The Village Church
The Way - Audio
I'm thankful that you would use moments like this, a service like this, and a city like this to remind us of your goodness. Lord, I thank you that we can even come and maybe crazy things are going on in our lives and in our homes or maybe times or peaceful. I don't know these people. You know them better than I do, but I know me. And Lord, I pray that you would meet us with your word this morning that as we look together and we consider this passage, we have a few moments to discuss your gospel, I pray that you would remind us of the hope that we have and the good news that Jesus has taken away our sins forever. And Lord, I pray that as we consider these things that we would look forward to heaven, I know that this has made me excited to be home with you because this is what life has made for. I pray that even in these moments we would grasp hope, enjoy and peace and perspective even as we consider your word this morning. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. It is an absolute honor to be with you guys this morning. My name is Reed and I'm a campus minister with RUF. I'm new. We just moved here. My wife is Kelly. She is nine months pregnant, very much so expecting here within the next couple of weeks. We have a two-year-old named Lucy who is crazy. She might just run across the stage from behind us in a little bit, who knows. We're glad to be back in Alabama. We're from Alabama originally from South Alabama and we've been going for several years and we're glad to be back here and really glad to be with you. I'm the new campus minister with RUF. I met a few of you this morning and said, "Do you know Brad Tubising?" I'm here to tell you, Brad's not here anymore. I'm sorry, some of you didn't know that. Brad moved to Indiana where he's starting a new work at Indiana University and so I'm Brad's replacement and I'm glad to be here. I want to tell you that I'm encouraged to be with you because I've been hearing about your ministry for some time. This is my first time being here but I met Alex back in November of last year. Alex was on the committee that hired me and they began interviewing us back in November last year. I began hearing about the work that God had called you all together here for and it is extraordinary to me and it is encouraging to hear what the Lord is doing here in this area. It's exciting to me to be with you this morning too because I just came from a church plant. I think the feeling and the love that exists in this place is something that we can identify with from the last church we were part of and so we're just encouraged to be here this morning. I just want to say that. Thank you for being partners with RUF. I know you guys have partnered very closely with Roy Hubbard and the ministry at A&M. Roy is kind of a partner of mine here in this area and so I'm encouraged the ministry that you've had even with the RUF as well. So I just wanted to give those words of thanks and encouragement on the front end. We're going to consider a passage this morning, John 14. It's somewhat a famous passage. If you have your Bible, you can turn to it. John 14 is when Jesus identifies himself as the "I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life." A passage that can often be overlooked because we might have heard it so many times growing up or maybe you haven't heard it. This is the first time. I want to give you perspective about what's going on in this passage before we even read it. Jesus' disciples are very troubled right now. If you look ahead in your Bibles to the last couple of chapter headings or section headings, you'll see that Jesus just predicted his betrayal. He told them that one in their own midst is going to betray him. He just predicted that Peter is going to deny him three times and he just predicted that he's going to die very soon. That's the context of this passage. Things are not looking good. And here's what Jesus says to his disciples, starting John 14 verse 1, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I'm going there to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I'm going and then 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 knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on you do know him and have seen him. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our Lord will stand forever." I want you to think about a specific time in your life as we began this morning, a very specific time in your life. I want you to think back in your imagination, maybe it wasn't too long ago for some of you, to the last time in your life that someone put before you a color by numbers coloring sheet. You know what I'm talking about? Those black and white sketches with shapes that connect. They have numbers one, two, three, four, five and often there's a little ledger to the side that says color all the ones yellow, all the twos red. Can you picture that? Now those coloring sheets were always both very exciting and overwhelming to me because sometimes you can look and you can be like, "That's a butterfly. I can see it's a butterfly. All I've got to do is now color it in and it can be a very beautiful butterfly." But sometimes you don't know what you're getting yourself into. You don't have a clue where this thing's headed until you start coloring. You just have to pick up a yellow crayon and get moving and see what happens, right? I think Jesus sometimes operated his own ministry like a color by number sheet because sometimes you can look at what Jesus is doing and what he's saying and you can say, "Okay, I get it." Now I see that this butterfly is going to become a butterfly, but then sometimes it is overwhelming because