Introduction
One
of the worst things we have to endure on a regular basis is uncertainty. Uncertainty
creates anxiety and stress in our daily lives that for some can lead to
physical and emotional illness if the stress and anxiety persist for long
enough. For others, uncertainty can lead to some of the most heinous behavior
in an attempt to develop some sense of certainty in their lives. You’re
uncertain if your boss will be satisfied with your work so you continue to work
more and more hours, sacrificing your health and possibly your family, in order
to achieve some sense of certainty that your work will be accepted. You’re
uncertain if your academic resume will be enough to get you accepted to the
college you want, so you volunteer for every possible activity at the expense
of enjoying the journey of life while life should be relatively simple in order
to build a sense of certainty that you’ll be accepted to a college to begin a
part of you life’s journey that is far from simple. You’re uncertain that
you’ll ever meet someone who will love you and share life with you in a
committed marriage relationship so you sleep with virtually anyone who will give
you a sense of certainty that you won’t be alone forever. You’re uncertain if
you’ve done enough to be accepted by God so you do more and more “things” to
try and prove your faithfulness to Him. And when the uncertainty doesn’t go
away, you fly planes filled with innocent people into buildings filled with
innocent people or you strap a bomb to your body and blow yourself up in a
crowded marketplace thinking that death for the cause will certainly be enough
to gain God’s favor.
Uncertainty
can be crippling as we wait for the doctor to call us with the test results.
Uncertainty can be terrifying when we get the test results. Uncertainty without
hope for certainty, at some point, will lead to despair. What happens if you
invest your life savings in a venture but don’t, at some point, receive some
sense of certainty that your investment will pay off? What if at the end of
each day all you’re left saying is, “I don’t know if we’re going to make it?”
What happens if you finish undergraduate college and then aren’t accepted into
graduate school? Have you wasted four or five years of your life pursuing a
career path you won’t actually be able to complete? What happens if you never
get into graduate school? Uncertainty can feel like we’re being crushed. However,
nothing is as paralyzing as the uncertainty of not being confident about what
comes after this life. Even the most hardened atheist has wondered what happens
to a person when they die. They are confident, with absolutely no evidence
whatsoever, that there is no life after we die; that there is no such thing as
the eternal soul. However, for those of us who believe in God, we know that there
is in fact life after death; that the human soul is very much eternal. And, unlike
the atheist, Christians actually have evidence to support that claim in the
person of Jesus Christ. Although many believe in God, not everyone knows how to
insure that they will spend eternity with God. Knowing or believing that God
exists is one thing but knowing the way or what it takes to spend eternity with
Him is quite another.
In
the days leading up to his death, Jesus told His disciples a number of times
that He was destined to be put to death. The news of this troubled them as you
might imagine. The disciples spent nearly every day with Jesus during the three
and the half years of His earthly ministry. They left everything to follow
Jesus. It seems clear that although they believed He was the Christ, the Chosen
One, they certainly had no idea what that meant. They believed He would
inaugurate a new Kingdom but they really didn’t knowing what that meant either.
Consequently, when Jesus announced that He was destined to be put to death, the
certainty of their cause and their purpose suddenly became uncertain. They went
from knowing where they were and where they were going to being lost. Without
Jesus, the disciples were uncertain of their future and afraid they would lose
their way. However, Jesus reassured them that they would never be lost because
they knew Him and if they knew Him, they would know God and they would know the
way to God because Jesus is that way. Pay close attention to this now: Jesus is
not a way, He is The Way, The Truth, And The Life. Without Jesus, we will not spend
eternity with God.
Subject Text
John 14:1-14
1“Do not let your
hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2In my Father’s
house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going
there to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where
I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going.” 5Thomas
said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the
way?” 6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me,
you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen
him.” 8Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be
enough for us.” 9Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even
after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen
the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Don’t you
believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say
to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is
doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and
the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles
themselves. 12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will
do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I
am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name,
so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for
anything in my name, and I will do it.
Context
Our Subject Text takes place on Thursday night during the final week of
Jesus’ life. Jesus and the disciples had gathered together for one last meal;
the last supper. However, before they began their last meal together, Jesus
gave them one final example of loving service they were supposed to emulate
when He humbled Himself to wash their feet. Jesus wanted them to know that they
were no better than their Master and if He was willing to care for and serve
others then they must do so as well. During their meal, Jesus revealed to them
that Judas would be the one to betray Him to the religious leaders. Having been
exposed, Judas left Jesus and the rest of the disciples to carry out his plan
of conspiring with the religious leaders to have Jesus arrested. Jesus
explained to the remaining disciples what would happen in the coming days and
that He would soon be leaving them to go to a place where they couldn’t follow
Him. Peter, and no doubt the others, were rightly confused and troubled—they
had followed Jesus everywhere to this point so they couldn’t understand why
they couldn’t continue to follow Him. We already know the real purpose of
Jesus’ ministry of relationship reconciliation but the disciples didn’t truly
understand this. The disciples still understood Jesus’ ministry primarily in
terms of re-establishing the kingdom of Israel back to prominence and the role
they hoped to play in that re-established kingdom. What the disciples foresee
in Jesus’ prediction of His death is the end of their kingdom plans for which
they left everything. Without Jesus and without the ability to follow where He
is going, the disciples must have felt lost. The only thing they are left with
is uncertainty and doubt. So Jesus attempts to reassure them that nothing has
changed and that this is all part of the plan that will ultimately be for their
benefit and for the benefit of all those who believe in Him.
Text Analysis
1“Do not let your hearts be
troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.
The basis
of faith for the disciples was no different than our own—trust. However, it’s
not just blind trust in some religious ideal. What matters is the object of our
trust. According to v. 1, Jesus knew
that the disciples trusted God but He needed them to understand that they could
trust Him in the same way that they trusted God because Jesus and God were one
in the same. It was time that the disciples knew who they were really dealing
with. Jesus was not just the long-awaited Messiah with the narrow and temporal
objective of re-establishing Israel’s prominence as a sovereign nation. God, in
the person of Jesus, had come to provide the means to reconcile all of humanity
to God. It was time for the disciples to take Jesus out of the box they tried
to fit Him into and see Him for who He really was and what He had come to do. “When
men [and women] are called in the [New Testament] to conversion, it means a
fundamentally new turning of the human will to God, a return home from blindness
and error to the Saviour of all…Conversion involves a change of lords. The one
who until then has been under the lordship of Satan comes under the lordship of
God, and comes out of darkness into light. Conversion and surrender of the life
to God is done in faith, and includes faith in Jesus Christ. Such a conversion
leads to a fundamental change of the whole of life. It receives a new outlook
and objectives. God’s original purpose in creating man is realized in the new
life. The converted man [and woman] is to serve him alone with a clear
conscience and voluntary dependence.”[1]
2In my Father’s house are many
rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a
place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
I want you
to stop for a moment and remember that the disciples don’t know, at this point,
what you know about what Jesus is saying in vv. 2-3. We know that Jesus is talking about going to heaven and
making preparations for our eternal home in anticipation of His return—the
Second Coming. We read our present day understanding into Jesus’ words but that
takes all of the confusion and uncertainty out of what the disciples must have
been experiencing. The disciples don’t have the same perspective of biblical history
and theological development they we enjoy two thousand years after the events
of this day in our Subject Text. The
disciples were experiencing it live for the first time and they were afraid and
uncertain. Jesus it trying to calm their fears and concerns by promising them
that they will not be disappointed by putting their trust in Him. “Whereas the
Synoptists [Matthew, Mark, and Luke] utilize the images of some kind of reward
in heaven, the kingdom of God (heaven) or various parabolic portrayals of celebration
and joy to speak of heaven, John opts mainly for the notion of ‘eternal life.’
Additionally, while the Synoptists portray heaven as future, John’s Jesus
asserts that believers who have been given a new birth by God have this ‘life’
now. The resurrection is still an important event, but not so that eternal life
can begin. Rather it seals the believer in this ‘life,’ eternally. Then those
believers will be given a room in the Father’s ‘house’ so that they might be
with Jesus.”[2]
4You know the way to the place
where I am going.” 5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where
you are going, so how can we know the way?” 6Jesus answered, “I am
the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me.
Do the disciples know the way?
Thomas doesn’t appear to know but again only because he doesn’t have the
benefit of our perspective. It’s like standing in front of a hidden door. Just
because you don’t recognize it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It may exist in
a room you’ve entered many times but you’ve failed to recognize it. However,
once you realize it’s there, it’s obvious to you every time you walk into the
room even if it is unseen by others. The disciples recognized many things about
Jesus but He is about to reveal to them the single most important aspect of our
faith as Christians and the primary element of our faith that makes us a target
for false religions and unbelievers—the exclusivity of our faith. Our salvation
is found only in and through Jesus. When John and Peter were brought before
Caiaphas, the high priest in Jerusalem, for preaching the Gospel after Jesus’
resurrection and ascension to heaven, they make this point very clear when
Peter tells them that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other
name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).”
