Online Text Sermon - Christ the Truth, John ch.14 v.6
| Date | 10/02/2008 |
|---|---|
| Time | 18:30 |
| Preacher | Rev. Gavin Beers, Mebane |
| Sermon Title | Christ the Truth (Arbroath Young People's Weekend) |
| Text | John ch.14 v.6 |
| Sermon ID | 1823 |
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This evening can I take you to an eastern outpost of the Roman Empire. The scene is a trial and Pontius Pilot is under severe pressure. A great congregation of Jews has gathered and they are very angry. He feels that he must appease them because they are baying for the blood of Jesus. Pilot's problem is that he can't find any fault with this man, although at the same time, he cannot understand the claims that this man makes. "My kingdom is not of this world", he says. Pilot then asks Him, "Are you declaring yourself a king?" Jesus replies, "No, you are saying that. I am come to bear testimony to the truth. Those that hear me are of the truth". Pilot is challenged with this, he is confused and under pressure, and he is beginning to get angry. To our Lord Jesus Christ he replies, "What is truth?"
Earlier in the Gospel of John we discover that the Lord Jesus Christ has already answered this question (John 14, 6). The question on this occasion was posed by Thomas - Thomas is doubting again - and Jesus says that He is going unto the Father. Thomas is panicking and saying, "But how do we know where you are going? How do we know the way?" Jesus reassures him and says to Thomas, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14, 6). Pilot asks, "What is truth?" Jesus answers the question: "I am the truth".
Pontius Pilot is a very fitting picture of our age: he's confused about the truth. When the truth was before him, Pilot sanctioned His death. Jesus was crucified outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem. But friends, the truth can never die. On the third day He rose again according to the scriptures, victorious over death and now to triumph in His gospel. In a world full of Roman's like Pilot who were unsure about the truth, in a world full of Greeks who are continuing their elusive search for wisdom and truth, Christ is preached, and the known world we are told in the Acts of the apostle, is turned upside down. We might say it's the right side up.
What we need to see this evening is that there has always been a conflict between truth and error. But throughout that continual conflict, our Lord Jesus Christ has always been winning, every day and all of the day; even when it doesn't appear to you and me that He is winning, be sure of it, He is winning. Just like the cross. We look at the cross and we see a man stripped naked, beaten, His face is marred more than the face of any man, He is dying an ignominious death, He is hung upon that cross, people are railing upon Him and gnashing their teeth, they are mocking Him, they are spitting upon Him. The proud Roman's who seem to have all of the power are standing ridiculing Jesus Christ.
What of His claims? All of the things He said He would do, all of the things that He said He was - have they all died? You see, it would appear so. But yet, in His death He is triumphing. In His death He is securing the redemption of all the Father gave unto Him. When we look at our culture today and we think that somehow Christ is not winning. We need to remember this because even in our age, our Lord Jesus Christ is triumphing and He is well able to confound the wisdom of the wise and to bring to nothing the understanding of the foolish. Indeed, when we cast our eye around our culture and we see all of this prevailing confusion, we can come to this conclusion that there has maybe never been a better time for you and me to preach the supremacy of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Truth, than today.
I ask you to start thinking in these kinds of terms: Christ is reigning; Christ is Lord. Nothing is happening in this world that Christ is not sovereign over. The conflict rages but Christ is winning and Christ shall win. If you don't believe me just pick up the Book of Revelation and read it from beginning to end. Nearly on every page you can come to this conclusion: Christ wins! Christ wins! Christ wins! In Him, His church likewise wins.
Our text this evening is John 14, 6. Particularly that statement - "I am the truth". Our theme very simply from that is: Christ the Truth. We want to look at five aspects of this doctrine of how our Lord Jesus Christ is the Truth.
1. JESUS CHRIST: THE DIVINE TRUTH
The first of these is that: Jesus Christ: the Divine Truth
He says unto the twelve disciples as He speaks to them here that He is the truth. If we read that statement aright we can come to no other conclusion but that this is no insignificant claim. You see Jesus is not here saying that He is one form of truth; He is saying I am thee truth. That is, I am the truth absolutely. "I am the absolute truth." Then if we go another step further and we consider this statement we will recognise that it must be interpreted as a claim of the Lord Jesus Christ to be God.
