verse 3 for just a moment.

Really just to read two names.

Philip and Thomas. So that’s it. You can go to John 14.

Philip and Thomas. And then we’re going to bounce to John 14.

I’m not sure I put it up on the screen. I don’t know if you can see the verse or not on the screens. But John 14, 1-6.

If you want to look at it with me.

Jesus says, Let not your hearts be troubled.

Believe in God.

Believe also in Me.

In My Father’s house are many rooms. And if it were not so,

would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again. I will tell you. I will take you to Myself that where I am you may be also. You know the way to where I’m going.

Thomas said to Him, Lord, you do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?

And Jesus said to him, I’m the way.

I’m the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

Go on and read the rest. It says, If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. From now on, you do know Him. And have seen Him. And Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father and it’s enough for us. And Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long and you still do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I’m in the Father and the Father is in Me?

The words that I say to you, I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father who dwells in Me does His works. Believe Me that I’m in the Father and the Father is in Me or else believe on account of the works themselves.

Truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I do and greater works than these He will do because I’m going to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, this I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. So Jesus starts by offering comforts, comfort to the troubled.

And I think it’s easy for us to identify with what it means to be troubled. You can go to the grocery store and see a lot of empty shelves right now. And you see a lot of businesses closing down and you see a lot of people freaking out. And it’s because we don’t like to be troubled. We like a sense of security about the moment. We really like a sense of security about the future. And we’re going to claw and do what we can to do that. And, you know, to get that, whatever it takes. So it’s just part of a fallen human nature to almost want that above anything else, that certainty in life. And all the glories that we talk about, and there are a lot, of what it means to be a disciple, what Christian discipleship is, what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus makes it clear to us there are great troubles in discipleship.

And He’s not saying, if you follow Me, you won’t have troubles. But Christ also makes it very clear the trouble that comes along in the pathway of Christian discipleship. He gives us the solution to those troubles if we’re listening and if we’re paying attention to what He says. So His disciples are in great trouble here. Do we know what it looks like to follow Jesus and deal with those troubles? That’s what I want us to see. So look back at verse 1. He says, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me.

In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again. I will take you to Myself that where I am, you may be also.

And you know the way to where I’m going. And Thomas said to Him, Lord, we do not know the way. We do not know where You’re going. How can we know the way? And Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. So why are they troubled? Well, three reasons.

Betrayal. Just recently at the Last Supper, Jesus says, Hey, somebody’s going to betray Me. And, you know, He says, Judas. And they really don’t grasp what that means entirely. They’re really not sure still. Right after this, Jesus says, and this is the greatest trouble for them, Hey, I’m going to go away and y’all can’t come with Me.

And Peter in response says, because he thinks he’s so devoted, I should get to go with you. And Jesus says, you know what? You’re going to deny Me here pretty soon three times. So we’ve got rejection. We’ve got denial, betrayal. And then Jesus, their beloved Master, saying we’re going to be separated pretty soon. And that’s just the way it’s going to be for a little while. So they don’t understand

what’s happening at all right now.

Everything was so good for them. For so long, right? We were following Jesus and He was teaching us and we were like, you know, His team and He was using us and we were doing miracles and things are really great and wonderful. And all of a sudden, they don’t understand discipleship.

It’s not all of a sudden what they thought it was going to be. And their devotedness to Jesus is under fire. So Jesus gives them a solution and it’s a really simple solution. He gives it to us. Jesus says, here’s the solution. You know, you believe in God. In the same way, believe in Me. Really, it’s a command. Jesus says, believe in God.

Believe in Me. So has Jesus up to this point said anything about understanding what’s happening?

No. He doesn’t, does He? It doesn’t have anything to do with understanding in the moment. Here’s what Jesus is doing. Jesus does this with His disciples and He does this with every true disciple. Jesus solicits from us genuine faith. That’s what Jesus is doing. He’s asking them a question and this question is forcing them and it forces us to take into account what we think about the genuineness of Jesus’ integrity.

Jesus says, really, do you think I’m false? Do you think I would say to you, I’m going to go prepare an eternal dwelling place for you in the Father’s house in eternity and yet that’s not true? Is it they think His words are false? His life is false? Or He simply doesn’t have the power to accomplish it? Jesus asserts His integrity. He says, I will prepare a place for you. Jesus said, I will come back and take you there with me. He assures them of the truth. He asserts it’s going to be the case and then He says something that baffles them. He says, and you know the way to where I’m going.

They don’t think they do, but they do. And Tom is speaking out of confusion. He says this, how in the world, can we know the way? We don’t even know where you’re going, which seems reasonable. Like if I don’t know the destination, what road could I pick to travel on?