Thomas
doesn’t doubt Jesus in vv. 4-6, even
though Thomas’ doubt gave birth to the modern idiom of calling someone who is
skeptical a “Doubting Thomas.” Thomas just wants to know the way. He’s willing
to follow the path laid out by Jesus if Jesus would just be clear to show him
and the others the way. So Jesus makes it plain to Thomas and the rest that
there is only one way to the Father who is in heaven. Jesus is that one way!
Jesus tells then that He is the Way
to the Father. Jesus tells them that they can trust what He is telling them not
just because what He says is true, but because He is the Truth. Jesus tells them that by believing in the Way and the
Truth, they will find life not because of something they do, but because they
are connected by trust to Jesus who doesn’t just sustain life, or give life,
but who is the Life—all things have
life because of and through Jesus. When we read these verses, it’s important to
remember the opening verses of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the
beginning. Through Him all things were made; without him nothing was made that
has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men (Jn 1:1-4).”
Armed with this knowledge and understanding, the exclusive faith in Jesus
Christ as The Way, The Truth, And The
Life must be the hill every Christian is willing to die on. In a world and
life of uncertainty, there is great comfort, at least for me, that I can focus
all my attention, affection, and devotion on Jesus and trust that that will be
sufficient for all my needs in this life and the next.
“Jesus is
the Way to the Father; Jesus is the Truth (or reality) of all God’s promises;
and Jesus is the Life as he joins his divine life to ours, both now and
eternally. Jesus is the way that leads to the truth and life. Jesus’ exclusive
claim is unmistakable. It forces an unconditional response. Jesus invites
people to accept or reject him, making it clear that partial acceptance is
rejection. His self-description invalidates alternative plans of salvation.
Some would say that a single way is entirely too restrictive. But that attitude
fails to see the desperate state of the human condition. That there is a way at
all is evidence of God’s grace and love. The state of human rebellion can be
seen in this: We are like people drowning at sea who are graciously thrown a
life-saving rope but who respond by insisting that we deserve a choice of
several ropes along with the option of swimming to safety if we so choose.”[3]
7If you really knew me, you would
know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” 8Philip
said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9Jesus
answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a
long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show
us the Father’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and
that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather,
it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me
when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe
on the evidence of the miracles themselves.
There are so many theological and
soteriological lessons in our Subject
Text and Jesus’ response to Philip in vv.
7-11 is a lesson in another fundamental element of Christianity—the
Trinity. I won’t go into great detail here about the Trinity but you can read
more about the Trinity in a three part series title “Defending The Trinity” at:
http://seredinski.blogspot.com/2011/12/defending-trinity-pt-1.html,
http://seredinski.blogspot.com/2011/12/defending-trinity-pt-2.html,
and http://seredinski.blogspot.com/2011/12/defending-trinity-pt-3-conclusion.html.
The disciples know nothing of the Trinity. They understand the theology of one
God. But Jesus is going to bend their minds with the teaching of three co-equal
persons within the Godhead introducing the Spirit in the text following our Subject Text. It was a hard concept for
them to understand. Philip seemed to think that if Jesus could show them the
Father, it would become clearer or at least it would perhaps provide some
tangible support for a concept that Jesus is trying get them to accept on faith
alone. They want to be able to see and touch the Father to ease their
uncertainty. Like the rest of us, the disciples have a myopic view and
understanding of God. They understand God from a very narrow and finite
perspective as finite beings. They couldn’t see where or how Jesus fit that
perspective.
“‘All truth
is God’s truth, as all life is God’s life; but God’s truth and God’s life are
incarnate in Jesus.’ Such an absolute statement leads, of course, to a
different series of questions. Jesus has disclosed more than anyone expected.
Instead of simply defining his destination (the Father, heaven), Jesus says
that he alone is the way to get there. But
only God can lead us to himself. Jesus takes the next inevitable step,
therefore, a step no doubt that the disciples can barely comprehend. Only the
Father can lead us to himself—and the Father is genuinely present in
Jesus…Jesus Christ is God in complete human form and so has the capacity to
accomplish divine tasks [miracles]. Hence if his followers know Jesus, they
will know the Father as well. This is not a rebuke, but a promise pointing to a
deeper revelation that will come if they continue with Jesus…Philip does not
understand that no one has seen God.
