This weekend, Pastor Albert will be preaching from one of the great texts in the Bible. In John 13-14, Jesus told his disciples that he was going to leave them. He said, “I am going to my Father’s house to prepare a place for you… You know the way to the place I am going.” A very disappointed (and probably angry) Thomas declared, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Some are critical of Thomas for asking this question, but I don’t think we should be. I can well imagine that others were thinking the same thing but were afraid to ask. In a way, I’ve always found Thomas to be an attractively straightforward sort of man. He didn’t fake understanding when he didn’t understand. He wouldn’t nod that he thought Jesus was right when he didn’t. Instead, he said, “You tell us we know the way to where you’re going. But I tell you, we don’t even know where you’re going.”
Thomas was wrong. Jesus had clearly told Thomas repeatedly where he was going—through death to the Father. And he’d said they could follow by faith in him. But Thomas had never grasped this. His question to Jesus led to one of the clearest statements in the Bible about knowing God: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
What an irony! “I am the way”—spoken by one whose way was to be a cross. “I am the truth”—spoken by one who would soon be condemned by lying witnesses. “I am the life”—spoken by one whose dead corpse would soon be lying in a dark tomb with a government seal.
But the triumph was to come. This way that Jesus would go would not be the way we go to the Father. We go through him. Because he went the way to the cross, he became the way to God for us. The Lamb dies—the world lives. The Shepherd dies—the sheep live. The way of Jesus is the cross; the way for us is Jesus. So, to Thomas and all of us, the answer is clear: If Jesus had not gone this way, we would never have a way to God, we would never have known the truth, and we would never have eternal live.
To His Glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor