I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, John 14:1-11

Summary

In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp discusses the exclusivity, work, and blessings of Christ. He emphasizes that Jesus is the only way to know God the Father and experience salvation. He explains that Jesus secured our future destiny through his death and resurrection, and that he revealed the Father through his complete submission and obedience. Pastor Aaron also highlights that Jesus is the truth that loves us back and brings meaning to our lives. He concludes by urging listeners to trust in the finished work of Christ and receive the gift of salvation.

Takeaways

• Jesus is the exclusive way to know God the Father and experience salvation.
• Through his death and resurrection, Jesus secured our future destiny and revealed the Father.
• Jesus is the truth that loves us back and brings meaning to our lives.
• We should trust in the finished work of Christ and receive the gift of salvation.

Chapters

00:00 Exclusivity of Christ
14:19 Work of Christ
36:30 Blessings of Christ

Creators & Guests

Host

Aaron Shamp

Lead Pastor of Redeemer City Church

What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?

Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.

Don't let your heart be troubled, believe in God. Believe also in me. In my father's house are many rooms. If not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you.

If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself so that where I am going, you may be also. You know the way to where I am going." Lord, Thomas said, we don't know where you're going. How can we know the way? Jesus told him, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will also know my Father.

From now on, you do know him and have seen him. Lord," said Philip, "'Show us the Father, and that's enough for us.' Jesus said to him, "'Have I been among you all this time, and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak to you, I do not speak on my own. The Father who lives in me does his works.'"

believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves. So we are doing this series called Who Is Jesus? Because we recognize that there are many, many people today who know the name of Jesus. In fact, Jesus' name, the name of Jesus is probably one of the most well-known names across the globe. Many people know the name Jesus, but they don't actually know who Jesus is.

There's a lot of people today who have an understanding of Jesus, maybe one that was even given to them by churches or pastors. And it's not the true image of Jesus or identity of who he is. Many people today see Jesus as someone who was a great teacher. You know, there's even though Christianity is more and more moving to the margins of our society.

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And more and more, we're living in a world that has a, in a society that has a negative view towards the church and towards Christianity. In spite of that, there's a lot of people who still like Jesus. You'll hear this quite often that they like Jesus, but they don't like the church or they, you know, they don't like everything else. He's still widely regarded as being a great teacher, suppose, and many people admire so many of the things that he said, because he talked about

loving one another, right? And he talked about how we ought to be kind to one another, how we ought to treat one another, how we ought to turn the cheek. We read and we see how he treated those who were poor and marginalized in their society, how he dealt with the diseased, how he dealt with women and children and so on. And many people admire all of these things. But take note though that people admire all the things about Jesus that they already agree with.

You know, everyone likes hearing the teachings about love and loving one another and loving our neighbor and so on. And so people really admire all those things. But let's just ask this question. There have been a lot of other teachers throughout world history, a lot of other religious leaders who have said very similar things and said some nice things about love and kindness and how we ought to treat one another and so on. But why is it that Jesus, that this figure?

in all of world history, completely changed world history. You know, Jesus said a lot of the things that of which he's admired for, that a lot of other people said, but those other teachers did not change the course of history like Jesus did. Why is it that the name of Jesus made such a huge impact on our world? I mean, do you do you realize that the Western world that we live in today and that even what we see across the globe, that it would not be the same today if it were not for Jesus?

through Jesus, his name, the people that followed him, the movement that started after through the early church, the church through the medieval and Middle Ages and so on, completely and certainly through the Protestant Reformation, shaped and created the world that we live in today. It influenced and created the air that we breathe, the assumptions that we hold, many of the ethics that we still stand by. Our whole conception of human rights did not exist before Christianity. Why is it that Jesus?

