I Am: The Way, The Truth, and The Life

Hi everyone. Good morning, morning, family, morning family online. Good to have you with us. We are going to jump into this. We’ve got several miles to go before the sunsets today. I am so glad to be back with you, you know, last week Tom did a great job and, uh, he killed it. Right? You can celebrate him. He's celebration worthy. I got to have a really cool experience. I went to Michigan and spoke at a family camp there for a Wesleyan denomination district family camp. It was great. I was there Sunday through Thursday and then, um, and it was same temperature as was here only -- it was like way humid. And I was like, this is stupid. Like, and so I asked him, why, why do you want to live here? It's pretty, but at what cost? And, and so, I flew back Thursday evening, and then Friday we left to go up to Fort Collins to a little Airbnb place. And yesterday, married my daughter. Technically she married another guy. I just did the ceremony. She got a discount on it and then we had dinner together and then last night I drove home cause I really wanted to be with you guys today. And so please forgive me if I'm a little bit scattered, it's been a long week. 

But we're, I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to jump into this sermon today because it's one of the more misunderstood statements in the whole Bible. It's definitely the most misunderstood of the seven I Am's and so, I want to kind of put it back into their context. One of my core convictions about understanding the Bible is, first and foremost, we need to do the work to try to understand what it meant for the original writer and the original readers. That's called authorial intent. And that's just good scholarship. It's just good scholarship to try that, but before we can apply it to our life, we need to do our work to try to figure out what it meant for them, so that we can then understand what it means for us. 

Okay. And so we're going to do that today and we're going to pull this apart as we go. John 14 is where we're going to begin this morning. Let’s read – Jesus is preparing, this is in the middle of this long discourse which Jesus is having with his guys at the last supper. And this going to -- we're going to pull a section of that out and look at it. So it says, don't let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have  told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you? By the way, this is wedding language. This is exactly the conversation that a young groom-to-be would have with a young lady of prospect, a young lady that they're looking at, maybe getting hitched. This is it, exactly, in my father's house are many rooms, but I go to prepare a place for you. Come with me to Israel, we'll pull it apart. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come back and take you to be with me so that you may also be where I am. You know, the place to where I'm going. Jesus says, you know, the place. Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you're going. So how can we know the way? And Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father, except through me.

Now, what we do with that passage is we use this as an opportunity to, to try to make the case that Jesus is saying that he is God. And he's the only way to heaven. Let me state, unequivocally, before we go any further, I believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Categorically. I believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven. However, that is not what Jesus is saying in this passage. Okay. And so I want to pull it apart a little bit. What's going on here -- just to, by way of information, the God that we're dealing with in this passage is the goddess Athena and Athena is -- she shows up everywhere in the Greek Pantheon. She's a busy body goddess. She's involved in everything, primarily she's the goddess of truth and word. And that's significant because there's a, I get, this is fun. So I'm not going to talk a bunch about Athena that except for this one historical piece in Pergamum, there is a library there. When we go to Turkey, we go to Pergamum. But there's a library there that they believe had over 200,000 scrolls in it. It was second only to the library in Alexandria. In the center of that, the reading atrium, was this massive statue of Athena because she is the God of truth and words. And so there's all these scrolls there. Cleopatra – here’s an interesting historical side note -- Cleopatra got concerned that that library would overtake the library in Alexandria. And so she went and stole a bunch of scrolls out of the library in Pergamum and then outlawed the use of papyrus as a writing medium so that they couldn't make more scrolls to put in the outside of Egypt, which she really, she outlawed papyrus outside of Egypt. So what they did was, this is brilliant. What they did was they started the use of animal skins and they would tan the animal skins and write on that. Okay. But what they found was that it was too thick to roll into a scroll. So they started to take it in sheets and cut them and stack the sheets on top of each other. And then they would bind them together and we call it a book. That's where it came from. Pergamum. 

