AUG 26 2018 | Stuff Jesus Said S1E4 | I Am The Way…To The Father

Sea Change Church · Stuff Jesus Said · "I Am The Way...To The Father" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · August 26, 2018
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning. My name is Ellen Martin, and we are going to be reading from John chapter 14, verses 5 through 14. Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way? Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. Philip said, Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.

Jesus 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? Don't you believe I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father living in me who is doing his work. Believe 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 works themselves.

Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. The word of the Lord. Thanks, Ellen. Ellen's OG. She was here as a kid, I think. Weren't you in the youth group here?

You were, weren't you? Right on. Love it. Right on. Well, hey, welcome to Loyal Christian Fellowship. Good to have you today. Welcome. It looks like everyone's back from vacation. Hope you had a good time. And enjoying the summer. It's good to have everybody back. We are continuing in the series on stuff Jesus said. And Jesus said a lot of stuff. Basically, we're in the words of red. If you're old school, and you know what the words of red are, that's the things that Jesus said in the Bible.

I figure that I would have just made the whole Bible red for the most part, you know what I mean? Because it is God's word. But some people wanted to focus on the things Jesus said that is important. And he says some very interesting and provocative things. Now, I've begun this sermon series by trying to build a foundation on the things Jesus said about the Father. Because I do believe that the most radical concept in all of religious history, of all religions, is that God's your dad.

I don't think there's anything more radical than that. There are some really interesting radical statements. I talked about, you know, Hindu religions. And if you look, you know, deep into that, you go down the wormhole of that. Or some of the other religious stories or narratives or people used to believe in the ancient day and the world of antiquity. You'll see some really bizarre understandings. Even the Greek gods, mythology, you understand that.

But people at some point actually believed those things. And maybe some still do today. But I see nothing more radical than Jesus coming and saying not only that he is God in human form. But even more radical that the God of the universe, this far away, arbitrary, perhaps benevolent, perhaps vindictive God that people have painted a canvas of, is your dad. And I want to use the word father. But actually, he's your dad.

And that he loves you and he treats you as a son. He treats you as a daughter. It's actually, it is so revolutionary that we miss it. Does that make sense? I'm going to talk in a moment about how people often miss Jesus when he's there. But Jesus' entire mission was to save you. But the purpose of the salvific mission was not so that you would be saved. It would be so that you have a relationship with your dad, your true father.

And that is so radical. A lot of times we focus on the mission, but we don't focus on the why of the mission. It isn't just so people don't become, you know, because we self-abandoned God. We self-orphaned ourselves, as I spoke about in the first message. And God wanted to rescue it. He's not willing to have his children be separated. So he sends his own son. And this is the gospel. And so we're moving into more now, away from this idea of father, or at least I tried to.

And I was going to start building on Jesus, what he said about him being the only road to eternal life. But when I got there, once again, I found the father. I think I counted. And I counted through twice. I could have got it wrong. But in this passage, this will give you something to do if it gets boring. But in this passage, I found 12 uses, again, of the father. And I was trying to build that foundation for a fatherly structure, a scaffolding that we could build the rest of this message series on.

It will go on another four weeks after this week. And once again, I ran into the father. And I thought, okay, God, what are you saying? And this is something I believe that God is wanting to say to our congregation. You see letters in the Bible that are written to specific congregations. And God is doing things in Christendom. And there are songs and movements and things that he's doing around the world. But I do believe that God loves each church individually.

And just like you see in Revelations, he talks to seven different churches. They each have sins. They each have things that he's happy about. We could be one of those churches. Do you understand that today, you could have been a person in the Bible? I love that idea that you could have been in the Bible. Your story, your life. And this church, I believe that God has it on his radar. I believe that he knows what our sins are.

I believe that he knows the grace he wants to unfold to us. And the special harvest and the special revelation of his spirit in the entire framework of the church. Jesus is speaking. And he speaks now, John 14, 6. One of the most, I would say one of the most provocative, stumbling block type of statements that he says. John 14, 6. I'll read it again. It says that Jesus, after Thomas asked him, Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?

Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one, circle that, no one comes to the Father except through me. Now, people have tried to move that away to say through, you know, there's different messiahs. There's different sons of God. That Jesus is just one form of messiah. And that could mean through different ways. Classic Christianity, which is what we try to follow at this church, and rustic values and rustic, I would say, exegesis of scripture, believes that Jesus himself, who he says he was, who he is, him dying on the cross, his unique salvific work on the cross, and believing in that if you are presented with it.

Now, if you're not presented with it, then there's God's grace, and how God judges people fairly. It talks about that in Romans 1 and 2. But if you are presented with the gospel of Jesus being the Son of God, that Jesus is saying the only way to spend eternity with me and with the Father is through believing in faith of what I did on the cross, not through good works, but through what I did in my death and resurrection, and that I will come back and you will be saved and have eternity through me.

This is classic Christianity. This is what we follow here at this church. And so Jesus is not talking about other types of messiahs or other possible manifestations of himself. The person of Jesus from the first century that we are speaking about is the Son of God, we believe, and there's no way to get through heaven except through him. That's a stumbling block. That's an issue, right? Because what it says is that all other ways to heaven, and probably one of the most well-known ways to heaven, is through good works, if you're just a good person.

I don't know how you balance that or levy that out or figure it out, but at some point you're trying to get over the hump of, you know, good works so that you can be in heaven. Jesus completely deconstructs that idea. They said there's nothing you can do. The Scripture, the whole of Scripture, debunks that. And this is the reason God gave the Jews the law, to prove that you can't be good enough and you can never do it.

And if you break one law, Jesus says, you've broken them what? You've broken them all. So if you lie, then you're also a murderer, even though you haven't murdered. If you're a murderer, because all of it is separated from God. This is the framework that Jesus says in this Scripture. And this is really where I wanted to build the message, and I'll probably move towards it next week, but sometimes I get under the microscope, and I start getting the scalpel out, you know, and working on the Scripture, and God says, that's really not the message that I want you to preach, although I had decided I was going to preach that.

And he had a different idea. And today we're going to talk a lot about purpose. And if you've been here long enough, you know I'm not a huge fan of personal purpose. I think that it is a system that we construct to make ourselves feel good and to give ourselves self-worth. I'm not saying that God doesn't have something for you, that God isn't excited about what you do and who he's created you to be, and that we shouldn't run with God into all that we enjoy and to enjoy God along the way.

I love that idea. But this American idea, and it's basically a 100-year-old idea, because only in the last 100 years since the Industrial Revolution has the majority of the universe or the majority of the world's population had the ability to choose what they do. Like we're stat millers, you know, so we mill wheat. That's what we do. And we did it for, you know, generations, and that's why we have the name. But only in the last 100 years have we been able to say that there is a shiny thing and that if you can get that shiny thing, whatever that, you all have your shiny thing, right?

And if you can get that shiny thing, if you can find the absolute center of God's will and maintain it, here's the deal. You all think that you have to get to the center of God's will or find that shiny thing. And when you're doing the shiny thing, whether you've been called into this career, it means you're going to be a mom of 12 kids or you're whatever, you're going to be a professional soccer player, whatever your deal is, we all tend to think that if we were in alignment with God, that that would fall into place.

And when that falls into place, we will have ultimate contentment. You just need to read the book of Ecclesiastes to find out that that is absolutely not true. You read a study today that after people have their basic needs met, and there's more middle class in the world than there's ever been before in the population right now. You can go to my personal Facebook page. You'll see an article I put up today. That it says, after your basic needs are met, that human happiness does not increase with more things.