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amongst all the other religious teachers out there throughout world history, that he changed the world, that he really changed things. Here's why. It's not because of all the things that we already like that other people also said, right? Because, well, why didn't they change things when they said it? It's because of the controversial things that Jesus said. It's because of the controversial things, the things that he said that confront us, that challenge us is because of those things that he said, which are the reason why

He, in contrast to everyone else, ended up changing world history that makes him stand apart. And we see one of those controversial statements here in John chapter 14. John chapter 14, this discussion that happens with him and his disciples is all done in the context of Jesus trying to tell them to not be troubled. He tells them these things because he does not want their hearts to be troubled. And yet he tells them things that kind of trouble them at first. They're struggling to understand it.

And so this morning we recognize that we must learn these things as well so that our hearts will not be troubled either. But we have to do that by looking at the controversial statements of Jesus. And so we're going to look at a few things. First, the exclusivity of Christ, then the work of Christ, and then the blessings of Christ. All right. So the exclusivity, the work, and the blessings of Christ, what we're looking at today. So first of all, we consider how Jesus made

Once again, something that is a very controversial statement. He stated that he is, which is our big statement for today. He said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Now, that is quite a bold statement, right? Jesus is claiming that in himself there is no other way to know God the Father. So he's claiming to be the

the ultimate and exclusive source of true knowledge about who God is, the ultimate revelation of who God the Father is. That is quite the statement, you know? Every other religious leader, founder of other religions came and what they said is that they were just, you know, teaching people about who their God was and they were unveiling some wisdom and truth, but they did not claim to be the ultimate revelation of who that God was.

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But this is what Jesus says. He says that he is the only way to know God the Father. And more than that, what he is talking about is that he is the only way to experience salvation, to be saved from sin, to be saved from death, to experience eternal life. That's why he says he is the way, the truth and the life. No one goes except through me, he says. You see, that is a controversial statement. It's an extreme statement.

He is claiming absolute exclusivity to God the Father. That's our first big point. Jesus claims absolute exclusivity to God the Father. He says there is no other way to get to Him. You see, now how do you respond to a person like this? We might look at Jesus and say, man, I love what He said about loving your neighbor. And I just love that story where He so gently treated the diseased woman.

or the father whose son was sick and dying and how he treated him. The story of how we see he received children. You know, Jesus in all of his humility and his meekness and ability to joyously receive the children, you know, they were coming to him and the disciples were trying to hold them back because I don't know if you notice, but children tend to cause a scene, you know, and he said, No, I want them to come to me. You know, he is gentle and approachable enough for the children to

to come and play with him, but then he says things like this. How do you respond to that? What do you do with that? Moreover, notice what else he says. He told them, he says, have faith in God and in me.

So he does not just claim to be, you know, the man above all men who has perfect knowledge of the father, but he claims that he is equally a worthy object of faith as God the father is. Just as you would have faith in God, he says, have faith in me. Once again, no one else, no other great teacher, no other philosopher.

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no religious leader ever said something like that. That just as you can have faith in God, you can have faith in me. Many other people came teaching about a God. Many other people came for a certain cause. They came in the name of a truth. They came in the name of justice and so on, but they did not say, you can place your faith in me. Jesus did not say, I came just to teach you about the Father. Jesus does not come and say, I'm telling you where, I'm pointing you to where

I am the object of your faith. He claims absolute exclusivity, that he alone is the way to know God the Father and to experience eternal life, that he is worthy of us placing our faith in him. It's incredible. It's an incredible truth. And it's something that is incredibly unpopular today. It is incredibly unpopular today.

We live in a society today where it is seen as bad manners, where it is seen as taboo, where it is seen as perhaps unsophisticated or backwards or old fashioned to claim any kind of absolute truth, unless it's an absolute truth that's already approved by the mainstream culture and by

the institutional elites and by major corporations, then it's okay to claim those truths. But otherwise, to claim any other kind of absolute truth claims or to say that, or to claim absolute truth claims about morality and how we ought to live and what is absolutely right and what is objectively wrong, these are things that are very unpopular to do today. They are the kind of claims that will lead you to being misunderstood, that will lead people to...

maybe even respond in hostility to you. And yet. Jesus tells us that he is the only way and that he is worthy of us placing our faith in him. In fact, it is only by us placing our faith in him that we can know God and that we can have life. Does this truth change in a culture where it is unpopular to say so?