Athena is the central goddess of this whole information transfer. She would go to Zeus and she would bring forth word and truth, but she was also involved in wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law, and justice, mathematics. She's a goddess of mathematics. There are no gods in mathematics -- that is of the devil --math -- strength, war strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. She is busy, but I think that if she could have been the goddess of taco bell, she would have. Like I’m pretty convinced she would have been anything that they would have given her room for. So this is the goddess that we're dealing with. And that's as much as we're going to talk about her today. I want to give you this statement the way, the truth and the life rooted in the rabbinic perspective. Okay? Because here's the thing. We assume that Jesus kind of pulls this statement out of thin air. And he doesn't, this is a statement that was regularly used in the Jewish world. Here's how it worked. Torah -- the law -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy was called the way and the truth. The way is the path, the path that I'm supposed to walk, we've talked about the path -- it's called the way, the path and the truth, the way that I'm supposed to walk it. So it's the path that I am to walk and the guidelines by which I am to walk it. Now, every rabbi had a way of understanding the Torah -- a way of interpreting it -- they had nuances totally different than the church world today, but that was a joke, but I'm just like, it just like denominationalism today. Each rabbi has a particular interpretation of how the you're supposed to understand Torah. And this is called the rabbi's yoke. And so if you studied under a rabbi, you took on that rabbi’s yoke. And you carried their yoke. You didn't get to have your own yoke. In our world, we're like, everybody's opinions are equal. Not in their world. In their world, if you studied under a rabbi, your obligation was to take their teaching on, period. So you took on their yoke this kind of conversation is in the gospels, right? Jesus talks about his yoke. My yoke is easy, right? And my burden is light. 

So they, they took on their yoke and the rabbi has their yoke and they're teaching their yoke and the way that they would help you understand, like, as they're teaching, they would give a wrinkle in how you understand it. Some kind of a nuance to how you can understand a passage and people will be like, whoa, that's incredible. And they would say this, I am the way and the truth. Not that I'm God, or that I stand in the place of God. But my way of understanding Torah is the right way. This is how they would say it. I'm the way and the truth. Every rabbi said this, all of them did. And so what Jesus is saying here in short version to his disciples is, they're like, we don't know where you're going. So how can we know the way? And Jesus is like, look, just do it. What I've taught you. Relax. It's going to be okay, I'm going away, but don't freak out about it because I'm coming back and they're like, well, we don't know what to do. And he's like, yeah, you do, do what I've taught you. That's the conversation that they're having there.

And, and Jesus interjects this interesting new wrinkle about life. I'm the way, the truth and the life. And so what I want to do is kind of put these things together in a way that I think will help us get kind of boots on the ground, executable with it. Okay. I'm going to jump out of John 14 and I want to jump into the book of Romans, which feels like, whoa, we just did a really big shift there, but I think what Paul does in the end of Romans 11 in the beginning of Romans 12, is he maps out the way, the truth and the life for us in a way that I think is actually really, really, um, profound. So I want to read it. And I want you to remember that when Paul wrote it, it was just a letter, the chapters and the verses weren't there. So you guys are like, why does he keep going into 12? Well, because that's how Paul wrote it. Okay. I want to pull this apart a little bit and see what we can learn. Okay. Paul is in a discourse in Romans 11, talking about the Gentiles not being proud because they got grace and the Jews got rejected because they rejected Jesus. Um, because they can like, God loves us more. Um, God loves us more than he loves. And before you go, well, they would never say that -- we say it in the church all the time. We think somehow that God thinks we're more special than the Jews. That's just not true, which is not true. So, he's in this discourse on the relationship, the Gentile relationship to the Jewish people, and we have an obligation to honor them in this process. But here's what he says. As far as the gospel is concerned, they (being the Jews) are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. I want to stop right there and say this. That is a message that I think a lot of us need to hear God's gift – gifts and his call are irrevocable. They don't change just because we blew it. They don't. I can't even tell you in the 27 years that I've been in ministry, how many times someone has said to me, man, when I was young, I wanted to serve the Lord. I had this thing I wanted to do whatever it was. It's -- some people, it was vocationally. They wanted to be in ministry. Some people, it was just like, I had this dream of how I could serve God. And I felt like he laid it on my heart and then life happened or, or, and then I blew it. Or, and then mom and dad divorced, or, you know, there's 1,000,001 ways that the story goes there. But then in the midst of it, something changed. And then I just let it go. And I got a job and now I'm just living my life. Listen, when God puts something in your heart, his call and his gifts are irrevocable. If you map the children of Israel, when they're coming out of Egypt, it's really interesting because they seem to just not learn their lesson, right? Like initially they kind of go right to the promised land and then they have the 12 spies that go in and you have the Sunday school song. What did they say? When they spied on Canaan? 10 were bad and two were good. Right? Listen, I learned a lot of Bible stories that way. So, um, there's something to be said for that. Uh, so they go in and, and Joshua and Caleb were the only ones that were like, Hey, let's go. It's God says, it's ours. Let's go. And then the rest of them stirred up the people. And so they go and meander and said, would they wander in the desert? 

