The Way, Part 2

“In My Father’s house are many rooms; and if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and I will take you to be with Me, that you may be also where I am. You know,” here’s our word, “the way to the place where I am going.”

And I love Thomas. He said to Him, “Lord, we don’t know where You’re going, so how can we know the way?” And Jesus answers, “I am the way and the truth and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through Me. If,” this is the part we don’t read, “if you really knew Me, you would know My Father as well.”

And notice these six promises. Look at your notes. He says, “In My Father’s house,” literally, there’s many residents. And then notice He goes on. He says, “I go to prepare a place for you.”

And He is beginning to help them see, your anxiety and your fear and your confusion and your uncertainty. What He’s driving a stake and saying: There is hope. I will come back again for you, third promise, I will receive you to Myself, I am not going away forever.

And then He begins to talk about, well, how is life going to work now that I am physically going to be gone?

Someday, someway their minds are spinning. Okay, You’re coming back, You love us, You’re not going to forsake us. But how is life going to work?

And so, He goes on and says to them, “From now on you do know Him and you have seen Him.” And so, Philip says, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” And Jesus answered, “Don’t you know, Philip, that even after I have been among you for such a long time, anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father?

And then He talks about the future. “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do even greater works than I have done. I am going to the Father and whatever you ask in My name, I will give to you so the Son may bring glory to the Father. You can ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it.” Do you see the hope?

Here’s the condition. If you love Me, you will obey My commandments. And don’t think love is a feeling. Love, in the New Testament, love largely in the Bible, is a matter of loyalty. It’s not a matter of my experiential feelings, although I sure love those and we want good ones.

But He says, “If you love Me, if you are loyal to Me,” not loyal to yourself, not loyal to others, not loyal to the world system, “you will obey My commandments.” Result, “And I will ask the Father and He will give you another counselor to be with you,” how long? Look at your Bible. Another counselor, the Holy Spirit. “He will be with you - forever.” And who is He? “The Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither has seen Him or knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives,” notice the difference now, “He lives with you.”

Remember when He sent them out? They did miracles. They cast out demons. God used them to heal. “The Spirit has been with you and now,” future, “will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. And before long, you will not see Me anymore, but then you will see Me,” speaking of the resurrection. “Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in the Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. And whoever has My commandments and obeys them, he is the one that really loves Me. He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love him and,” I love this line, “will show Myself,” we get our word manifest. In other words, “I will make Myself known.”

Jesus loves all of us all the time. But there are certain Christians that, experientially, have Him reveal Himself or manifest Himself, or make Himself real in your experience. And it’s when we obey. It’s when we obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit, fundamentally. Obeying His Word, obeying the wisdom that God gives us through other believers.

Jesus promised when you obey Him, when you trust Him, when you hear His voice, He is the way for relationships to work. Others-centeredness, sacrifice, serving. He is the way in a fallen world when you forgive those who betray and hurt you.

He is the way to experience the manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s work inside you. Jesus says: I have a map. It’s Me. It’s personal, intimate relationship. The way you follow the map is obedience, not rules, not principles, obedience to Me, the person, I’ll be with you. I’ve got an anchor. Your hope, you don’t have to be afraid in the future. Not only that but as I, as I do this, I am going to give you a spirit of truth that is not just going to be available. He’ll live in you.

Notice it goes on, “Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, ‘But, Lord, why do You intend to show Yourself to us and not to the world?’ He said, ‘Anyone who loves Me, he will obey My teaching.’” It’s like, it just gets from good to better to best. “My Father will love him, and we,” plural, “will come to him and make our home with him.”

Now, when you walked in this morning, were you at least intellectually aware that when you turned from your sin and in the empty hands of faith turned away from your sin and asked Christ to forgive you, based on what He did on the cross and the moment that you received Jesus as your Savior, the Holy Spirit entered your life and sealed you with the Spirit, deposited spiritual gifts, took you out of the kingdom of darkness, placed you in the kingdom of light. And now the Holy Spirit’s role is He actually will manifest the actual dwelling of the Father and the Son in your physical body. Like, you knew that, right? And when you pray, that’s how you think about it, right?

Or is God way off there somewhere? He is completely transcendent and simultaneously, immanent and personal.

And what is the conduit? The conduit of experiential relationship is obedience. “These words you hear,” He keeps modeling. “These aren’t My own.” See, I am walking in dependence on the Father in the power of the Spirit. “These words you hear, are not My own; they belong to the Father who sent Me. All these things I have spoken while I was with you. But the Comforter, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He’ll teach you things and He will remind you of everything that I have said to you.”

Now, do you remember what He said, how He started this? Peace. Relax. Take a step back. You believe and trust in God. Trust also in Me. And now, “Peace I leave you; with the peace that I give. I do not give you the peace that the world gives,” that is temporary, “Don’t let your heart be troubled; do not be afraid.” The context of, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” is to a group of intimate friends, in a private dinner, where He wants them to know: I really get you’re anxious. I really understand your fear. I can certainly identify that confusion is reigning and I know that the future seems completely uncertain.

Here's the solution in horizontal relationships. Here’s the solution when you are betrayed. And here’s the solution when you don’t know what the future is going to hold. I am the way, My person. I am the way to do horizontal relationships. I am the way to forgive others the way I have forgiven you. I am the way because, like the groom has gone and prepared a place, your future is absolutely secured.