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We as Christians, as Christ followers, must be willing to stand on this truth and say unequivocally, yes, it is still true. In spite of religious pluralism, in spite of any kind of multiculturalism, in spite of any type of moral relativism, we stand on the words of Jesus and say, yes, they are true. Are we willing to stand on the exclusivity of Christ?

no matter how unpopular it becomes, no matter how, what kind of hostilities, mockery, you know, ostracization, I butchered that word, ostracization, I'm going to have to look that up later. You know what I mean, being pushed to the edges of society, you know, being left out of social groups and so on. Are we willing to experience all those things in order to stand on the words of Christ as he says them here in John chapter 14?

Let me tell you what we ought to tell the culture, what we ought to say to them as we stand on this exclusivity of Christ. We live in a culture today that is relativistic. What that means is everyone says, you know, you can do what is right for you and I will do what is right for me. And what is right for you is right for you. And what is right for me is right for me. What is true for me is true for you. And if yours is the complete opposite, well, then it's still true for you. This is moral.

Relativism. There's no such thing as objective, absolute truth and falsehood, but it's just whatever works or whatever I decide. This comes down to truth and falsehood. It comes down to what I decide is right and wrong and so on. It comes down to what I will stake my life upon as what makes my life meaningful. And so we are told everyone can just go and choose your own truth. You can go and choose what makes your life meaningful. But here's the thing.

There's several different responses to this, but I just want to make one.

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Can that truth love you back?

Where do you decide to stake your life upon? Can it love you back? Because we do not just need like that calling or source of truth, but we also need a source of truth, something that gives meaning to our life, but also that encompasses all of life, making sense of the whole. And can your truth love you back? Can it make sense of the love that you need? Well, here's the answer, no.

Of course it can't. And what happens whenever your chosen truth, whenever you fail it? Because we all will. No matter what you decide to make as the center and core of your life, the truth that you'll live by, you're going to fail it. What happens then? Is there any path to redemption, atonement, grace, second chances? You're just a failure then. What you decided to choose as making your life meaningful wasn't able to fulfill. So a lot of people then just abandon the whole concept of.

source of truth is making our life meaningful and they just go looking for love, whether that be love through family, love through community, love through romantic life partners, and so on. But at the end of the day, we recognize that none of those loves can fulfill, that they still don't make sense of life, that they don't necessarily carry us through suffering. The source of meaning that we receive from them disappears once that love or trust is broken. And what happens is, we live in a culture of despair.

despair where people have finally just thrown their hands in the air and said, well, there's no ultimate meaning, there's no ultimate truth. And love is always fleeting. It can be broken, it can be taken away. And so we say, Jesus is the truth that loves you back.

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Jesus is the source of meaning that you can stake your life upon that actually loves you back. He fulfills not just that need to ground us with a truth and meaning that gives, that makes our life feel significant and matter and gives direction to our life, but also that gives us the love that we need, that makes sense of all things and brings unity to life. He is the truth that loves us back.

Moreover, He is the truth that can redeem us, atone us whenever we fail Him, whenever we sin against Him. He can forgive us. He loves us.

Upon this, we stand on the exclusivity of Christ and we say that he is the truth. He's the truth that also loves us. Now, what about his work? So he tells them, he tells them these things because he does not want their hearts to be troubled. That's what it says in the beginning of John 14. So the first thing he tells them is to have faith in him. That's the first thing. Do not be troubled, have faith in me, he says. But then he also continues to tell them about what he is going to accomplish for him through his work.

And so our second big point is that Jesus claims his work will have extraordinary accomplishments. There are two that I want us to look at, two extraordinary accomplishments of Jesus's work. The first one he describes in verses four through six, he says that his going away will secure their future destiny. He starts to talk to them about what he is going to do. He says, I need to leave because I'm going to prepare a place for you in my father's house.