They're not wandering. They're being led by God. Right? They're not lost. They're being led by God, everywhere they go. And what they do is they keep taking a lap around the same mountain. God does this with us because we come to a point where we're like, God puts on in our life, this is what I want you to do. And we're like, no, the guy's like, okay, I got all the time in the world. Cause he's like eternal. And cause he made time. He's like, I'm patient, I'm patient. So we, what we do is we take another lap around the mountain, but God doesn't take us to a new location. Oh, you don't want to do that? Well, let's try this. That's not what God does. What God does. Is are you ready yet? No. Okay. Are you ready yet? This is no. Okay. What about now. You're ready yet? This is the story of our life. When we choose not to be obedient to God, his call’s not going to change just because time went by .When God makes us, he designs us -- and by the way, where's he going to go next? And Romans 12 is offer your body to God. And here's some gifts that you can use to do it with. It's where he's going to head to when God gifts us, he designs us and puts a call in our life. It's not changeable cause I blew it or cause I wasted time or could, but so much time has gone by -- it's like what part of the world does that excuse even work in? You know, I really need to put gas in my car, but so much time has gone by. I really need,… but so much time has gone by, right? Where does that work? I really need to tell my wife that I love her, but so much time has gone by. I just won't, I can't, I can't do it anymore. Right? Like what, where else in your life does that excuse work? So, so much time has gone by, it's just been so long and now life is different. Is it really like, is life really different for you? Because God's call and his gifts are irrevocable. They don't change because time went by. Some people will tell me this -- I’ve just blown so bad. I'm just blown it so bad. I wanna do just a little exercise, just a little exercise, just with the folks that are in the room this morning. And you can do this at home just to show your kids, make a point. Put your hand in the air if you've blown it, hold it up, hold it up because I want you to feel really bad about yourself. No, hold it up. Cause I want look around the room, look around the room. We've all blown it. Right? Every single one of us has done that a lot. God's call and his gifts don't change because we blew it. We just, maybe we needed to take a couple of laps around the mountain. Maybe we're not that, you know, we're just not that astute. Maybe we got to learn some things. Maybe we got to not -- whatever it is. God's like, look, before time began, I knew your whole life. So before you blew it, I knew you were going to blow it. And I knew that when I designed you and gave you a call, it's not going to change because you blew it. And I know that for many of us, but I blew it really bad and God's like, yeah, you did. Okay. But the truth is still the truth. Your call and your gifts are irrevocable. They don't change just because you so much time has gone by. They don't change just because they really blew it. They don't change. God is going to give you a way. This is the way this is Mandalorian 101 right? This is the way -- there's no options. And we can try to, we can try to have options, but it's just taken another lap around the mountain. Aren't you tired of the same old scenery? 

When will we learn our lesson? This is the way God designs us and calls us to walk out a life as he has seen fit. Let's keep , just as you were, uh, you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy on you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience. That's why we all put our hands in the air. We've all blown. It. We all have -- so that he may have mercy on them all. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord ? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. 