What Thomas couldn’t see is this, the road, the way, was right under his nose the whole time. Jesus is at the end of His earthly life and ministry. He will momentarily be crucified. Is He really such a poor master that He was with His disciples for three years and He left out this vital information about how to follow Him, where to follow Him and where that leads? He would have been the poorest master if that was the case. And I think we have to realize we’re like Thomas so often, aren’t we? Like I don’t want there to be like anything I don’t know. I want a map and I want to see all the lines and all the dots and I don’t want to not know anything from here to there. I want to know everything that’s going on. I want surprises.

And what Thomas couldn’t see was this. Jesus, had only been giving them the map for the last three years. That’s the only thing Jesus had been doing for them was exposing the map. Jesus says to Thomas, Thomas, I’m the map.

He says, I’m the way. I’m the truth. Jesus says, I’m the life. It doesn’t have anything to do with geography, right? He’s trying to put Jesus on a piece of paper and turn it into an equation. And that’s not it. Jesus says, knowing me, believing me, Jesus has taught them with his life about the kingdom. Jesus has taught them with his words about the kingdom. Jesus is going to spill his blood soon and become the living way for them to come into the kingdom. So Jesus is the way.

And Thomas in the moment couldn’t see it. Do we see that?

The call to discipleship, I want to say to us this morning, it requires knowing the right way to go. The right way to go.

And if we’re sure of the integrity of Jesus’s words in life, we can trust him even when understanding evades us about what he’s doing. And that happens a lot of times in life. Paul says, hey, you know what we are? We are perplexed, which perplexed is the height of confusion. Like, I don’t understand what’s happening in the moment, but he says we’re not driven to despair. So the Christian life, it’s often confusing. I don’t know. I don’t understand what God’s doing. I don’t understand everything about him. But you always got this solace in the Christian life. The solace is, hey, but I know Jesus. And because I know Jesus and everything that’s happening and I don’t understand how God’s moving, I don’t understand how God’s working. There’s this thread and it may be a very fine thread I can barely see, but there’s this thread leading me forward in every situation towards truth in life because Jesus is truth in life. And Jesus, who is that life, he’s ever in me, abiding in me. He’s ever in me, leading and guiding me to where I want to go, to where I need to go. So I can’t be lost to God even when I don’t understand God. And you know what? None of us perfectly understand God. I can’t perfectly always see how God’s moving in my life. But trusting Jesus when I can’t understand, that tests the quality of your discipleship. If you understood everything, you wouldn’t be a disciple. Jesus is showing them, hey, it’s not just about glory. Of doing great things for God and knowing great things about God. It’s so often about trusting God when I can’t see.

So a healthy disciple learns. And so I’m not arguing here for like this anti-intellectual kind of Christianity, like let’s all stay as dumb as we can because Jesus is happy, you know, like when we just trust. That’s not true.

A good, healthy disciple grows in the knowledge of the Lord. I want to know more because you know, the more I know God, the more I love Him and the more I know how to obey Him, the more I can conform to Christ, the more deep my worship is when I’m sure of His person. Paul says, the mystery of the gospel has been revealed to you. So that mystery, that revelation that Jesus came to save us, that’s something to take care of. It’s a special privilege to know it, to know the doctrines of the Christian faith, to guard and protect those doctrines and to teach them. So nobody, not Jesus or the Bible is saying be as dumb as possible, but here’s just the reality of it. As much as you can know and should know about God, you’re going to hit a wall at some point. God is going to do something you can’t see. God is going to be working in a way you don’t understand. You’re not going to be able to get to the bottom of the wells of God’s knowledge and mercy. Think about the Apostle Paul in Romans. Romans is Paul’s magnum opus, if you will, in the New Testament, like this is Jesus. This is salvation. I mean, it’s all these glorious chapters of just slowly teasing out what it means to be a saved person. And when Paul gets to the end of that, he doesn’t say, so I got God figured out and y’all can keep trying to figure, you know, God out by reading my stuff. That’s not what Paul says after saying so much deep theology. He says this in Romans 11. He says, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. How inscrutable his ways. So Paul says, I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of this God. You know, Jonathan Edwards, he talks about it like this with this illustration. He says, he that looks on a plant or any work of nature at a great distance where he has but an obscure sight of it may see something in it wonderful and beyond his comprehension. But he that is nearer to it and views them narrowly indeed understands more about them, has a clear understanding, a distinct sight of them. And yet the number of things that are wonderful and mysterious in them that appear to him are much more than before. And if he views them with a microscope, the number of the wonders that he sees will be much increased still. But yet the microscope gives him more knowledge concerning them. So the more you know about God and you should want to know more about God, there’s always just that realization, oh, there’s so much more there. There’s so many more questions. There’s so many more wonders. And that’s what Paul says. And that’s great. And you know what that’s great? Because your Christian discipleship doesn’t hang on how much you know. We want it to a lot of times. Like if I can know enough, I can be sharp enough, that’ll make me a good disciple. It’s not true. What our discipleship boils down to is this, is do we trust, do we believe what has been revealed to us? And I want to say to you, I think that what has been revealed to us is more than enough to believe and trust. So what has been, what has been revealed? Well, that Jesus was a perfect human, like nobody ever else lived a perfect life. That’s unique. Jesus died a sacrificial bloody death for enemies. That’s unique. Jesus got up out of the grave by His own power. That’s unique. And Jesus ascended to the Father and is reigning at the right hand of the Father right now. And that’ll never stop. And Jesus sent His Holy Spirit inside of us to show us and reveal to us. Reveal to us more of Christ and to work out more of Christ and to give us more life and joy in Christ along the way. And He’s given us His written Word as a perfect treasure and instruction of how to live for God and how to please Him. So in light of everything that has been revealed, friends, we don’t just, you know, owe God something. Like God demands it. It’s not like a choice. Like the revelation of God in Christ and His Word, it demands obedience. It demands trust even when we can’t see everything.

