“I AM THE WAY AND THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE” - PRESENTATION IN THE “I AM SERIES OF JOHN’S GOSPEL” PART 1
This talk was given in a seminar on the series, “THE I AMs OF JOHN’S GOSPEL”. Because the message is long, I have split it into two parts. This is PART 1.
John 14 v 1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.
[A]. INTRODUCTION:
To open I want to use a small section from a pervious message to the Zion Church. The Lord was about to go to the cross and on the betrayal night, He had a very lengthy time with His disciples, and He revealed things to them that they did not understand but they were becoming agitated. The opening verse for today is John 14 verse 1. The disciples were becoming troubled. Now for a quick look at something from that pervious message –
{{John 14 v 18 I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.”}}
Verse 18, “I will come to you.” My dear Christian friends, in the dead of night in your loneliness, He will come to you. In the tossing boat on the seas of your troubles, He will come to you. In the turmoil of family problems and heated up emotions, He will come to you. In the aspects of failing health and dwindling mental abilities, He will come to you and hold your hand. There is no one else who is closer than a brother. He loves His sheep. He will never leave one of his sheep as orphans. He will never leave a sheep by the wayside, but if necessary, He will draw near to it and carry it on His shoulder. So many times we need the Lord to carry us. The journey is too great for us. The obstacles are too many. The enemies are too powerful. Do you feel alone? No, never feel alone, because you are not alone. “I will come to you,” is our verse. Reach out your hand and place it in the hand of the Saviour because He is close, right near to you. Your eyes of faith see Him there beside you. I am His, and he is mine, in a love that can not cease.
When you read the writings of the Apostles in the New Testament, especially in what is known as the Pastoral Epistles, you will see special attention being commanded for the care of widows and orphans. That is because God understands those who have had loss, and those who are rejected, and alone in the world.
{{John 14 v 20 “In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”}} In verse 20, which must have seemed a great mystery that night when the Lord spoke the words, He is saying that the resplendent light that came with understanding after the resurrection, and later on at Pentecost, would cause the disciples to know with absolute certainty that there are unbreakable bonds between Father and Son, and between the Lord and His own. That bond is what Christians possess. No one can remove us from the Lord’s hand. No one can remove us from the Father’s hand.
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We now come to the study for today, so let us return to John 14 and verse 1.
[B]. THE TEACHING ON THE PASSOVER NIGHT:
Verse 1. “Troubled”. “Do not allow your hearts to be troubled.” I don’t know if you are like me, but when things are troubling me, they just keep revolving around in my mind, and if you shut the door to exclude them, they seem to open another door to trouble you further. The Lord knew their hearts were troubled, or disturbed. What had caused this? The answer is clear in the previous chapter, 13. Firstly, Jesus reversed roles, and washed His disciples’ feet, a task of a servant, not a Master, as John records – {{John 13 v 4 “rose from supper and laid aside His garments, and taking a towel, He girded Himself about. John 13 v 5 Then He poured water into the basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.”}} This act seemed to be out of character, even though He said to them, {{“What I’m doing you don’t understand now, but afterward you will know.” (verse 7).}} That was a mystery.
Then He revealed to them that one of them was going to betray Him – {{John 13 v 18 “I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen, but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats My bread has lifted up his heel against Me’.”}} Now add to that, what Jesus revealed next - John 13 v 21 When Jesus had said this, He became troubled in spirit and testified, and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, that one of you will betray Me.” (The disciples must have noticed the troubled spirit of the Lord). Shortly after, and on top of all that, He told them He was going away, and they could not come. In {{13 verse 36, Jesus answered Peter, “Where I go, you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow later.”}} To close the chapter, Jesus told Peter he was going to deny him. He had just presided at the Passover Supper, and the night was long. These words He spoke to them just before they arose to go to the Garden of Gethsemane. Their hearts were troubled, agitated, shaking back and forth (literally). They understood none of it. No wonder they thought they had been put into a washing machine. From the human perspective, no wonder their hearts were full of anxiety and turmoil.
The second part of 14 verse 1 contains the solution for agitation and anxiety. It is all wrapped up in the word “believe”. Let your trust rely in the Father and the Son. As your faith rests in the Father, let it rest in the Lord also. Believe God. Believe the Son also.
{{John 14 v 2 “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?” John 14 v 3 “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.”}}
We are probably most familiar with the KJV here - “In my Father’s house are many mansions”, and when I was young I loved singing the song, “I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop, In that bright land where, we’ll never grow old, And some day yonder, we’ll never more wander, but walk the streets that are of purest gold.” Well, “mansions” is not correct – it is rooms or dwelling places. In the Father’s House there are many rooms, but for what purpose? Will we live in rooms in heaven and in the New Jerusalem? For sure, we will not be married, for we will live as the angels in that regard, as Jesus answered the Sadducees – {{Matthew 22:30 “for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”}} Do we require privacy in heaven? I don’t know, but I would not think so. Our eternal spirits unite with a resurrected body. The word here for “room” has the sense of abiding, remaining.
