If you would remain standing for the reading of God's Word as we
continue in our study of the Gospel of John, we come to
chapter 14. We reading verses one through 12
today. This is John 14 verses one
through 12. These are Jesus's words for you
today. Let's not your hearts be
troubled. believe in God, believe also in me and my
father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, what I have
told you that that I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and
we'll take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also, and
you know the way to where I'm 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. 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. Philip said to him, Lord, show
us the Father and it is enough for us.
Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long and you still
do not know me? Philip, whoever has seen me has
seen the Father. How can you say show us the
Father? Do you not believe that I am in
the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own
authority, but the Father who dwells in me does.
His works believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is
in me, Or else I believe on account of the works themselves.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also
do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he
do, because I am going to the Father.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, you may be
seated before I get to the sermon.
I was greatly moved by Tommy's prayer for us this morning.
And even on a week where we have seen great tragedy in the Middle
East with what's happening, I was actually reminded by the
word of the hope of the gospel. And I don't know if you know
this fact or not, but this Chapel where you are sitting
right now in our denomination, the PCA was ordained the first
man in our in our presbytery, North Texas Presbytery, who came
from a Farsi speaking background originally.
His name is Hamid Hitami, he is a teaching elder, and our
presbytery and his ministry is a trained man for the work of
ministry in Iran. He does it online, many
secretly, many very dangerously. But even as we're praying for
the Iranian church in the midst of this conflict, you're sitting
in a place where God has showed us his hope of redemption.
It happened right here, and it was very exciting to be a part
of it. And so let that just thought
encourage you and encourage you as you pray for that part of the
world this week. One danger that can happen in
language is that because language is very social, often
phrases can become devoid of their original context.
You've done that before, right? You've heard a phrase and you
try to repeat it, and you kind of play the telephone game,
right? It's not quite the same version
that you heard that you're passing along.
It can take on a life that it was never meant to have.
We can lose a sense of its context.
And the results can be anything from kind of a loss of just
nuance or a loss of the fullness of the meeting to actually a
phrase that becomes the opposite of what it was meant to be in
the 1st place. I was reminded of an example of
this this week. I'm a I'm a big sports fan.
And so former UCLA Bruins football coach Red Sanders, he
was the one who coined the phrase with winning isn't
everything. It's used today, right?
All often. You probably used it yourself.
Winning isn't everything. We often use it as we console
perhaps a losing team. We remind them that, you know,
character and sportsmanship matter, and that there's
something more to life than just the sports games that can come
so over encompassing, all consuming in the moment.
The problem is that he didn't actually say the phrase in that.
In that way, his phrase actually went winning isn't everything.
It's the only thing. So if you're quoting him,
remember that the original meaning was actually to focus
his players to great intensity and tenacity on the field.
And that was the complete phrase.
In a similar way, I think we're kind of hitting at a similar
topic when we think about this passage of Scripture that we've
come to because there is a phrase in the Bible that many
people recognize from this passage.
John 14-6, right? I am the way, the truth and the
life. No one goes to the Father except
through me. I can remember this first.
It's special to me because it's one of the first verses in the
Bible that I ever read. I remember reading it in the
Knowing God Personally booklet .3 in that booklets and it's a,
it's a great verse to pull from it.
It's it explains the gospel clearly and in one verse.
I can even remember memorizing this verse in my days of
everyday evangelism in Italy, 'cause I was, I served as a
missionary in Italy. And you know, I, I had it
sketched into my memory. You have someone la via la
verita and la Vita and Zuno pull Vienna al Padre senon palmezzo
de May kind of sounds fancy in Italian, right?
La villa, la Vita, la verita, the way, the truth and the life.
And it's well applied in a gospel presentation.
But this morning, as you read it, I want to exhort you away
from the the danger of just making it about a gospel
outline. There's clarity in that gospel
outline, right? We need those clear moments,
especially as we're sharing our faith to no one who's ever heard
it before. But I don't want you to miss the
deep, deep theology that goes behind this verse.
And that is what the sermon title was meant to encapsulate
in one word. And that's in in the doctrine
that underlines this verse is the fact that we are in Christ,
our union with Christ undergirds.
It's a strong foundation in which Jesus says I am the way,
the truth and the life. And so this verse is kind of
emanating from this doctrine of our inness with Christ and which
comes from, as the text tells us, Christ's inness with the
Father. Our catechism explains it this
way. This is question #30 from our
Shorter Catechism. You can write down question #30
in your notes and make sure you look it up later.
How does the Spirit apply to us, the redemption purchased by
Christ? The answer The Spirit applies to
us the redemption purchased by Christ by working faith in US
and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling.