What I want you to do for a moment is imagine that you are a Jew. You are a Jew and you are waiting for the Messiah and the Messiah has not come. We are going back roughly 2,500 years or so. This question that Pilot asks comes to you a Jew: "What is truth?" What will you as a Jew now answer to that question? You see the Greek would say, "Well I don't know but I'm looking for it." The Jew would say very straightforwardly, "God is truth." Let me give you an example of that. It is found in the Psalm which we were singing earlier. These are the words of the Lord quoted on the cross: 'Into thine hand I commit my spirit: 'Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord [Jehovah] God of truth' (Psalm 31, 5). To the Jew their God, Jehovah, was not merely a tribal god like any other tribal god - like Baal or Ashteroth, or any other of these particular gods; their God, Jehovah, was the only true and living God, and the only true and living God infinite, eternal and unchangeable in the truth. So this question comes to you Jew: 'What is truth?' You say, "God is truth!"
Now to you a Jew we go forward about five hundred years and here is a man who is a fellow-Jew and he stands with this absolute declaration: "I am the truth". What do you, a Jew, now understand of the claim of Christ? You must understand this claim to be a claim to deity: that Jesus Christ is saying, "I am the absolute truth"; that Christ is saying to His disciples, "I am the divine truth". Because this One who speaks in John 14, 6 is non other than God manifested in the flesh, in whom are hid all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. We need to recognise that if we are ever to find truth, or if we are ever to understand truth in its proper context, we will never do it outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, because our Lord Jesus Christ is the very originator of truth. He is the One who is the centre of all truth and all reality, as we have looked at in Colossians 1: He is the one who is before all things, the one by whom all things consist; He is the one who made all things, and all things are made for Him; He is the one who has the pre-eminence above and among all things. Our Lord Jesus Christ is a divine truth. My friends we must learn to seek truth, and to seek truth as it is in Jesus because Jesus Christ is the divine truth.
2. JESUS CHRIST: THE REVEALED TRUTH
In the second place we want to consider: Jesus Christ: the revealed truth.
John 1, 14: John writes - "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth" (John 1, 14). Then in verse 17 he says: " "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1, 17).
He is referring here to the Old Testament law. Of course, that Old Testament law that was revealed by Moses was most certainly true. But that law was not at the same time a full revelation of the truth. Rather what the law was given for was to display unto the Old Testament church by way of type and shadow and ceremony, in a pictorial manner if you like, of the full reality of the truth who would come. Now that truth was ultimately Jesus Christ. Therefore when we look at that law which was to by God to Moses we are looking at it in these terms: that it is shadow in the sense that Jesus Christ the truth is the substance of all there that is revealed.
Similarly when we go to the Old Testament and we read the prophet, we discover that all of the predictions that people hoped on in the Old Testament period as they looked forward to the Messiah, all of these predictions are fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. To Abraham God said, "I will give you a seed, and in your seed, Abraham, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed". When we come to the New Testament in Galatians 3 the apostle Paul tell us that this was a gospel promise. This was a promise that concerned the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ who would be the Saviour, not only of the Jews but also of the Greeks. Listen to what He says: "And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed" (Galatians 3, 8); "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ" (Galatians 3, 16). All of the law is pointing to Christ as the substance. All of these predictions are centring upon Christ as the substance of the truth and all of the promises of God - from Genesis right through the Old Testament period - come to us confirmed in Christ. In Christ they are yea and in Christ they are all Amen, and 'amen' simply means, 'let it be true'.
