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Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain John 14:5:
John 14:1-6
Excerpted from: Jesus in the Feasts (Part Two): FirstfruitsLet us remember when He said this, what the context of this is: The evening of the Passover just before His arrest and His trial and his crucifixion. Once resurrected, which He had told them several times would happen, He was going to heaven and to sit at the Father's right hand. And here He says His job, then, would be to prepare places of authority and service for His disciples, all of them. There are many mansions, there are many offices, there are many rooms. We can fill the place up. But I am going, He says, to make sure that the people are prepared for the rooms, If you will.
In other words, it would be His job to prepare for the harvest of the firstfruits. As Herbert Armstrong said, He would be putting together His team to govern the world once He once he set up His Kingdom after His return. So He tells them, at least from our vantage point here, what He was going to do. It is pretty plain. That He was going to go where the Father is in heaven, to His house, and He was going to take up the job, take up the responsibility of preparing a people for God.
Now we get to Thomas' questions. Notice them. "Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?" He asked basically two questions. Where are You going? It is the first one. Let me just stop on the first one. I find it very odd that he said, "Where are You going?" Because He had just told them! That is why I said as we are going through there, Thomas must not have been listening. But really the rest of the disciples were not listening either in this sense. They were confused, they did not know what He was talking about. It is almost like they had no conception of the Father being in heaven. I am sure they did, maybe they intellectually knew it, but they could not put it together that Jesus Christ would end up going to the Father in heaven. You know, their understanding may not have been quite as developed as obviously it later was; they were having trouble putting things together. But I have always, since I was a young man, have looked at that and said, "Thomas, why didn't you know what He meant?" He just said, "I go to prepare a place for you." And He just said that it was His Father's house He was going to. I do not know; the disciples just baffle me sometimes. But I guess that is typical of human nature.
But his second question is: "How can we follow You if we do not know the way?" How can we know the way? I think it is really interesting that Jesus completely ignores the first question. "Thomas, you should know." Of course, He was going to expand on it shortly, so He was really just putting Thomas off a bit on the answer to that first question, even though He had made a pretty good description of where He was going. But if you go through this whole evening's worth of discussion between them, they do not get where He is going until chapter 16, verse 29. "Oh, now You're speaking plainly." I mean, He really had to spell it out to them over a very long discourse and finally, you know, the light comes on.
But it is the second one that He answers here. The second question, "How can we follow You if we do not know the way?" And He answers it with one of His "I am" statements. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
Now remember the second part, "No one comes to the Father except through Me," is referring back to "I go to prepare a place for you." I am going to My Father's house. He is saying essentially, "I am the way. You can't get to the Father's house except through Me." Now we do not need to go through the technical arguments about whether this is properly translated or not. It could be, and it seems like it might very well be better translated as "I am the true and living way." Fine, but we do not need to argue that right now. For our purposes, it does not matter.
John 14:5-6
Excerpted from: Holiness (Part 1)Tie that together with Matthew 11:27. Those who can know the Father are those who are having the Father revealed to them by the Son.
It is through the life, the works, and the words of Jesus Christ that we come to know the names of God. Moses asked God to show him His way. "If you want to see what God is like, if you want to see the mind of God, if you want to see the nature of God, if you want to see God's whole attitude," Jesus Christ is saying, "look at Me!" He is the way because, of all of mankind (all who have ever lived), He is the only one who has intimate knowledge of the Father that is totally, completely, unmarred by sin. His vision of God is absolutely perfect and accurate.
Jesus Christ shows the way men should walk. Actually, I should not say, "should." The way men must walk. He shows us the direction, the manner, the method of doing things. The way to God lies in knowledge of the Son. This is exactly what Christ has done, in declaring the glory of the Father to mankind.
In addition to that, He is truth. There are people who can speak truth. They can teach us truth. I can teach you truth. Many others can teach us truth. But Jesus Christ was truth. He embodied it! Everything that He did and said was absolutely right on the mark—every time, without fail. No misleading, no shadow of turning. No time, at any time in His life, was there ever even the tiniest hint of deception about God, about what He is, or the way to go, or the way to do things. Everything is right on the mark.
That is important, because I could get up here and I could teach you things—let us say about geometry. Whether I am a man of integrity, of responsibility—and what my character is like—does not matter a great deal. It does not affect the mathematical truth of geometry. But if a person is going to teach you moral and spiritual and ethical truth, what that person is makes all the difference in the world.
Would you like to receive a lesson on purity from an adulterer? There is an inborn resistance to that kind of thing. But it is awfully hard to refute and to find fault with the words of a person who embodies truth, and he is teaching truth—because you know that person is living it. Then those words carry weight and authority.
EssaysKnowledge and the Truth (Part One)
Overcoming Troubled Hearts (Part Two)
SermonsGlorify You Me
Hebrews (Part Fifteen): Chapter 2, A Mind Bending Purpose (Part Four)
Running God's Marathon With Christ
Conforming to This World
Troubling the Household of God
In Search of a Clear World View (Part Three)
The Spirit and the Way
Jesus the Door
A GPS for our Spiritual Pilgrimage
The Apostle Thomas
All in All (Part 2)
The Third Commandment: Idolatry
In Him Was Life
Our Core Business
John (Part 21)
The Father-Son Relationship (Part One)
Principled Living (Part 1): Imitating Christ
The Commandments (Part Four)
All in All
The Unleavened Life Is a Happy Life!
Leavening: The Types
To the Glory of God
All Sifted Like Wheat
All Sifted Like Wheat (Part Three)
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