It is beyond the human capacity. Even Moses’ request on Mount Sinai was refused
(Ex. 33:18-23). But in Christ Philip has before him the full embodiment of God
as it can be seen by humanity. Nevertheless, Jesus now says with utter clarity
what Philip could not comprehend before. In seeing Jesus Philip is seeing God.
This is one of the high points of John’s Christology. Jesus is not simply a
religious teacher or guide, nor is he simply the means to some other
destination. He is also the end, the goal. He is the One in whom God can be
found.”[4]
12I tell you the truth, anyone
who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things
than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do
whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You
may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
I have to
be honest with you, I struggled for much of my life with the promise from Jesus
in vv. 12-14. I remember hearing
these words in church on Sundays but still having to endure life with an
abusive alcoholic father even though I prayed in Jesus’ name that the drinking
would stop. I always figured that God either didn’t want to help or didn’t have
the power to help. It wasn’t until I entered Seminary that I began to
understand this promise in its correct context. First of all, what “greater
things” is Jesus referring to? It’s probably not referring to His miracles
since raising the dead, as Jesus did, sets the bar for miracles probably as
high as it can get. Jesus gave sight to the blind, gave hearing to the deaf,
gave voice to the mute and gave health back to those who suffered from
devastating illnesses. Jesus calmed the sees, commanded the fish, and walked on
water. If Jesus were referring to miracles as the “greater things” the
disciples would do, it’s hard to imagine what those miracles would have been.
Instead, there is something that the disciples could and would do that Jesus,
by Himself, couldn’t do. Take the gospel to the ends of the earth as He
commanded them to do. Jesus’ primary ministry area was in and around the region
of Galilee. Also, it’s important to remember that Jesus’ primary mission was
not to perform miracles. The miracles were intended to help authenticate who
Jesus said He was. In other words, the miracles were supposed to be signs
pointing to Jesus’ divinity. The miracles don’t bring glory to the Father.
Jesus brings glory to the Father. This is the key to Jesus’ teaching in these
verses—the disciples can ask Jesus for anything they want to spread the Gospel
message and He would give them what they needed in order to do “greater things”
to advance His message of reconciliation with God.
God sent His only Son to die in
order to provide a means of reconciliation between God and humanity. When the
disciples and by extension the rest of us preach the message of the Gospel to the
world and people come to faith in Jesus, God is glorified. Why didn’t Jesus
answer my prayer to stop my dad’s abusive behavior? Because He knew that
someday it would make me uniquely qualified to preach the Gospel to those who
have been similarly wounded. When my message reaches the heart and mind of
someone who couldn’t believe that their heavenly Father loves them because
their earthly father didn’t and they finally put their faith and trust in
Jesus, the Father is glorified. Jesus isn’t saying that we can literally ask
for anything we want and He would give it to us. Think about that for a minute
and see if that actually makes sense. He’s not a genie that grants us wishes.
You’re probably a better person than I am but I know myself and I would have
been dead from over-indulgence if Jesus had given me whatever I asked for. When
you read this part of our Subject Text,
you have to think in terms of two things at all times: (1) Advancing the
Gospel; and (2) Bringing glory to God by advancing the Gospel message. That’s
not to say that God won’t grant a request made in the name of Jesus for God’s
miraculous intervention in some kind of physical healing or natural phenomenon
but only if that request is made according to His will and only if it serves to
advance the Gospel and brings Him glory.
“Perhaps the
best way to understand [these verses] is to take [them] literally, exactly as
Jesus said [them]. Jesus’ earthly ministry was limited to time and space. He
served the Father for three and one-half years and never outside the boundaries
of Palestine. The disciples, on the other hand, as Acts clearly attests,
carried out ministry that was greater geographically, in terms of numbers of
people reached and long-lasting effect…All parents should be able to say to
their children; all pastors should be able to say to the staffs; all leaders
should be able to say to their followers: ‘You have to potential to do greater
things than I have done.’ To empower and develop followers whose ministry
exceeds the impact of their mentors is to follow the model of Jesus.