Do you see here that the Word of God is teaching us that Jesus Christ is the revealed truth? In other words this is not something that has been hidden. This is something that has been revealed from the very beginning of history; or from that point of time where man fell into sin, God is revealing this truth. God is demonstrating unto men that he will send His Son in order to redeem them. Now in the fulness of time our Lord Jesus steps into history, and that is where we find Him in John's Gospel chapter 14. He makes this declaration: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14, 6). My friends we need to recognise that Jesus Christ is revealed to us in the Word. When men approach this whole subject of 'truth' and they want to find the way of salvation, very often they search in all of the wrong places. But God has spoken here in His Word. If you say to such people, "I have the Word of God here and God has revealed His Son as the Saviour", they say, "Well, I don't care for the Bible. I don't believe that it's the Word of God." You ask, "Have you read the scriptures? Have you proved the Word? Have you tested it?" They do not believe in a concept that God could reveal Himself through words in this way. But our Lord Jesus Christ said, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life" (John 5, 39). Yes, that's fair enough but it all focuses upon me, therefore if you are here this evening and you are not a Christian, and you have doubts about all these things, I am saying to you, pick up this Word and begin to read it. Sit under preaching because under the preaching and exposition of this Word, faith comes - "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Romans 10, 17). As you begin to read the scriptures, you will see a golden thread that is weaved through from Genesis to Revelation as all of these individual writers of the Bible, in successive generations, are penning this glorious, harmonious message over about two thousand years. That message is declaring to you and to me from the beginning, "Jesus Christ is the Truth."
Perhaps I can illustrate it for you in this way. Imagine you have never seen the sun. Nobody had ever told you that there was a sun. One day you got up and somebody came to you and said, "You know, there is a sun in the sky." You went outside and all you could see above you was clouds. As you sat there, looking at that scene, all of a sudden, one ray pokes through the cloud. Maybe you have sent his kind of thing. We see it in Ayrshire as we look down over the sea towards Arran. Very often you see these rays of sunlight coming down through the cloud. But here is one ray, and you wait studying it for a little bit longer, and another ray comes down. As you wait, as you continue to study this thing, what happens? - the clouds begin to dispel and lo and behold to your eyes, the sun appears. Jesus Christ is the Truth in that way: God said unto Adam, "I will give a seed to the woman, and that seed will bruise the head of the serpent" (Genesis 3, 15). God then said to Abraham, "I will give a seed, and in that seed all the families of the earth are going to be blessed". God then says to David, "I will give you a seed David. And you are going to sit upon the throne of Judah for ever and ever. And you will vanquish all its foes." Then God says through the prophet Isaiah, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53, 5). In the fulness of time, "shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings" (Malachi 4, 2). My friends, Jesus Christ is the revealed truth.
3. JESUS CHRIST: THE SAVING TRUTH
Then in the third place we can say this: Jesus Christ is the Saving Truth.
What is this golden thread? What is the harmonious message that we have just been speaking about, that we find right from the beginning to the end of the Bible? Well, my friends, that thread is simply this: Jesus Christ is the saving truth.
When we come to the bible to learn that truth, the first thing that we will discover is that this is a particularly hard truth. The reason for that is that it tells you the truth about yourself. It tells you, you are a sinner. It says, "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3, 23). You say, very well, I'm a sinner! You begin to think about sin, and maybe you try to theologically define it and you say, well, sin is any want of conformity to the law of God, and so on. Sin is a breach of the law of God. You have it there in an abstract kind of way. But then the Word of God makes it a little more descriptive and particular. It says, "All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags" (Isaiah 64, 6). Yes, those things that you think are the best things that you have ever done in your life; those most noble moments; those most kind acts. God looks upon them and He says they are as filthy rags. The force of that is not clear in our Bible, and what I am going to say to you might sound offensive but it is very clear in the Hebrew Scriptures: "All of our righteousnesses are as a blood-soaked menstrual rag". That's what God says. You would think He was trying to make an effect on our conscience wouldn't you? All of our best works, all of those works which men trust in to try and save themselves, God just cuts right through them and says, "Know this, in my eyes they are an abomination". "From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment" (Isaiah 1, 6).