That the super rich are no happier than the middle class. And it does talk about, though, that once your needs are met poverty-wise, that there is a step up at that point. But we tend to think that if we know where, that we can get to this certain place, and then, we don't think about this so much, but you have to maintain that place, right? So if you write a book, and it just goes off the charts, I mean, you are just in the top bestsellers, you know, you're J.K. Rowling, or you're whoever you are, I gotta say, you better start working on that next book, right?

And your follow-up album better be good, or you're a one-hit wonder, and you're no longer in God's will. Or if you always wanted to be that mom, you just couldn't wait to be that mom, but your kid's a complete mess, right? Did you fulfill your purpose? Seriously. And, you know, here's the thing. God was a perfect father, and his kids still rebelled, right? Have you ever realized that? God's a perfect father, and his kids still went off the deep end, right?

You know, the first two that he created. So, you know, that's not a free pass, just to be a bad parent, by the way. So, I really rebel. I roil against this idea that if you can find this perfect little place, you're gonna have contentment. It is not what's gonna bring contentment. And so, I wanna move on to this, because Thomas is asking, as you'll see in your notes, one of the most commonly, one of the most common questions known in spirituality.

How do we get to where we're going? It's a great question. That's what spirituality is basically about. It's about going somewhere. It's about you're here, and you're going somewhere. And your spirituality is a transaction that is supposed to give you something that you don't currently have, and it's supposed to take you there. What I have seen happen in the last 40 to 50 years, especially since the 1950s, is a sense that there is this shiny thing, and if you can get there, you will eventually have the peace that you've always wanted.

You will have the recognition. You will have the success. The Bible shows us that wherever you go, unless you go with God, and that's the end of Ecclesiastes, unless you go with God, and you're doing everything for his sake and his purpose, then you will never be content. So this is the paradigm that we want to start with, and he's asking the question, how do we get to where we are going? And so I want to start by just big, fat forehand and to the right, you know, the back of the line.

I guess, is the French Open going on right now? It's not. That was earlier in the year. Nonetheless, my brother, who we won, I think we won CIF. I think it was, he's here somewhere. We played, we were CIF partners in tennis. I'm a marginal tennis player, but we did okay, and he's six foot eight, so he patrols the net pretty well. Glory years. Glory years. I want to serve it back to you. I did have a pretty good serve.

I want to serve it back to you to the far deep corner and ask you, where are you going? Where are you going? I mean, seriously, where are you going? And if you get there, are you going to be happy? I mean, like if you were to ask, like I had to ask myself this week, where am I going? Do I want to, you know, I don't want a different job. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to write more books. I mean, I would if, you know, I had some offers, but I don't, I'm not really thinking that's going to make, because I just realized long ago, like after I pretty much reached a lot of the goals that I wanted to reach, that I just wasn't any happier.

I just, I figured that out early, thank God. And hopefully if you're young, you'll figure that out as well. And the older you get, I think we kind of figure that out more. But the question is, where are you going? Like, is it a house? Is it, you want a better house? If you, if you could, I heard someone say this week, I can't wait, I'm going to, he's in his twenties. I'm going to retire early. And I thought, why? Why?

I don't want to retire early. I love what I do. Why do I want to retire? I like it. The fact that you want to retire early means you probably don't enjoy what you're doing. Am I wrong? Is that bad logic? So Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes unto the Father, but through me. And it's interesting that Jesus' entire destination was to get back to the Father. Do you get that? That was the quest of his life.

That was his purpose. That was his mission. His mission was to go to the cross, but he didn't go to the cross as an end all. I mean, we all want our purpose, right? Imagine if you had Jesus' purpose. What if you don't like your purpose? Seriously. Like, if you ever thought that the purpose that God had, like, we wouldn't be so into purpose if half of us realized what God's purpose for us might be, right? Seriously. We all think we're going to be, you know, Clark Gable, Harrison Ford, you know, whoever it is, you know, Aretha Franklin, you're going to be, you know, are some, you've, we've all dreamed up this movie of our lives.

