowing these truths, our hearts should never be troubled. Brothers and sisters, we have so much in Christ Jesus. We are on the path.
[47:31] We have the truth. And in Christ, we have been made alive. We should rejoice. But, if someone in this room knows that they have never turned from their sins and believed in Jesus, then the message for you is different.
[47:51] The message for you is that you are on a different path. Certainly, the path of Christ leads to life. If you're not on that path, your path leads to destruction.
[48:04] It leads to judgment. It leads to hell. If you have not embraced Christ as the truth of God, then you have embraced a lie.
[48:16] And that lie is a deadly lie. And in the same way, if you do not have Christ, you are dead in your sins. There is no way that you can earn your way to Him.
[48:29] You must come to God in the way that He has provided through His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the only way to the Father. So, after I finish, I'm going to be up at the front.
[48:45] If you'd like to talk with me about this, please come. But if you don't want to talk with me, that's okay. Don't leave this building today without understanding what your relationship with Jesus is.
[48:56] Talk with somebody here. We don't want you to leave without being on the path to God our Father through Christ our Lord Jesus. Would you pray with me? Lord, we love you.
[49:09] We rejoice in you and in who you are. Lord, we thank you so much for Jesus and for who He is. And God, we ask that you help us to honor and revere Him, to serve Him well in our lives.
[49:22] And Lord, always to remember that He is with us. Father, help us to be like Christ to other people in our world. And Lord, help us to point people to you.
[49:33] We love and bless you. We praise you. We thank you for all these good gifts that you've given to us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[49:54] You