Jesus
answers prayer in order to bring glory to the Father. Our praying, therefore,
out to be directed toward that goal and end…What we see here is a New Testament
formula of asking in the name of Jesus…Obviously, just saying ‘in Jesus’ name’
creates no magic potion for prayer. The culture in which these words are spoken
took names very seriously, so much so that they equated one’s name with the
character, spirit, and power of that person…Christians do strange things and
then claim they are behaving ‘in Jesus’ name.’ Since Jesus’ name is always
connected in some way with our prayers even if we do not speak those words, if
we cannot ask in his name we should not ask at all…Jesus’ ‘departure to the
Father, so far from ending his influence on earth, will mean its continuance
under wider conditions and with the results rendered possible by the power of
effective prayer.”[5]
Application
For all of
us, each day is fraught with some type of uncertainty. Will I have a job after
today? How will I do on my test? Will she decide to leave me today? Will there
be enough food to feed my family? Will I still have a home after today? Will my
family be safe today? There are many events in our daily lives that are out of
our control that leave us with a sense of uncertainty. For example, last week
the co-pilot of a Germanwings airplane took control of the aircraft while the
pilot stepped out of the cockpit and crashed the plane into the side of a
mountain in the French Alps killing himself and the other 149 people on the
plane. The cause for the crash is irrelevant for my purposes here because what
I want you to focus on is the uncertainty of our very lives from one day to the
next. Except for perhaps the co-pilot, I doubt anyone else on the flight didn’t
think they would reach their destination. Yet in the span of eight minutes they
went from traveling safely to their destination at a cruising altitude of
38,000 feet to smashing into the side of a mountain below 6,000 feet. In a mere
eight minutes they went from life to death—all of them. Here’s my question for
you, are you absolutely positive that you have more than eight minutes to live?
Before you answer that question, I want you to take your fingers and find your
pulse on your neck or on your wrist. Did you find it? Assuming you don’t take
your own life, do you control whether or not your heart continues to beat? No.
Then you have no idea if or when it might stop. You have no idea if you will
wake up in the morning or make it home from work at the end of the day. You
suspect you will but you have no way of knowing for sure. Some of you live with
this reality everyday in countries that are embroiled in wars of one kind or
another. So now that I have your attention, let me ask you a very simple
question: If you had eight minutes to live, could you tell me where you are
going when you die and why you believe that? If you can’t tell me with complete
certainty then this lesson is aimed specifically at you.
If you are
an atheist and don’t believe God exists and that life just ends when we die,
you had better be sure because I have yet to meet anyone who has died to
testify to that. If you do believe in God and you’re trusting your eternal soul
to someone or something other than Jesus, do you know with absolute certainty
where you will spend eternity and how you will get there? If getting there
depends on your efforts, are you good enough to save yourself? If it’s up to
you to get there, can you find your way to heaven and eternity with God? You
had better be absolutely positive because you may only have eight minutes. Let
me try and make this easy for you.
·
Sin has separated humanity from God.
·
God became incarnate in the person of Jesus
Christ.
·
Jesus Christ died on the cross to atone for
humanity’s sin against God.
·
Jesus Christ conquered death and rose from the
dead after three days.
·
Humanity can be reconciled back to God by the
faith that Jesus is who He said He is and did what He said He did.
That’s it. I just timed myself to confess that and it took
me way less than eight minutes. Everything changed when Jesus walked out of the
grave after three days. That gave him credibility that no one else had or has
to this day—the power over life. Walking out of that grave gave Him the right
to demand that we look to Him exclusively as the way to salvation. By walking
out of that grave, Jesus proved that everything He said about Himself and His
mission was true. When Jesus walked out of that grave, He demonstrated that
death could not contain the Author of life; the Creator of all things. Peter
said that there is only one name under heaven by which we must be saved and
that name is Jesus. So now you know the way to salvation, you know the truth
about salvation and you know that salvation gives eternal life. If you can
confess that Jesus is The Way, The Truth,
And The Life then eight minutes will be nothing compared to spending
eternity with God.
[1]
Colin Brown, gen. ed., New International
Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 1, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1986), p. 355.
[2]
Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1992), p. 309.
[3]
Bruce Barton, Philip Comfort, Grant Osborne, Linda K. Taylor, and Dave Veerman,
Life Application New Testament Commentary,
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), pp. 435-436.
[4]
Gary M. Burge, John—The NIV
Application Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000),
pp. 392-393.
[5]
Kenneth O. Gangel, John—Holman New
Testament Commentary, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2000), pp.
266-268.
No comments:
Post a Comment