And that is just the truth. Like, you can try to do things for yourself. You can try to even be noble and do things for those that you love. And that's wonderful that you would try to do some of that. But the reality is all things -- are from him and through him and for him -- our life is not about us trying to figure out a great idea of how we can be with God. God never comes to people and says, Hey, could you cook something up for me? Like figure something out that you could do for me. I don't know. I'm kind of at my creative limit. I'm busy holding the universe together. Could you come up with something that you could do for me? God never does that. And the good news is, that means we don't have to do that. Like the pressure's off. All we have to do is to be faithful in what he's already shown us, that we should be doing. Here's the thing, when you're faithful to follow God, if you start getting off of the path, off of the way, he'll bring you back. 
You don't have to worry about that. We don't have to worry about it. All things are from him and through him and for him. It's just the truth. His way his gifts and call for you. It's irrevocable. The truth is, but he's not going to do it for you to build your own world. He's going to do it for you to good, bring glory to his name, which feels at one level that God is awfully full of himself. Right? But my question is, who else would he be full of? He's God. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice Holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Change how you see what matters in here. Then, you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is his good pleasing and perfect will for by the grace. Given to me, I say to every one of you do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith, God has distributed to each of you. For just as each one of us has about one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ, we though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. By the way, before I go on, this is really good news because you don't have to do it the way I would do it. And what we do a lot of times in the church is we look at certain people that we’re like, man, that person has it together. Or this -- I want to be like, and we feel like if we're going to really serve the Lord, we got to do it the way they do it. Nope, no you don't. You can do it the way you do it. If you're like, I don't, I love like, I feel God's hand on my shoulder when I'm digging in the dirt, right. Or when I making things. We have people in our congregations that are skilled craftsmen. If I can't fix it with my mouth, I'm not gonna do it. Cause I'll tell you what, here's what I can guarantee you. Number one, I won't fix it. Uh, and number two, it'll be more broke than when I started. That's just, just me and I am -- there was a long time where I was like, Oh, I can do it. I'll figure it out. Cause I'm a man. And I'm like that. Now I'm like, that's dumb. Like that's, there's a lot of other reasons why I'm less of a man than I should be. Being able to fix things is not one of them. Um, that's, that's my point that we don't all have to do it the same way. Like we all have things, these gifts that God brings to us, that he puts in us, he designs us and then invites us to a path that maximizes the potential of what he put in us. And that's awesome. You don't have to do it the same way. We're in Christ. So many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace, given to each of us. If your gift is prophecy and the prophesy in accordance with your faith, if it's serving then serve. If it's teaching, then teach. If it's to encourage that, encourage give encouragement. If it's giving, then give generously. If it's to lead, do it diligently. If it's to show mercy, do it cheerfully. And then he goes, and here's the broad, like these are the specific nuances. Here's the broad truths that all of us can stand on. Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope. Patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Like, all of us can do those things, but these, by the way, here's why God wants you to do that. Because living out the design, the gifts in the way that God asks you to do, it gives you life. Like here's the thing about Jesus adding the life. I'm the way, the truth and the life. Here's the thing. When we truly follow Jesus, it actually gives us life. And this is one of the major measuring rods for whether or not we're doing what God has made us to do. Is just a simple, like, do I enjoy it? Now? We all serve because we're called to serve because there's a need. And what a lot of people will do is use, well, I'm just not, I'm just not gifted. I'm not, but, no, there's a spill. Just grab a mop, right? Like you don't need to be gifted at mopping. And I have the spiritual gift of mopping. No, we all serve because there's a need, but there's a space where we start to walk out our call, like our day in and day out responsibility. We start to walk out our call that God has given us. And that is rooted in how he designed us. And that gives us life because we're doing what we were made to do. I know there's this new thing in kids that are coming out of high school and college. They're like, I just got to go do what I was made for. Okay. That's great. And you should always be pursuing that. But what you need to do is get a job and pay the bills, right? Like get a job and pay the bills and then start working on figuring out how to do what you were made for. And if you can monetize that, great. But if not, and what happens is they're like I'm going to live at home and mooch off mom and dad instead of going and getting a job because it's beneath me. It's not what I was made for. And that, that smacks of entitlement, that's not okay. That's not okay. That's not what we're talking about. When we're talking about design, what we're talking about is living into the call that God put in our life so that it fulfills us and gives us life, the way God gives us doesn't change. It's the way. And the truth is we have to do it for his glory, not for our own. And when we do that, it gives us life. It's not a religious burden. So many of the rabbinic teachings were just burdens. That would, that's what Jesus said. But the Pharisees, you tie heavy burdens on people, but you won't lift a finger to help them like, ah, it's not a burden, it gives life to follow Jesus. He's the way -- doesn't change. It's the truth --it's for his glory and it gives us life. 