It’s greater than what you don’t understand yet about God. It’s greater than life’s battles. It’s greater than anxieties about the future. Look at the cross of Jesus. And I think when you look at the cross of Jesus, let your faith climax because the cross proves the integrity of Jesus. He did what He said He was going to do. And the empty grave proves He’s reliable and He’s trustworthy and He’s worthy of my faith.

Earlier in the book of John, John says, for this is the will of my Father, what Jesus says, that everyone who looks on the Son and doesn’t understand Him completely, everyone who believes in Him should have eternal life and I will raise Him up on the last day.

And it’s interesting that we kind of look at Thomas here. He uses that very famous passage in John 20-24. You know, everyone got to see Jesus first and Thomas wasn’t with them and Thomas was like, I’m not believing that. I’m not believing that. There ain’t no way till I see it with my own eyes. That’s essentially what happens. It says, eight days later, His disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them although the doors were locked and Jesus just went through the door and stood among them. He said, peace be with you. And then He said to Thomas, Thomas, put your fingers here.

See my hands? And put out your hand and place it in my side. And look what Jesus says. He says, understand, Thomas. Grasp all this fully. It’s not what He says. He says, Thomas, don’t disbelieve, but believe.

And at last, Thomas says, my Lord and my God.

Because it’s reasonable, isn’t it? Like, hey, dead people don’t do things. Dead people don’t only not do things, they don’t not do things. Like, you can’t passively sit on the couch. Like, when you’re dead, you’re just… You’re dead, you don’t do things. And Thomas is having to deal with something he can’t understand. And that is the living Christ who was crucified and buried standing in front of Him. And all we can do, friends, at that moment is say, with Thomas in faith, my Lord and my God.

You know, don’t ever feel like it’s me, like I’m the one that doesn’t understand things. There’s people out there that have got everything figured out. I think this is interesting. So this is Billy Graham. And he’s writing and he says this. In August of 1949, I was so filled with doubts about everything that when I stood to preach and make a statement, I would say to myself, I wonder if that is true. I wonder if I can really say that sincerely. My ministry had gone. I then took the Bible up into the high Sierra Nevada mountains in California. I opened it and I got on my knees and I pled, Father, I cannot understand many things in this book. I cannot come intellectually all the way. But I accept it by faith to be the authoritative, the inspired word of the living God. Friends, and I think that’s the place to be right there. Lord, I don’t get everything. And here’s the thing, by grace, God’s not expecting you to understand everything. I think you could see it as you should and must see as a great grace to you that the Lord’s just calling us to believe and trust it. Because when I don’t force myself to understand everything about God and how He’s working my life, but I can just, I can believe Him that all I need to do is trust Him. You know what I can do? I can just know that, that God is good even when life’s bad. I don’t have to like do a math equation like, okay, is God really good? Let me like try to figure out how God’s good because this looks bad. I don’t have to do that. I can just say, no, based off the cross and the empty grave, God’s good even though life is bad. I can know I’m forgiven even when my sins are great. However, really could God forgive me? I got a thing on these sins and I have this pattern of sin. I keep, no, no, no, stop doing that. You’re trying to figure it out. Just know here’s what’s true because I trust in Jesus. I am. I am forgiven even when my sins are great because He says so. I can know I am loved even when I don’t feel lovable. I can know His words are true when I can’t explain them. I can know salvation is sure even when the future is unknowable. I can obey when it’s difficult and I can rejoice in suffering when I believe Jesus and just take Him at His word. You just take Jesus at His word and I’m believing what He’s revealed and what He has revealed is more than I can believe. It’s more than enough for me. It’s more than enough. I think it’s a posture of discipleship. I just want to go on and we’ll look at Philip here. John 14, 6, Jesus says, so I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. And then He says this thing. He says, no one comes to the Father except through Me.