Calvin answers a similar question and that from his
institute, the 1st chapter of his first, the third book, that
as long as Christ remains outside of us and we are
separated from Him, all that He has suffered and done for the
salvation of the human race, it remains useless and of no value
to us. So we can only say that Jesus is
the way and the truth and the life in a way that matters that
have significance for our life in as much as we are united to
Christ. And so in this this morning, as
we look at this in, in three movements, I pray that you would
sense your unitedness to Christ, your reunion with him in the
hearts of the Savior in the way of salvation and in the Triune
God. So in the hearts of the Savior,
verses one through 4, in the way of salvation, verses 5 through
7, and in the Triune God verses 8 to 11.
So this verse one opens up with a pretty stark transition from
where we're coming from from chapter 13.
Let not your hearts be troubled. It lets us know that Jesus is
kind of beginning a new phase of his upper room discourse with
the disciples. And as we think about this first
point that we are in the heart of the Savior, this first verse
is is rather phenomenal to think about.
It should really wow us that in light of Jesus own denial that
is coming, he just proclaimed it right.
And at the end of chapter 13, his betrayal became before that
his eyes are focused on his disciples to say, let not your
hearts be troubled. And my first part of this is
that we are so focused on our own hearts, on our own troubles.
But from verse one, we see a picture of a Saviour whose heart
is focused on us. You see, in order to get us in,
Christ was immediately looking out out of the Godhead in order
to get us to see the peace, the freedom, the joy that comes from
life with Him. He then immediately in verse 2,
sets our minds and hearts on belief.
I'm sorry, it's actually the second-half of verse one, not
verse 2. Believe in God, believe also in
me. This is kind of an interesting
context in the Greek language, those belief verbs, it's
actually the same verb. And it's been a little bit
debated because in the Greek language, the indicative and the
imperative are they look the same in form.
So indicative, that's when you just stay, say a statement like
I believe in God, but the imperative, that's the commands,
right? Like believe in God.
And you see that kind of here in the text that this is actually a
command of Jesus. But the way that he uses these
two commands right next to each other, we actually know that the
second command is subordinates. It's under the first command.
It depends on the 1st command. So we must first believe in God.
And Jesus does that because even as he has spent time with his
disciples and as we go through the text, you'll see that their
belief in God is there. What is missing is sort of the
second part of that command. Believe also in me.
And so as he is trying to empathize with his disciples, he
knows that even as he has announced his betrayal, his
denial that their hearts are troubled, that the cure to that
trouble is belief in the one who can cure it, believe in God and
therefore also believe in me as his son.
And he goes on to say, my Father's house or many rooms, He
shows us more of what the hearts of the Savior is like.
Remember, they are around the table with Jesus.
They are in a room with him. And even as they're beginning to
remember the images of the Tabernacle, that place where
God's presence was in the Old Testament, even though it was
the rather large place, the dimensions of the Tabernacle
were actually quite immense. They're they're huge.
He's actually kind of giving an image of a picture of a house
that doesn't have an ending. His heart is for his disciples.
They're right there, but they get the picture of an ever
increasing scope of that heart. Something is about to change.
It's not finite. There are many rooms where He is
going to prepare a place for them.
So the hearts of the Savior is to show them that they have need
for Jesus, His presence there. His statement, let not your
hearts be troubled. He's showing them that that need
is met in belief and that that that belief is met with the hope
of the future that goes on and on and on, and that there's room
for many who believe in that house.
My first question for you this morning is what troubles you
this morning? Where do you find your hearts
being troubled? I was greatly humbled by this
thought because I think sometimes we see a picture here
of the disciples being troubled in face of the betrayal of their
Savior. My troubles are so much less.
The things I find my heart dwelling on are not often the
things of the Savior and where He is going and what that means
for me. It's often on earthly things,
what's going to happen next. But my mind was renewed.
It was focused on what our hearts really should be troubled
on. And that is, how is Jesus going
to make this all work? Now we know what that's
happening, right? We have the end of the story,
but that's what He's first kind of telling us is really we're
supposed to interact with Him. So verses 5 through 7, in the
way of salvation. Even though Jesus has told us
that we are going with him to our Father's house, we sometimes
aren't sure and thus don't know where we are going and therefore
don't know how to get there. But Jesus shows us Thomas's
doubt in verse 5. He wants an unambiguous
destination, something he can touch and feel.
Remember Thomas's story later on in the Gospel?
He wants something unambiguous. But we see this pointed out that
really Jesus has already said this in the text, right?
He said that they don't know in verse four that they don't know
where Jesus is going, even though He's already told them
that, right? He's going to prepare a place
for them. He's told them about the
destination, but now he's telling us in verse 6 the way to
get there, and that is through him.
Jesus does not simply blaze a trail, commanding others to take
the way that he himself takes. Rather, he shows them that he is
the way. You see, I think that's a big
difference between religion and relationship.
In this text, religion tries to imitate what Jesus did, trying
to prove that in that imitation in itself that you can be the
way and therefore the truth and the light.