Okay? So if it's all about purpose and it's all about finding this place, this center, Jesus' purpose, one of his purposes, but I think ultimately his purpose was to be with the Father and get back to the Father because he came here on a mission and he had to go through the cross to get to his ultimate purpose. But if Jesus' ultimate purpose was going to the cross, what a bummer. What if your purpose stinks? Right? What if your purpose stinks?

Why do we all think that everything that God has for us is this amazing job, this amazing, we'll have this amazing thing. You know, in scripture, there's a lot of people that didn't get an amazing thing and if it's about the amazing thing, let me tell you, a good majority of us aren't going to get it. Probably most of us aren't going to get it. It has to be about something more than the amazing thing or the place. And if we can get to that place, the place where the thing that we want, that the center of, of the, the purpose is to be in relationship with a Father who loves us and says, you're okay today, that I love you and that's enough, is relationship with God enough?

I guess that's the question. Where are you going? And let me ask you this, if the answer isn't through these different steps to get to the love of the Father and walk in relationship with the love of the Father as you go, you're going to the wrong place. Absolutely. I mean, when you think about all the things you want for your life, if it doesn't end according to this scripture, because Jesus takes the totality of life on earth and puts it back to going to the Father.

He says it over and over again. If your little story, if your little movie that you've created in your life doesn't end with a glorious unification, reunification with the Father in heaven that has been built with a relationship with him on earth every single day, you're going to the wrong place according to scripture. Now, this week, it was a heck of a lot easier when I just thought to myself, sitting here in this chair, having this cup of coffee, and enjoying my Father is my purpose.

Imagine, now, imagine if your shiny thing happens, okay? You get a letter in the mail, let's say you're an author, and you get a letter and they call you, this happened to me, they call you and say, we want to have your book come out. And they say, we're going to give you this much money and this is going to happen and we're going to book radio interviews, whatever your shiny thing, you all have a shiny thing, right?

And your shiny thing actually happens in that moment. There is a moment, right? There is a moment when you get booked, or you, I remember, one of my biggest things, I wanted to be the camp speaker at this camp. I just wanted to be the week-long speaker and it was such a huge aspiration. Now I'm not even sure I'd do it if they asked me. It's not that it's not a great camp, it's just, I've done it a bunch of times and I got other things I want to do and I'm actually kind of more focused on just trying to be a local church pastor and ride a bike around and minister to all you and run this church.

Like, I just, I'm happy and content doing that. Well, thank you. That's, no, I want to have multi-campuses on my face all over this country. No, I'm just kidding. More of me, less of Jesus. And I remember there was a moment, and there's been different moments in your life, where you get the call or something happens, right? And then you have that moment of like, yes! God and I, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm in, oh, I'm in the purpose.

I'm doing it. I'm in the will. It must be because this camp asked me to speak for five nights that I, in 15 years, I probably won't want to do again. But still, in this moment, I'm doing it. Or you get, you know, you make it to the NFL. Or you get that movie. Or your company goes really big and you go public. Or whatever your thing is, there comes that moment and in that moment, it's just awesome. It's so awesome until it's not anymore.

And if you're setting your life up to constantly be about the next awesome breakthrough, seize every opportunity. And opportunities do pass and I think there's open doors and we need to do that. I gotta say, you're running on the wrong fuel. It has been very difficult for me to learn to live on a different fuel. It has been very difficult. Burning straw feels a lot better than burning oak. Burning oak is really, really difficult.

You ever try to, I'm really bad at starting fires. I'm really bad. If there's ever any question someone started a fire, it wasn't me. Because I'm horrible at it and you'll probably die during the winter if you go to the mountains with me. But I love, I love the next thing. And I want to get to where that relationship with God, the relationship with God is an oak. And it's not sexy. Let me just say, it doesn't have that, it doesn't have the same type of appeal that you being on a screen or you having more likes.