He says, if you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. So from now on, you do know Him and have seen Him. And Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us. And Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and you still do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father who dwells in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me or else believe on account of the works themselves. So Jesus has said, hey, look, if you’re My disciple, I’m inflexible on this thing. I am the way to life. I’m the path. He’s not flexible on that at all. He’s not willing to bend on it. But He’s pretty explicit at the same time about where He’s going and where discipleship terminates. It’s with the Father. And that’s the great apex of life, especially for these Jewish men. You know, you’ve got the temple, the Old Testament, and there’s the story of the fallenness of man. So there’s always that wall of sin. There’s always that tabernacle there. So what would a Jew ultimately want? It’s a nearness to God. And so Jesus is saying, I’m the only way to get near God. But Jesus, He raises His stakes significantly. He goes further, a lot further than to just claim a privileged access to God, which that would have been a pretty incredible claim. Jesus claims, more so declares, here’s how I’m equal with God.

He claims that He is as God, as God the Father.

And think about that for a second if it’s true. If it’s true, Jesus is equal with the Father, all of a sudden, the destination and the pathway are the same thing.

There’s nothing greater or higher for Jesus to take me to. In Christ is the substance of God. Because, Christ’s glory and greatness is equal with and united to the glory of the Father. And Philip says something with a sting in it. Hey, these three years have been great. But when are we going to, you know, we get to finally meet God? Like, when are you going to satisfy us with that thing? Take us to God, is what Philip says. We haven’t made it to the destination yet. And Jesus responds, how can you say that? You’ve only seen God for three years. Jesus, I didn’t say, hey, I’ve given you like a pretty good idea of what God’s like. I’ve tried to like produce this really good replica. I’ve given you like a first class preview of some things you could hope to expect someday. That’s not true at all. Jesus is saying, because when we behold Him with the eye of faith, we are seeing nothing less than God. Jesus is not God-like. He’s equal with the Father in divinity.

Philippians chapter two, verse five.

It says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God. And what does that mean there? It means nature. Jesus had before, assuming a human nature, He had the same nature as the Father. He was in the form of God. His form in eternity past was identical with the Father’s. So if we say one glory in God, His thing about the Father, we have to say that thing about Jesus because the Father doesn’t have a greater nature than Jesus. If we say the Father is eternal with no beginning, no end. If we say the Father does not change. If we say the Father is everywhere, all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect in holiness, justice, love, and wisdom, we must say the same things about Jesus.

Paul says in Colossians 2, 9, for in Jesus, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. So He’s equal with the Father. But then also, and this is what Jesus really wants, I think, us to grab as well from this passage, He’s not just equal with the Father, He’s one and united with the Father. So Jesus is not an independent God. I think when you look at Christianity from a distance, you go, well, they’re polytheists because there’s the Father and there’s the Son and the Holy Spirit. And it’s not true at all. Jesus has nothing to allude to that. He says the opposite. He says, I’m in the Father, the Father’s in me, we’re one. And you do get those, you know, distinct persons in the Trinity. This is the glorious doctrine of the Trinity, so much of what our Christian faith hangs on. So the Father is the Father and the Son is the Son and the Spirit is the Spirit. And the way that they relate to one another and their operations and saving people and working in the world, that’s different, but they’re not different beings. You say, explain that to me. I can’t explain that to you.

John, John McKinley says, a shared use of desires and choice is the way the three persons of the Godhead love each other and fulfill personal inner relationship as co-essential, co-equal, and inseparable persons.

Don Carson says, this mutual indwelling is a linguistic way of saying they’re completely unified, Jesus and the Father. So they’re together as God.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians, when we look at the Bible, when we look at the face of Jesus, we behold the glory of God. I think that mystery can do one of two things. Okay? That mystery can drive you to despair because you cannot understand it or that mystery can drive you to worship because you cannot understand it.