You may not know what is around the corner, but here’s what you can know. The final destination. And here’s what you can know, “I won’t leave you as orphans.”

Your experience will not sustain you when you get wounded or when you get cancer or lose your job or someone you love dies. Jesus will. And as you obey Him, He will allow your experience to get richer and deeper. And according to Jesus, He didn’t trust His emotions. He trusted the Father, but He trusted the Father’s Word.

By way of summary, I wanted you to know that Jesus really, I mean, it’s such a generic word. He loves you.

Well, what does that mean in real life? Because God loves me, Jesus is preparing a place for me. Underline me. And that “me” is you. Because God loves me, He sent Jesus to make a way for me to be with the Father. In the midst of their confusion and anxiety, there’s a way, there’s a door, there’s access, there’s certainty.

Because God loves me, He sent Jesus to reveal to me what God is really like. You don’t have to wonder. If you have seen Jesus, you’ll know exactly what God is like. You’ll know exactly how He responds when you fail and when you sin and when you are resentful and when you feel far from God and you want nothing to do with Him. And in the moment the little light says, “Turn,” and you said, “I don’t want to turn,” you’ll know exactly how He feels.

He feels like you, just like He did the woman who was caught in adultery. He feels the way about you that He felt about Peter afterwards where after he failed Him after his big bravado, He met with him privately and loved him and restored him. It doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences.

Jesus is not the genie in the bottle, but He is your loving, faithful, all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful Savior. Because God loves us, He will use you and use me greatly. Even more than what He did He says, “Greater works you’ll do,” why? Because He was confined to a body.

Now we are His body and He has millions of hands, over two billion people. Greater works, hospitals and orphanages and children and people rescued from the sex trade and clean water and the heart of Jesus all over the world.

As we get our focus off of ourselves and off of getting our little phones out to find out what everyone else thinks about us. And into the Word to say, “As I obey and saturate my mind with God’s Word, the Father and the Son are going to come and they are going to manifest their presence and I will have experiences where I’ll learn to hear His voice.”

Finally, He says, because God loves me, He sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of me, to manifest the presence, the personality, and the power of Jesus 24/7. You know what? That’s a great sentence. I mean, not because I wrote it. It’s because it’s true.

The Holy Spirit isn’t, like, the Force. The Holy Spirit is the third part of the Triune God and He dwells inside of you. He’s a person.

You know He’s a person because He can be grieved, see? In other words, you can hurt the Holy Spirit’s feelings. When I’m prompted and I say, “I don’t want to, leave me alone right now. This movie is too interesting.” Or, “Leave me alone right now. I’d rather eat.” Or, “Leave me alone right now. I don’t feel like it.” I can hurt the Holy Spirit’s feelings. So it says, “Grieve not the Spirit.”

When I don’t forgive someone, I grieve the Holy Spirit, I make Him sad. He lives inside of you to manifest the person and the personality and the power of the Lord Jesus. Well, how do we respond?

Because I love God, I will not fear because my future is secure. Some of you are going to have to really renew your mind on that one. You don’t have to fear because He is preparing a place for you.

Second, because I love God, I will trust in Jesus as the only way to eternal life. And we can talk about that as a theological construct and the intellectual basis for that.

Because I love God, I will make knowing God the number one priority in my life.

There is such a difference of believing in Jesus as a portion or a part of your life and making the number one priority – it’s what I do first. It’s what matters most. It’s I evaluate where my time goes, where my money goes, who my friends are, what I do, what I don’t do, where I’m going to work, where I’m going to relocate or not relocate, who I’m going to marry, who I’m not going to marry. The number one priority is I am going to passionately, intentionally, diligently discipline my life to know God and then make Him known. Not as a rule, not as rigid, but as a relationship.

And because I love God, I will use my time, talent, and treasure and platform to make Jesus’ love known.

And finally, because I love God, I will submit my heart and mind and obey the Holy Spirit’s direction through His Word, His people, and His promptings.

And I’ll tell you what, you get with people from other parts of the world that I’m hanging out with. When they read the Bible, they don’t read it like, you know, good, autonomous, independent Americans. We read it like this, “Wow, this is really interesting stuff. That was pretty cool. Tacos later? Sounds cool. You know, I love Jesus. And, oh yeah, you know the Jesus about love? I’m there. Jesus about heaven. I’m there. Ah, I’m not really sure about all that moral stuff. You know? I can sort of take it or leave it.”

You know how they read the Bible? Each day they read a section and then it’s, “What do You want me to do?” Radical, costly, immediate, obedience. And they get promptings and they act. And guess what, all that stuff about Jesus manifesting the Father and the Son in supernatural ways and choosing to heal people and choosing to rescue people and choosing people who we would think who are, literally, out to kill us infidels are coming to Jesus in ways.

You know what Jesus is looking for here? He’s looking for an awakening among God’s people, especially the next generation who would get off of how everyone else thinks and not be sort of Jesus people that really the way is secularism and prosperity and happiness is the map, but who would read the Scriptures and do life in community in a way that your response would be immediate, radical, costly, obedience. That might alienate you even from other Christians, but would make you one of God’s favorite sons or daughters and you would see Him work like never before.