This is something that, with some cultural understanding, it kind of helps illuminate. Back then, whenever a man and a woman would become betrothed, whenever they'd become engaged, their engagement period would, or betrothment, would typically last for a long period because there's all kinds of planning to be done and so on. But one of the things that would happen is that the groom, the man, he's a man.

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the male fiance, you know, in the couple, would go back to his father's home and very often he would go and perhaps add on rooms to his father's house or prepare a room for them in his father's house or add on in some way to his father's property a place for them to live because after they would be married, the bride would leave her family and then she would go join her groom and become a part of his family in his father's house.

So this is the way they do typically work in that type of culture. And so you see how you can understand what Jesus is explaining here, what he is talking about. He's saying to his disciples that we who follow Christ are going to be covenantally united to him for all eternity, to such a deep unity that we will be a part of his family in his father's house. Just as the betrothed couple, the bride and the groom become covenantally.

united together as a new family, right, for the rest of their lives. Jesus is saying that he is securing a future like that for us, where we will be united to him. But we have to keep this in mind. How is he going to do that? He says he's going away to secure this future for them, but what route will he take? When we go and we read the rest of the story of the Gospels, we recognize that his going away is going to be done

and it was through the route of death. Jesus is going to go and add rooms to his father's house. Jesus is going to go and prepare a place for his disciples and for us, but it will be done through the route of his own death. There's no other way. Through his death and resurrection, this is how he secures a place for them in his father's house, because we don't deserve a place in the father's house. We shouldn't be brought into the father's house.

And nevertheless, when you read the Old Testament Psalms, you read the psalmist declaring about how he will spend all the days of his life, all the days of his eternal life in the Father's house. How in spite of all the sufferings and trials he endures now, he looks forward to that day when he will spend all of his days experiencing the goodness of God in his house. But what does the psalmist always say whenever he says that he looks forward to that future? He says, it will be done.

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by the steadfast love of the Lord. Anytime you read the Psalms and it says, steadfast love, it might say something slightly different depending on your translation, but it'll always distinguish, steadfast love of the Lord, that'll secure a place in the Father's house one day. The word being used there in the Hebrew is hesed. Hesed was the special term used for the covenantal love of God.

That is referring to whenever God promised to Abraham and he promised to Moses that he had chosen them to be his people, for them to be his people and for him to be their God. And that if they would obey him, if they would live as they ought to in this relationship with him, then they would receive life. They would receive blessings. He would take care of every need, and they would have a future with him. But what happens whenever they break that covenant?

We see every covenant comes with a set of blessings, but also a set of curses. If you keep the covenant and maintain it, then they're the blessings, the blessings of God's provision, the blessing of life and so on. But if you break the covenant, then there is curse and that curse was death. So what is God to do then? Because he made a covenant with his people. He promised that he would give them life.

But yet the people of Israel, the people in Jesus's day and us now, we are sinful, right? We are fallen. We are imperfect and we break that covenant often daily. So what is God to do then? Is he then to break his promise to give us life because we have broken his covenant? Or is he to find another way? There's this magnificent story in the life of Abraham whenever God reminds Abraham of this covenant.

He tells Abraham, he appears before him, it says as a smoking pot, a flaming torch. And he goes to Abraham and he says, I want you to take these animals and you're going to cut them in half and place them, the two halves, across from one another with like an aisle in between them. And so Abraham does this. This was a typical way of signifying a covenant between two people. You would, it was often thought of as cutting the covenant because you would cut the animals,

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place their two halves and they walk between them saying, we are entering into this relationship with promises. And if I break my promises, if I break my commitment, may I end up like these creatures, right? May my life be taken and may my blood be spilled as they were. So God tells Abraham to do this. Abraham takes the animals, he cuts them, and then he waits until it gets dark. And then in the darkness,

with God appearing before him as he did, he passes through the animals. Well, what we would assume would happen next is that Abraham, as the representative of the covenant to be made, would pass through next. But instead, God passes through a second time.

saying, you know, I am entering into this covenant. I'm promising you my faithfulness. And then in Abraham's place, he walks through again saying, and I am promising my faithfulness on your behalf too.

saying, if you break this covenant, may I be broken. If you break this covenant, may my blood be shed.

And Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. Jesus makes it possible for us to look forward to a future one day of having a place in the Father's house. Though we break the covenant, though we are unfaithful, Jesus says that we can place our faith in Him, not because of how faithful we are, but we can place our faith in Him because of His faithfulness to us. Jesus is the one.

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who passes through the animals and who, because of our breaking the covenant, because of our sinfulness, he is the one who is broken. He is the one whose life is torn asunder. He is the one whose blood is shed. He is the one who suffers on our behalf so that we might be saved. And this is the reason that Jesus is the exclusive way to God the Father, because he is the one whose blood was shed. There are two options. Our blood will be shed or we will have a substitute.

Jesus is the only one whose blood was shed, whose blood could atone, because he was the perfect one. Can a sinner?

in his blood, atone for the blood of another sinner. Can a sinner's blood atone for the blood of another sinner? No, but Jesus, the sinless one, the righteous one, the perfectly obedient one to God the Father, his pure and righteous blood can be shed to cover the sins of an unrighteous people, of a people who will break the covenant, who will be unfaithful to it. Just as whenever the angel of death was passing over Egypt and...

God promised that he would spare his people, though they deserved to die like the Egyptians. God promised he would spare his people because of the blood of a substitute. He did not spare them just because he said, don't worry about it. No, something else had to die. Something else had to bleed to atone. The blood of a substitute was shed and was placed up on the doorpost. And you know what? Whenever the angel of death passed over,

and all the lives of the Israelites were spared in Goshen. There were people in those houses with the blood on the doorpost who were wicked, just like the Egyptians. There were people who had committed the same sins as the Egyptians. There were people who were as faithless as the Egyptians. But whenever the angel passed over and their lives were spared, their lives were spared not because of anything that the people in that house had done, but because there was

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blood of a substitute on the door.

Jesus's ability to promise that he has a place he is preparing for us is possible because he took a route. It was a route that was pointed forward to whenever Abraham saw God pass through the animals. The route that was pointed forward to whenever the blood of the lambs was placed up on the doorposts and those people were saved. It was the route of death. But through the route of death and resurrection, Jesus is able to make this promise that we can stake

our lives upon, that he has a place for us.

He also says, so that's his first accomplishment, but he also says that through his work and his accomplishment, his going away will complete his revelation of the Father, his revealing of the Father. So Thomas asks the first question, you know, about how can we know the way? Jesus tells him, I am the way. And he completes that way in his death and resurrection. And then Philip says, well, just show us the Father. And Jesus tells him, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.

My works are the works of the Father. If you hear my words, you have heard the words of the Father. But his revealing of the Father, we must recognize, is made possible by his complete submission and obedience to the Father, including his ultimate act of revealing God the Father in his death on the cross. This is how Jesus reveals the Father to them by his going away. Because in his revelation of

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of God the Father on the cross, he is revealing how God is upholding and fulfilling his covenant on the cross by satisfying his justice and yet his love winning the day and his own son taking the curse for our sins. Let's consider this blessing. Our last big point is that Jesus claims that he is

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to life. If we remember the context of John's gospel, at the beginning of the gospel of John, in chapter 1, he opens it by saying that in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. And he describes the Word and he says that this, as it goes on later in chapter 1, he says, and this Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

What he is talking about there is he was speaking directly into the culture that he was writing this gospel, this memoir, if you will, that he was writing it into. He was speaking directly into that culture because whenever he was saying in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, he was using a loaded term. He was talking about the logos. He was saying that in the beginning was the truth, the divine truth, and that this truth was God. You see, because in this context and in this time for centuries,

their philosophers have been arguing about what exactly is, or where exactly is, what exactly is divine truth? Is there a source of objective truth out there? Is there a source of objective meaning that we can stake our lives upon that makes sense of the world around us? Is there this objective source of meaning and truth that we can live in, right, that brings unity and wholeness and flourishing to our lives?