"All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3, 23) - we just let it roll of our tongue don't we? My friend, I want you to have a look at yourself tonight. I want you to see yourself as God sees you: all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in His sight. You see why I say that this Gospel of saving truth is, in the first place, a very hard truth. Then it gets even harder. It tells us because of our sin, we are heading for everlasting destruction. Except we repent and believe the Gospel, we will end up in hell where the worm does not die, that is conscience that speaks to our soul in this world, that tells us there is a right and wrong, and we are guilty of wrong. That conscience does not die when you die. Instead, that conscience becomes all the more perfect: a conscience, which only, always and ever nags and shows you your guilt before a holy God; which only, always and ever intensifies and causes you extreme mental anguish for ever; where the fire is not quenched; where the pain that is inflicted upon those who die in trespasses and sins, never ends.
You can see why the Gospel is not popular, can't you? We are all like a menstrual rag. Because of that God is going to cast us into everlasting perdition. "BUT GOD!" "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us" (Ephesians 2, 4). This message comes to us as a hard truth, but it comes to us with a glorious truth on the back of that hard truth, because from this sin and everlasting ruin there is salvation because: "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5, 8). There we are, cast out in every detail. Cast out to the loathing of thy person; rejected as an abominable thing in the open field. Then God says, "And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live" (Ezekiel 16, 22). "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5, 8). What that means friend is that Jesus Christ faced the horrible reality of the wrath of God on the behalf of every sinner who will put his trust in Him.
This is quite simply what men don't get about the Gospel. You go into the majority of churches in our land today and, "Jesus is a nice man", and "Christians are nice people". Then you go out into our communities today and they say, Well, Christians don't seem to be much different than the rest of the world. If anything, they seem to be weak people, lonely people, and they go to the church to try and get some kind of help." Do you know the reason for that? The church has ripped the very heart out of the Gospel and left nothing but a dead, barren, lifeless corpse. They don't understand that on the Cross, Jesus Christ was suffering hell that you and I might go free. They don't understand that when Jesus Christ said, "I am the truth", He means "I am the saving truth". They don't understand that Jesus Christ came not only to teach us and set us an example, but that Jesus Christ came to save us. When we do understand that, something which was at first a very hard truth becomes the most beautiful truth imaginable to the heart and life of a man. That soul that is so enlightened by the Spirit of God to see Christ as the Saviour, to think that God gave His Son, His Son whom He loved, that I might live. And to think that Christ willingly offered Himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and to reconcile sinners to God. When a man understands that what else can he do but fall down on his face before God and say, "Thou art my God and my Saviour. I love Thee, because Thou hast first loved me".
Jesus Christ is the saving truth of God. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4, 10). And, yes, herein is truth - that Jesus Christ lived and died and satisfied all that the Father required Him to do on behalf of sinners. Because of that, every sinner who comes to God on that basis will be saved. In fact, every sinner who comes to God on that basis cannot not be saved; it is an impossibility, because God is truth.
So, Christian, if you sometimes doubt your salvation but yet you know that you are one-hundred percent abandoned to the Lord Jesus Christ, well the, you will be saved; you will never be lost; because God is the God of truth, infinite, eternal, unchangeable truth. He cannot lie neither can He deny Himself. Jesus Christ is the saving truth.
4. JESUS CHRIST: THE EXCLUSIVE TRUTH
Then in the fourth place we have: Jesus Christ: the Exclusive Truth.
Christ the exclusive truth. Relativism, that we were looking at last night, reduces truth down to taste. It says that there are no absolutes; there are only opinions in a sense, and that every one of those views or opinions is equally valid. If we take that philosophy and apply it in a religious sense, they come up with that old adage that religions are simply different roads that lead to the top of the same mountain and there sits God waiting to receive whoever comes by any of these roads. It doesn't matter if these roads or these ways blatantly contradict each other. It doesn't matter if one is heading that way, and one is heading that way (pointing in opposite directions), they all end up in the same place. But let's just read our text again: Jesus says, "I am the truth" (John 14, 6). Low and behold we discover that our Lord Jesus Christ is not playing any little relativistic game, is He? He says, "I am the truth" in this sense: "I am the only truth" "I am the truth to the exclusion of everything else that pretends to be truth!" "I am the truth."