So I have some implications for the sermon this morning that I want to work our way through. Number one, implication is this. There's no place where you can go where God's grace cannot reach you. You haven't blown it bad enough. Look at Romans 8. I love this. I love the book of Romans. I don't know if you pick up on that. I love the book of Romans 8. Here's what it says. Who can bring any charge against those whom God's chosen? Who can do that? It's God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns no one, no one can condemn you. If God says, you're a thing. You're a thing. Cause he's right. God is right. Like 100% of the time. Christ Jesus who died more than that, who was raised to life is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? And, I would throw in, stupidity or laziness or like any of the, any of can, any of it separate us from the love of God, as it is written: For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. You can't blow it bad enough. You can't. It's not possible. 

Second implication -- no matter what you've done, God's plan for you has not changed. Now, maybe we took some laps around a really dark mountain, but whenever we're ready to come back, God's like, okay, now let's get to that thing that I made you for.

Number three, no matter your excuses, true life and fulfillment are only possible when you're aligned with God's created agenda for you. Like, you might be surviving in your life outside of God's agenda. You might be surviving in your life, but you'll never thrive outside of God's agenda for your life.

Number four. And this is just as important. The attitude with which you live out  your purpose is as much a part of your growth as the purpose itself. Because there's a lot of people who are like fine, I'll go, I'll serve the Lord. Hypothetically, they might do that. Like, you know, the, the joy of the Lord is my strength… you know, these people, right? These are people that brighten the room by leaving it. We all know these people. We all know at least one. So if you're sitting there, you're like, I don't know anybody like that. We all know at least one. So … I am just joking. Kind of. Like, the attitude with which we cause you can, you can be like, all right, fine. I'll do what God wants, but I won't like it. I won't, I won't enjoy it. Well, you can do that. That's just not really putting your God on display. Proverbs 16 says this -- to humans belong the plans of the heart but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue. All a person's ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord, commit to the Lord, whatever you do. And he will establish your plans. 

Like how our motives of what? Like I want to follow God because I want him to make my life a certain thing. Well, that's just as fleshly as not serving the Lord at all. Our motives are weighed by the Lord. And if you commit your way, if you're like, I don't know what to do with it. Like I know I want to figure it out, but I don't know how to respond. Exactly. Commit your way to the Lord, nd he'll establish your plans. If you get off of his way, he'll bring you back. Like he's so faithful to do that. He's not going to be like, here's the path. You better get over here and walk it. That's not how God does it. God's like, Hey, come here, come here, come here. This-- come with me. Isn't this awesome. And when you get to see me everywhere you go, cause I'm walking right in step with you. God's not going to bail out on us. 

As we think about our communion time this morning, I would just invite you to consider in your life, where are the spaces where you've tried to go your own way? And it might be simple things like I don't love my wife or my husband the way that God would want me to. It might be things like I chose a career that I wanted because I wanted it. Or I chose a career because my parents said that it would make me good money or whatever it is, but it's never been the thing that I felt like God wanted me to do. Where is that space? Let's, let's consider that. As we prepare our hearts for communion this morning 

On the night, Jesus was betrayed. He took bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body, which is given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me. Let's remember him this morning. And then in the same way, after the dinner He took a cup and he said, this cup, it's a blood of the covenant, which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your grace. Thank you for how intricately involved you are in our lives. You are, in the busy-ness of all that you're doing, you find space to create this beautiful personal journey for each one of us. Lord, I pray that you would help us to be a people who not only walk out our own call and our own gifts, but that you would help us to be people who look for your work in other people and celebrate it wherever it is and help people discover what they can become as well. We love you, Lord, in your name. Amen. Let's sing one more song.