So for centuries, they had been arguing about this. They had been saying, you know, well, does this divine truth exist? And some of them said, yes, it's out there. But they just kind of looked at it as a force. You know, it's like this transcendent force that is out there. Others said, no, there is no such thing. Others of them said, well, it is out there, but it's impossible for us to know. They've been arguing over it for years and years, and no one could ever make sense of it. Many of them, just like in our culture, that's struggling to find a source of truth and meaning that makes sense.

of life that brings wholeness to life, just as we've given up, many of them did back then as well. But into this culture, John is writing his gospel and he says, there is the logos. It does exist. It is there. This divine source of truth, objective source of meaning that orients our life and brings wholeness to our life. But then he says something that no one had ever suggested. He says, and this logos became flesh.

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This logos became flesh. He is declaring in the midst of this Hellenistic world that yes, there is objective truth, there is inherent meaningfulness to life, but it is not found in just some transcendent divineness out there or force is found in a person, Jesus Christ. And Jesus himself states that. John tells us in the context of saying that Jesus says, he is the way, he is the truth.

that they had been searching for, that people today are searching for, and that he brings life. I said it a few times already, but we live in a similar time of nihilism about life. Nihilism meaning the worldview that there's no meaning, there's no truth, nothing matters, right? We live in a similar time. We might call it a cynical time, where people are cynical that...

that there is any goodness in the world, that there is anything meaningful and worth staking our life upon other than just the small momentary fleeting pleasures that we can soak out of our modern society and our technological luxuries that we have available to us, that this is all that we really have. It's a cynical time that we live in. Just choose your own truth and meaning. But what do we see?

We see that those ultimately fail. They lead us to a place of meaninglessness. They lead us to a place of brokenness where there is no truth that brings unity to all of life, that orients our hearts, that tells us that our life ultimately matters. This is one of the things that troubles our hearts. When we, particularly, when we experience sufferings, when we go through times of hardship and trial, does any of this matter?

the trial that I'm going through, is there a reason for it? The sufferings that I've been through in my life and the scars that I have to show for them, the horrors and the wickedness and the oppressions and the sufferings that I witnessed in the world around me that I see my neighbors going through and coworkers that I see on the news, does even actually matter? Or do we just live in a world that is, what does it say, Macbeth? We live in a world that is a story told by

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A tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing, you know, something along those lines. Is that the world that we live in? Or is there a good ending? Does any of it matter? Is there even a reason? Can there be a good reason even for the sufferings that we face and that we witness?

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We look at Jesus and Jesus says, yes. Christmas tells us that there is meaningfulness to life. Christmas tells us that this life and even the sufferings that we endure matter because.

the eternal God stepped into time.

You know, the God who is transcendent beyond time, the God who created the world stepped into this world as a man. He walked in the dirt as we walk. He lived a life just as we live. He experienced the hardships that we experience. And because the eternal God stepped into time, because the transcendent God became a man, and because he died on this earth in the time that we live in, within time, it signifies to us that it does

matter because otherwise why would he do that? It tells us that the sufferings that we go through do matter because he came. The Word became flesh and he dwelt among us, John says. Whenever John says that he dwelt among us, he describes that in the original language in a unique way that can be literally translated as he tabernacled among us.

It refers back to in the Old Testament, whenever the people of God had the tabernacle, that was a tent that held the holy, that held the Ark of the Covenant, that held the stone tablets with the law, that had the multiple rooms with it that led to the Holy of Holies. And this tabernacle, through their wanderings in the wilderness, even as they became a nation up until the time that the temple was built, always dwelt among them because it was viewed as the covenant, the God that we are in covenant with.

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who promised to be with us, this is his presence. This is where he is, he dwells with us. Whenever the people of Israel lived in tents, God lived in a tent, a tabernacle with them. And John says, the word did not just become flesh, but he tabernacled with us.

The covenant God came and he made his place with us. This is the promise that we can know God, that we can have a life that God dwells in, that God tabernacles in, so that any sufferings that we go to and any times that we can ask, does life in any of this matter, will there be a good ending to it all, we can go to the God who dwells with us. Jesus says he is the life.