Then when we put that statement in the context of the whole verse, we find that at every step through this text the same truth is confirmed: He says, "I am the way" - that means the only way; "I am the truth" - that means the only truth; "I am the life" - that means the only life. Then if you haven't got it He says, "no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14, 6). Here is this relativistic idea of religion: we have all these roads and they are heading, if you like, to the top of the same mountain. In the end, whoever gets to the top, no matter what way he comes, is gong to be saved. But do you know what the biblical illustration is? - all of these different religions are all different ways down, down to the bottomless pit the Scriptures call hell. And that there is only one way to the top of that hill, where the one true and living God waits to receive us, by the one Way, the Truth and the Life - that is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the exclusive truth.
We were thinking of a question last night about arrogance in making the claim of exclusive truth. Sometimes we say, "Well, what would Jesus do?" We get this idea that Jesus is so placid and Jesus is so nice; Jesus would never be dogmatic. "You Christians, especially you reformed and evangelical Christians, you are so dogmatic." What do you think of this statement from our nice Jesus? "I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14, 6). I would say that that is perhaps the most dogmatic and, as people would look on, the most arrogant claim that has ever been made in the history of the world. Jesus says, "I am the truth". If you don't believe in me, you have a lie in your right hand, and that lie in your right hand is going to take you into everlasting ruin. Jesus says, "I am the way". If you are not on this way, you are on the wrong way. That wrong way is going to lead you to everlasting ruin. These apostles that the Lord Jesus Christ instructed went forth with His Gospel and they preach it in precisely the same terms. The apostle Peter stands before a congregation of Jews who put Jesus to death, and he says to them, "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4, 12).
My friends, if you have any hope for heaven, it has got to be built here: that you have Jesus Christ for your Saviour. You can grow up in a church and you can come to conferences like this, you can mingle with the people of the Lord. It may appear that you have a common interest, but you are not going to heaven unless Jesus Christ is your Saviour. You are not going to work your way to heaven, you are not going to excuse your way to heaven. The only way you are going to get to heaven is to cease from your works and cast yourself wholly upon Jesus Christ. Now, tell me, are you a Christian? Is Christ your only hope for entering heaven? Jesus Christ is the exclusive truth.
5. JESUS CHRIST: THE UNIVERSAL TRUTH
In the fifth place we have this: Jesus Christ: the Universal Truth.
Here we have our Gospel and it's very exclusive, isn't it? Jesus says, "I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life". But because we have such an exclusiveness in the Gospel, does not mean that the Gospel is not universal. Because the same Christ gives the commission unto His disciples and He says, "Take this exclusive message and teach it to every creature under heaven. Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." The reason that we must have this burning desire within our souls to preach this Gospel to the universe if you like, to the whole world, is because it is exclusive. It is because Jesus Christ is the only way, truth and life.
Last night we were thinking about this whole idea of multi-culturalism in our society. The idea that we have ethnic diversity and that the only peaceful way that we can all together is if we give this group their truth and nobody is allowed to challenge it, then you give this other little sub-culture their truth and nobody is allowed to challenge it. Then some other religion over here - it's quite all right for them to believe that and to live that way, and nobody is allowed to challenge that either. What was the result of that? We have fragmented, isolated, sub-cultures within this one nation of Britain and everyone speaking a different language, and everybody has a different truth and there is nothing binding us together, not even the vague notion of what it means to be a British citizen because that seems to have lost its meaning largely today.
But in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is universal truth, we have that absolute. We have that universal truth that is able to bind men, women and children from all cultures and ethnic backgrounds and bring them together in one body which is called the church: a spiritual temple built up to the praise of our God. If we go back to the early church we will see this, and it must have been a very exciting and humbling thing to be in one of these congregations in the first century church. I imagine there is a slave there and he is sitting in one seat and beside him is a rich man, then over here there is a slave owner, then there is a Scythian man and a man from Bithynia. Then there is Jew over here, and somewhere else there is a Greek. What is the thing that has brought them all together? It's this universal bond: this absolute truth that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour.