So I think you can get yourself worked up because that’s more, and is it not, more than your mind can grab

and that can lead you to despair if you demand to understand God. I demand to know how He’s working. I demand to know what discipleship looks like in full. I demand to have a land of His. Or I can say, praise the Lord. I can’t understand that. God is so much greater than my finite mind can grasp. So I’m going to worship Him and praise Him and know that He’s good and He’s always going to reveal to me what I need to know and He’s never going to leave me without in eternity. I’m just going to spend eternity just knowing this God and knowing there’s so much more that I don’t know about Him yet. You know, you get that picture like the iceberg and you see just a little bit on top and then, you know, the camera goes below the water and there’s this, you know, city of a piece of ice there. And so I think that’s like God, friends, but so much more to say that right now I’m traveling to heaven, but I’m not without now. I have no lack now because as I believe on the way of Christ, to heaven, I have Jesus who is God and I have in Jesus the Father who is God and I have in Jesus the Spirit who is God. So I’m not going to get to heaven and see like this foreign place like, whoa, this is totally different than what Christianity was like. It’s going to be like this final like realization of something that was a dim mirror. So like what I have now on the pathway to heaven, it’s this satisfying foretaste of what’s to come. So when I get to my Father’s house and I get into my dwelling, dwelling place, whatever that looks like, it’s going to be great. I don’t know. I can know, man, this was that taste I had in life. This was that satisfaction I had in Jesus. Jesus satisfied me then and boy, my sense is filled with glory now in eternity. I think that’s grabbing by faith the Trinity. It’s not me being God in my own life and understanding. It’s me having joy and being a creation of God in the image of God and loving and trusting that God for everything that I need. So you can get down on your knees and you can say, Jesus, there is no one higher or greater than you. And you can get down on your knees and say, Father, there’s no one higher or greater than you. And somehow both of those things are true.

I don’t know how they’re true, but they’re both true. And then we just rejoice in that and we just worship the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

Augustine, while puzzling over the doctrine of the Trinity, was walking along the beach one day and he said, when he observed a young man with a bucket running back and forth to pour water from the ocean into a little hole. And Augustine asked, what are you doing? And the boy replied, I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole.

Then Augustine realized he had been trying to put the infinite God into his finite mind.

Friends, faith, it allows us to just be satisfied in Jesus. Because that’s what it is. Because there is no higher attainment for your soul than to have Christ. There is nothing to do but patiently just wait when what we’ve already been given a taste of comes to fullness and fruition in new heavens and new earth someday.

Verse 12 with me.

I’m just going to close out here. Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I do and greater works than these will he do because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, this I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

So discipleship then,

it begins with Jesus. And it begins with Jesus calling you and I out of ourselves, out of what we must understand, out of what we think is right. And it brings us into, by faith, Him. And I can know this Jesus, He is the way out of darkness. He’s the way out of broken relationships. He’s the way out of empty promises. He’s the way out of addiction. He’s the way out of meaningless. And as much as I believe in that, I can believe this Jesus is the substance of the destination just as much and I will be satisfied in Him someday. But there’s this middle part here in between those two I don’t want us to miss. And that’s what we’re doing right now. And Jesus says, Look, right now, do the works. He says, I haven’t just saved you. You’re not just on a journey for you. You are. You should grow up in Jesus along the way and you should look forward to the destination. But Jesus says, Hey, if you really believe it’s true that I’m from the Father and I’m God and I am God at the right hand of the Father, what you should be doing then is imploring me on behalf of you. I will intercede to you, to the Father. And the Father, He’s going to do this great thing. He’s going to, He’s going to use you so that other people can know about the way, the truth, and the life too. So as much as I love the way and I love the way home and I look forward to it and I can trust it and believe it and have satisfaction in it, Jesus is saying to us just as much, then make it known if you really believe it’s that great.

You say, Well, how can I do a greater work than Jesus? That’s confusing because Jesus did some pretty great works.

Dying on the cross would be one. Raising from the grave. Healing sick people. Bringing dead people back to life. So what does Jesus mean when He says, Greater works than these will you do? What Jesus is saying is this, is that you and I convicted that Jesus is the satisfaction of the soul. If we do that together as the church, it’s going to come out and God’s spreading His kingdom all over the earth as our faith leads us to preach and to teach the gospel and live in the way so that, more and more people can come and believe in Jesus and come into the kingdom of the Father.

So, I think the thrust here at the end of the day is, Yes, Jesus, I see you and you’re beautiful and you’re wonderful and I don’t understand you. I’m going to trust you and I’m going to go out to a bunch of people and say, Hey, there’s this God. I really don’t understand Him. But boy, let me tell you why He’s trustworthy. Let me tell you what He did in His life and in His death and in His resurrection. So that’s our discipleship. Let’s pray together. Let’s pray together.