It doesn't have the same taste. It doesn't have the same fragrance. It doesn't have the same flavor. But it's so much better and it takes an eternity to develop. And you're going to have to decide, I don't want to live on straw. I want to live on the oak of God that comes from relationship. And I got to tell you what, and I said it multiple times, I found myself going through seasons of not knowing who I was anymore and bored.

And somebody said, well, if you're walking with God, you're not bored. No, I think God allowed me to deal with that so I can walk to a place where relationship with him and nothing else was enough. This is what Jesus says here as we continue on in the notes. And trust me, I know where I am in the notes and I'll get you through them. Where are you going? Jesus responds by saying that there's only one destination, knowing God as Father.

I am going in verse 12b. Where is he going? To the Father. I thought you were going to the cross. It's all about your purpose. You're going to the cross. Well, Jesus was going to the cross. And much of religion has made the Christian faith and the gospel all about the cross. And it's a lot about the cross. It's a lot. I'm not going to diminish the cross. Thank God for the blood. I mean, I'll sing those hymns all day long.

But I don't want to live at the cross. I want to live with my Father. I want to live to where the cross takes me. And the cross is a wormhole that thrusts you into a powerful relationship with God. And if you can just get to the point where that's enough, I've got to say, it'll take you a while. You're going to have to detox. I've been two or three years detoxing. I can't, I literally, I can't, there's, I think of things like, if the, you know, I can't think of anything more I'd want at the moment.

When you get to the place where what you have is enough and more, and then, you know, it's kind of hard to explain. But I'll just leave it at that. Moving on. Jesus also says that he's the only passage you can traverse to get to that destination. One of the ways to know the Father is to know Jesus. I and the Father are one. And so you can focus on Jesus, but don't miss the fatherly qualities in Jesus along the way. It says that when you get the Spirit, it is the Spirit of Jesus that you will have because there is a Trinitarian effect.

And Jesus wants to show you the Father. And if you know Jesus, you will know the Father, even though Philip missed him. We'll see this, excuse me, Thomas missed him. Because Thomas says, show us the Father. We'll talk about this in a second. And Thomas, and Jesus goes, are you serious? Like, really? You've been with me all this time? You know who the Father is? I mean, he says some pretty bold stuff. I feel like he said that to me a few years back.

Seminary degree, blah, blah, blah. You know, whatever. All this education. But I didn't know the Father. And I felt like Jesus one time said, hey, I want to introduce you to my dad. And that is so core and so revolutionary in the stuff Jesus says. And I just want, if I can shift this entire, everyone in this congregation to pursuing Jesus through the cross so that you might know the love of the Father, that's what I will do.

Because that is the entirety of the gospel. We need to have it all. Continuing on, for Jesus' relationship is the destination. And you hear people say that all the time, right? It's not about destination, it's about the journey. That's actually, it's a secular statement. But it's actually true. You sitting here right now, okay, you know that feeling I talked about that you get, that good feeling when something good happens.

You can have that feeling. Jesus wants you to have that feeling just sitting in the pew right now. That right now, that you have this sense of like, I am exactly in God's will. I've gotten the shiny thing. I got the phone call. The movie's going to be produced. Your dance is going to get danced. Your play is going to get written. Your, whatever you want is going to happen. You know how you would feel like that? If those things happen?

Jesus is saying, you should feel like that now. That you can get out of bed every single morning and think, I'm in the center of God's will. I'm perfectly, I reached my purpose. I've done it. I've actually done it. You can go walk down the street right now and do it in God's love and do it in relationship with the Father and say, God, I know you love me and you're with me and I'm doing everything for your glory as Jesus says in this.

And as you do that, you can actually live if you can detox from the world's statement that you have to be something else that you're never going to actually get to. If you can step away from that and live in that moment, you can actually have moments where you think, I've actually done it. I've done it. I'm living in this purpose. We have seen all over the world the amount of celebrities that are taking their lives when they're supposed to have everything.