We read of that in Colossians 3, 11: "Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all". Do you realise what an amazing thing it was for God to reconcile Jew and Gentile? The Jew said of the Gentile, "They are dogs". The Gentiles looked upon the Jews as a very un-enlightened people. The Greeks sought after wisdom, didn't they? They had an intellectual elite; they had a different kind of culture. Yet, the Lord Jesus Christ in the church at Ephesus brings Jew and Gentile together. He makes peace by the blood of His cross, and His enemies are reconciled. This is the truth that can unite the world. This is the truth that can unite the nation of Britain. The church of God can have its Indians dressed in their lovely colourful clothes, and Africans singing the Psalms and swaying, and the Scots singing the Psalms sitting very still, very serious looking in their face. There is room for all of these cultural differences but the thing that binds it all together is this glorious truth: "I am the way, the truth and the life".
That is why I submit to you that Jesus Christ must be preached as supreme in our post-modern world because it is fragmenting and it is killing itself. The only thing that will save and unite it is the Gospel that you and I have in our hands. Therefore as Christians and as witnesses to the truth we need to go forth knowing that this Gospel is relevant to every age of person, class of person, degree of wealth of person; no matter what ethnic background or religious background he is from; whether he is heterosexual, homosexual, a-sexual, or whatever kind of sexuality he has - the Lord Jesus Christ has something to say to him: "Repent ye, and believe the gospel" (Mark 1, 15) and I will save you with an everlasting salvation. You need to engage in evangelism in this way without prejudice. We are not a white, middleclass church. We are the church of Jesus Christ and we love the souls of all men, and we seek the good of all men through the Gospel.
But then there is something else you can do. You can pray that this Gospel is preached to the ends of the earth. You and I can't do it but God will send His ambassadors to every tribe, nation, kindred, tongue and people. At the end of time we are going to discover the greatest example of multi-culturalism that will ever be known. In that church triumphant, we find men from every nation under heaven, ever tribe, kindred, tongue and people around the throne of God and of the Lamb. They are singing, Worthy is the Lamb because He has redeemed us to God by His blood. Will you pray for that? Will you pray that God will send missionaries to the end of the earth? Will you even take up the call yourself to go forth with this Gospel and preach it to the regions beyond; to pagan-darkened nations who are perishing and have never known the truth? Will you take it? We have had the Gospel and we are throwing the Gospel out. Our brother here comes to us from Sri Lanka, and we say "Praise God", because in Sri Lanka the Gospel is being preached. Tamils who have never heard are hearing about Jesus.
Will you take that Gospel? Will you take it to your countrymen? Will you take it to the nations who have never heard it? Will you pray for those who attempt to do that very thing? Will you pray that the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ, and that nations will take the yoke of Christ upon them and establish His laws and preserve and support His Church, and give all praise, and glory and honour to Him?
But in closing we come back to you who are not Christians. Does this not have a very poignant application to you: Jesus Christ is universal truth? That means that He is relevant to you, doesn't it? That means that as I preach this truth to you tonight as an ambassador of Jesus Christ and Jesus Says, "I am the way", He is saying to you, "Come to me and join that way". When He says, "I am the truth", He says, "Take me and I will save you!" Tell me friends, would you come to Christ? Would you come to Christ? We have all sorts of things in our head when we come to this question and I think some of you are from a little bit further north. Sometimes it is a very difficult thing to profess faith in Christ. What will people think of us? Will they think that I have the real thing? My friends, Jesus says to you now, "Come". I want you to set all of these cultural things aside right now and I want you just to listen to the command - "Come", "Come to me and I will give you life".
I can be as charitable and as respectful to you as I possibly can, but I must tell you, and the reason that I do so is rooted in love, that if you don't have Jesus Christ, your lie is not the truth. But if you do have Jesus Christ, then He is the truth. Because He is the truth, you can trust Him. Because He is always the truth, you can always trust Him. "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me" (John 14, 6). May God bless to us the preaching of His Word and glorify His name for Jesus sake. Amen.
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