But Jesus is ultimately saying only I can be the way, the
ultimate truth, the ultimate light, life rather.
And so I think in the frailty of our lives we try to set set our
our surety on other things, lesser things than Jesus.
But He is exhorting his disciples to see that it can
only be found in him, there's powerful significance, and that
we can only know the Father through Jesus.
It's Father's Day, we have examples of earthly fathers
among us, some great. Maybe some of you today have
pain in your memories of your earthly fathers.
And yet even the best Father, the most faithful Father,
they're only meant to be a fragrant aroma of the love of
our heavenly Father. And Jesus's relationship to his
Father is meant to show us that only He can be the way to
knowing God personally. So celebrate your Father's well
and celebrate where they have shown you the aroma of Christ
and the love of God poured out through the love in the hearts
of the sun. So lastly in the Triune God
verses 8 through 11, if Thomas's doubt in that he wanted to have
an unambiguous destination. Philips doubt is more that he
wants assurance in the objects of his faith.
In one sense, Philip and the others truly do know Jesus.
He calls him Lord, but yet he also exclaims Show us the
Father. So they don't fully recognizes
recognize it yet Jesus's response to Philip's question.
Show us the Father. It picks up in verse 10.
It's sort of tinged with a bit of sadness.
Those who have been closest to him, those who he is at table
with, still have yet to see him for who he truly is.
There's a bit of a spiritual blindness to who he is.
It would make sense for those who are distant to him, those
who are his enemies, to not yet understand.
But these are those who are closest to him, and yet they
still have questions. So I think there's a temptation
here to think that the spiritual blindness might only be reserved
for the disciples. And I'll get to why I believe
that there have the spiritual blindness in a second as I
finish. But don't miss the this
temptation of thinking that just being close enough to Jesus
allows you to see him for who he truly is.
I might say for those who just think coming to church, being
close to the church is enough. Checking the box and a rhythm.
It's not even about being in the in crowd or being associated
with the right things. It's about accepting that only
in Christ do we have the sufficiency from his path, from
his death and his resurrection, the power that comes from that,
to have relationship with the Father.
Verse 10 shows us what the disciples ought to have
believed, that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Him.
The Father and Son are distinct, and yet they are also unified in
the Godhead. And so thus, as we are in
Christ, we have that imputed to us, transferred to us.
Jesus is not a mere envoy or an ambassador.
He is the Son. Jesus is highlighting this deep
theological principle in the context of a relationship around
the table with his disciples. We will get a chance to remember
that here today as we take the Lord's Supper.
But let me get back to why about the spiritual blindness of the
disciples. The spiritual blindness happens
because the Holy Spirit has not come yet in this part of the
story, in the fullness of what He will.
We just celebrated Pentecost Sunday.
The coming of the Holy Spirit and the gift of the Holy Spirit
will finally enable Jesus disciples to grasp the truth
that they are dimly aware of in this moment.
But let me conclude with thinking about verse 12, because
there's an interesting phrase there about greater works,
Maisona tutan in the Greek. It's confusing because the
disciples had just seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead.
They've seen many healings. They're sitting in the presence
of the Savior, and yet he says greater works.
And why do they happen? The text tells us because Jesus
is going to the Father. So what is the difference
between the miracles that Jesus has performed to this point and
what the disciples will do when Jesus has gone to the Father?
What is the difference between those two things that makes
those works greater than the other?
And the answer is actually a simple Sunday school answer.
It's the cross. It's the death and resurrection
of Jesus. When Jesus goes to the Father in
the power of his death and resurrection, he is inaugurating
a new age, a new age of salvation, a new Kingdom through
which greater works are done, not because of the works of the
disciples themselves, because, but because Jesus has now been
glorified. And that in this has a complete
presence of the Godhead in eternity.
Together, united in the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Jesus is able to judge the disciples acts as greater
because of the work he is about to do on the cross.
And everything the disciples will do after the cross are
empowered by the spirits, and they give glory to the Son.
So just as verse 12 asks, I ask you, do you believe in Christ?
Can we enter the works that He has done by faith being in
Christ? And because of the sun's glory,
made known by the Spirit, by faith, we can claim the greater
things that Christ has claimed for us.
Because we are in Christ, we are part of a far greater story, one
that He has been writing since before creation, and He has
invited us into it. Do you see it?
Do you believe it? Let me pray, God, as we have
caught a glimpse of Your word and how you sat around the table
explaining to disciples who You were, even in light of their
spiritual blindness, even in light of their hearts who are
thinking about themselves. Your heart has always been
towards Your people, and now we ask for Your spiritual presence
to be here and Your heart to be on us as we come to Your table
yet again proclaiming what it is that we believe in the power of
the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus.
Use your word to speak and minister.
Minister to us now, this day. And it's in your name that we
pray. Amen.