Why? Because that shiny thing doesn't exist. The shiny thing is where you are now. And I had moments this week where I was like, I reached it. I did it. I am, I'm here. And I felt at so much peace of like, I did it. And it's just knowing that my Father loves me and walking in relationship with Him. Jesus talks on this. Take this home and chew on this chapter. For Jesus, relationship is about the destination. When we make a life, now, I spend a lot of time writing this sentence.

I hope you like it. I really don't care if you don't like it, but nonetheless. When we make life about a destination, other than a relationship with our Father, we set ourselves up for a life of disappointment. When we make our life about a destination, other than a relationship with our Father, we set ourselves up for a life of disappointment. Now, here's the next sentence I wrote that I really like even more. Purpose, outside of living completely for the glory of God as Father, is a works-based merit system that promises you worth and contentment if you can only find and maintain it.

I wrote that. I'm happy with it. You can use it. You can steal it and say you wrote it. Thank you, Eric. Purpose outside of living completely. Now, dig into this. Purpose outside of living completely for the glory of God as Father is a works-based merit system that promises you worth and contentment if you can only find and maintain it. That's true. That statement is true. And what Jesus is wanting to say is he wants you to step outside of that and into relationship.

Jesus' life, entire purpose was to do the will of the Father, to be in the life of the Father, and he will lead you into good works. It says that he has good works prepared for you. If you are in relationship with the Father, you don't have to go seek for your purpose. It will come and lay down at your feet. It'll be, you'll have an awareness when someone comes up and needs help, when there's a moment to go, to enter into a new work or a new act.

God will bring it to your feet. Imagine if Jesus made, as I said earlier, his entire purpose, spiritual and emotional satisfaction based on his personal purpose. If that purpose was the cross. It had to be based in something more. Finishing now, it's possible, circling the tower, it's possible to walk with Jesus for years, even decades, and miss the entire point. And I do believe that much of a large section of Christian media is built on this purpose idea because it sells.

I literally believe that a huge portion of Christian media, the songs that are written, the books that are written, the TV shows, it sells. I can sell you your purpose because we are so longing as people to be valued, to feel contentment, to feel peace, and I can sell it to you. And I tell you what, I don't think they're doing the wrong thing. I don't think they think I'm going to sell it to them. I think they think that contentment comes when you find your purpose.

And the purpose is knowing God as Father. So different. It's so countercultural. It's so revolutionary. But it doesn't sell as well. And it's harder to live. Is it possible to walk with Jesus for years and even decades and miss the entire point? Verse 8 through 10, Philip says, this is Philip, Lord, show us the Father. It wasn't Thomas, it was Philip. Show us the Father and that will be enough for us. Well, I like that.

That's actually correct. And Jesus answered, don't you know me, Philip? Even after I've been with you, among you, for such a long time, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, don't show us the Father? Show us the Father. Don't you believe that I and the Father are one and the Father is in me? As a scripture, as we come in for a landing, is full of stories of people that are in the presence of God and have no clue that God's there.

Jesus walks out and the disciples right after they'd been with Jesus, after the crucifixion, and they think he's what? A ghost. They have no idea who he was. Pilate has no idea that Jesus is in his midst. Moses, when there's a burning bush at first, has no idea. Abraham has no idea that God is in their very midst and we miss the core of the gospel. I want to say that if we open up our eyes and pray each day for an awareness of the Father's love, I mean, really, spend some time each morning like we talked about last week and get yourself in touch with the Father's love and walk through each day with say, God, give me an awareness of who you are.

The Father will begin to reveal himself and create a peace in you and a cadence in your life that stops ringing alarm bells. You will know, you will know how much the Father is a part of your life by how many alarm bells you have to ring every week. What I feel like God wants to do is come in and give us a peace and a joy. And that is the gospel, to know the Father. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes unto the Father except through me.

Let's journey to the Father this week. Chris, come up and lead us. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Let's do it. Let's do it. 2, get you.