He doesn't come to tell them about how to find the life, but instead he gives us himself. Remember, Jesus and his work is the exclusive way to God the Father. It's not done by any other name, and it's not done by your name. You will not add a single ounce of merit to the work that Jesus has already accomplished. Whenever you and I stand before God the Father,

And we have to answer the question of why or do we have a place in his house? We will only stand upon the work of Jesus Christ alone. We will add nothing to it. He says he is the way he is, the truth. He is the life. We will not add anything to that. We will stand on the finished work of Jesus alone. That is the salvation that he accomplished for us. The gospel is not instruction.

It is announcement. Have you received that announcement? Are you following Him as the exclusive way to God the Father, the only way to experience forgiveness of sin? Have you experienced like those Israelites being saved from your sin and death because you have been covered by the blood of the Lamb? Or are you trying to add a little bit of your own effort to it? Are you still living with what are

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doubting hearts tell us, which is that it can't be all grace. I've got to add a little bit, I've got to work a little bit, I've got to improve myself. Of course, God couldn't love me and accept me as I am now. I've got to clean myself up some, I've got to do some acts of morality, I've got to start doing this and that, I've got to fulfill some steps that the church gave me or whatever else it might be. Are you still holding on to those little things? Or are you standing secure in the work of Christ?

alone. This is why Jesus came at Christmas, because it was the only way. Our situation was so desperate, we cannot add anything to it, we cannot save ourselves, and so therefore God had to come.

Why would you trust or place any faith in any of your own efforts, but trust and rest in the secure love of God. Look at what he has done for you. Rest in that love alone. Whenever you become a parent, you start to see something in yourself that I think maybe at first is kind of unsettling. There's a lot of things about parenthood and having a child that make people nervous. It's a big job.

It's a big responsibility. But I think one thing that people don't really tell you about is how parenthood also, having a child, changes you. And one of the things that you might see inside of yourself that maybe makes yourself more afraid than a lot of the other things about parenthood is recognizing what wouldn't I do for my child. Sometimes you think through scenarios about, what if they fall into this river? I'm jumping in. Doesn't matter if it's raging.

I'm going in. What if someone were ever to try to harm my child? I'm gonna harm them. You think through all these scenarios and you recognize what wouldn't I do for my child? What lengths would I go to for them? Sometimes it kind of frightens you to think about it.

Aaron Shamp (47:43.35)
What wouldn't God do to save you? Jesus shows us he will go to the absolute lengths. Coming down as a man at Christmas, living his perfect life, fulfilling his ministry, dying on the cross and rising again from the grave. That is the love of God that he has for you proven in Jesus Christ, who is the only way, truth and life. Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you now, we ask that you would help us to understand these things. Lord, reveal to us what is going on in our hearts, the barriers that we have, the defenses that we put up, the temptation of our hearts to continue trusting in our own work to try to earn your love. Lord, the doubts that come into our mind whenever we consider our unworthiness to receive your love and your life. Father.

reveal these things to us in our hearts, show us how they are lies, and that the truth is found in Jesus. That it is not our faithfulness, but it is your faithfulness. It is not our work, but it is Christ's finished work. It is not our ability to love you, but it is your unbreakable love for us that secures our salvation. And that this love that is shown to us, ultimately revealed in Jesus Christ,

through Jesus Christ is how we can experience and receive that love. Lord, so Father, I ask for all of us here this morning that you would break through those defenses, that you would tear down those walls, that you would soften hard hearts, that you would banish away any lies so that we might receive. Lord, this Christmas season, we ask that you would help us to be in a posture of bowed head and open hands.

to receive the gift.

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We talk a lot about giving gifts. We love to give gifts, but Lord, let us receive your gift this holiday season, this Christmas season.

and joyfully live in this new life that is based upon your love, your work, your righteousness, that gives us a secure future in your house, and that changes us and transforms us. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Let us stand together now and respond to this gospel by worshiping our loving father.