Why then do we have the rooms? If the rooms are literal, I do not know. Note carefully though, the Lord said He was going to prepare a place for them. Does that mean He has gone off to build rooms in the Father’s house, and comes back again when He has completed that task? No. Not in any way. The Creator of the universe would not be building rooms when He spoke the universe into existence. (My personal belief is that the universe evolving from the grain of sand, is rubbish). The answer lies in the words “prepare” and “place” in verse 2 - “I go to prepare a place for you.” He is making it all possible, preparing places in the Father’s House. In what sense? We look at that soon.
At this point though, now we need to ask, “What is the Father’s House?” It has to be the spiritual house of {{1Peter 2 v 5 “you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”}} Paul talks about God’s household – {{Ephesians 2 v 19 “Therefore then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, Eph 2:20 having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, Eph 2:21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord; Eph 2:22 in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”}} Paul later uses the term Church in {{Ephesians 5:27 “that He might present to Himself the Church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless.”}} And again, {{Ephesians 5:30 “because we are members of His Body.”}} All true believers are members of His Body, His Church, part of God’s household, and members of the spiritual house.
[C]. TO PREPARE A PLACE:
There has been speculation over what it means “to prepare a place” but I want to say this – “any subsequent preparation of anything, is meaningless if you bypass the cross, so I feel certain, absolutely certain, that the preparation is Calvary – the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, for it is only through that, that the Father’s house becomes at all possible for redeemed people. Even the Old Testament saints were not fit for heaven until the penalty of their sins was removed at Calvary, and their sins, which were covered, were then eradicated through justification by the blood of the Lamb. Do you recall the story in the Gospel about the rich man and Lazarus? (Names are NEVER used in parables). Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom in Paradise, not heaven. Only the blood of the Lamb could prepare them for the presence of God. The preparation for believers, went the way of the cross – {{“and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” (Heb 9 v 22). Hebrews 9:12 “and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”}} The preparation was the cross.
Let us go back and look at verse 3. The verse contains a beautiful promise of His personal return for His own disciples. He is coming Himself, for all His own. That is what we, as Christians, are looking forward to today. Not only is He coming back again, but the reason is special as well. It is to receive us . . . to Himself. That is close and personal. How we need to behave ourselves, and be faithful to Him, or there might be disappointment and shame.
{{John 14 v 4 “And you know the way to where I am going.” John 14 v 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”}}
The Lord added, “And you know the way”. It is true that the disciples did not understand what was happening, because the cross was a mystery to them, and the comprehension of Calvary was nowhere on their horizon. In fact, Luke tells us the matter was not understandable to them, but had been concealed. I once heard a church minister proposing that the reason the disciples were debating among themselves as to who was the greatest, or the more important among them, was that they knew the Lord was to be killed, and they were arguing about who was to become the leader after this happened. That is absolute rubbish.
Jesus said they knew the way, and by that, He meant they had to continue doing just what they were doing, and that goes right back to the beginning of their call. It was “Follow Me”, as some of the disciples heard while tending fishing nets or collecting taxes as Levi was doing. That was the way they knew – Follow Jesus, and leave all the rest to Him. We might know it, as the walk of faith. Isn’t that a fantastic truth – Follow Him, and leave all the cares and all the future to Him. [[The following account comes to us from E. Stanley Jones. He told of a missionary who lost his way in an African jungle. He could find no landmarks and the trail vanished. Eventually, stumbling on a small hut, he asked the native living there, if he could lead him out. The native nodded. Rising to his feet, he walked directly into the bush. The missionary followed on his heels. For more than an hour they hacked their way through a dense wall of vines and grasses. The missionary became worried: “Are you sure this is the way? I don’t see any path.” The African chuckled and said over his shoulder, “Bwana, in this place there is no path. I am the path, the way to where you are going.” (“Today in the Word”, May, 1996, p. 24”
Thomas asked his question out of confusion. Like us, he wanted a road map, and a careful list of the details so he could know the way, and what to do. “We don’t even know what the way is,” we can hear him asking. “How can we know the way?” God’s way is often not apparent. It is one step at a time. Question –“What was required of the sheep in the shepherd’s flock in the pastures, and on the hills of Judah?” Certainly not to map out their own destinies, but simply to follow the shepherd. We are not called on to know all, but to follow Him.
Elijah was led to the brook Cherith to be fed by ravens and drink of the brook, and those times were difficult, but he stayed there until God revealed the next step, then off he went to the widow and her son. It is one step at a time, but we must follow. Follow Him in ALL circumstances.
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This was all one talk at a seminar, but for the article on Sermon Central I am breaking it into two parts. End of PART 1.
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ronaldf@aapt.net.au