you think, "Jesus, I don't know what you're saying. I don't have a clue where you're going with this. I don't know how things are going to look good." Then Jesus begins coloring and what he promises is that at the end there's going to be something very bright and beautiful and wonderful on the other side, but for now you just got to pick up a crayon and get moving. Now the context, as I said, Jesus' disciples are very troubled right now. They're disheartened, they're worried. They're teacher. The one that they had given their lives to just told them that he's going to die really soon. And then he told them that even one in their own midst, one of those who had been trusted for a long time was going to give him over, betray him, and that Peter, one of the most trusted for sure in the inner circle of Jesus' disciples, would deny him three times. Things are not looking good, but Jesus wants to encourage them. He says, "Don't let your hearts be troubled because he wants to comfort them to know that the end isn't really the end, that something good is coming on the other side of this, that his death is not the end, rather it's only the beginning, that the resurrection would soon occur, that death would be overturned forever." He wants them to know that sin would no longer have dominion, that Satan's kingdom would be curved, and he wants them to see that there's something very full and vibrant and beautiful on the other side of this black and white sketch. They need to hang in there because Jesus is coloring a very beautiful picture here. He says, "My father's house has many rooms, if it were not so, what I've told you, that I'm going to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me where I am, that you may know where I'm going." He wants to comfort them with this hope of heaven, and then Thomas speaks up, and Thomas gets a bad rap sometime in Christian circles, but Thomas is just honest. It's a good thing to be honest, and I feel like Thomas sometimes, because he looks at Jesus and he says, "Okay, here's the thing. I hear what you're saying, you're saying you're going somewhere to prepare a place. Let me be honest, I don't know where you're going." Then he says, "If I don't know where you're going, how can I know the way to get to where you're going?" He's just honest. In other words, Jesus, I'm only holding a red crayon here. I cannot see how this thing is going to turn out well. I don't know what's about to happen. I can identify with Thomas like that, and maybe you can too. Maybe something's going on in your life, or you've been in a place before where you think, "Jesus, I don't know how this is going to end well." It is okay to be honest about that, and say, "Jesus, I'm only holding a red crayon here. You need to help me understand." I don't see how a butterfly is going to become a butterfly. Then it's like Jesus says, "Okay, I see the problem. Here's the solution. You don't know the way. I am the way and I am the truth and I am the life." It is in these very three precise, fast descriptions that Jesus gives of himself that he begins to color in the picture. It's like he takes the individual crayons out of each of his disciples' hands, and he begins coloring this beautiful, vibrant picture of who he is. He wants to comfort them with the truth of who he is so that they know things are going to end well. Jesus identifies himself as the way, the truth, and the life. All I want to do is consider those three things this morning. What does Jesus mean? What is he getting at when he says, "I am the way. I am the truth and I am the life." The first is the way. The way to what? Remember, he's answering Tom's question, "We don't know where you're going. How can we know the way?" Let's think about it like this. Jesus, or God's people in the Old Testament, had once known a place where God dwelled. Now Jesus says, "I am going to my father's house, the place where my father lives." Now God's people had once known something of that in the Old Testament because God had them construct the tabernacle or a temple, and he said, "This is the place where I live. This is the place where I dwell with his people." The problem is in the Old Testament, everyone wasn't allowed to enter the most holy place of the place where God dwelled. These specific people were allowed to enter that place. Now, you may know that in the Old Testament, priests were allowed to go into this holy place on behalf of the people they represented. But when they did, they had to make sacrifices first, both for themselves and for the people that they represented. This was only a temporary dwelling place of God, a temporary means by which his people could come and approach him or have any kind of real access to him. But it was only one day of the year, on the day of Atonement, that someone could enter the most, inner most holy place of this construction. And only one person could do that, the one consecrated as the great high priest. And there was only one way through that this one person could enter this most holy place and it was through a big curtain, a scarlet woven beautiful curtain that hung from the four pillars of the temple that separated the most holy place from the holy place. So get this, one man, one day of the year, one way in through one great curtain to make sacrifices for the people of God. All of this for man to have access to his holy God. But this was only a shadow of a reality that it was pointing to. Now you know how shadows work, if you're standing outside on a bright sunny day when it's 115 degrees outside in North Alabama, and the sun is shining on your back and you're standing here, you can see kind of a resemblance of yourself, right? You can move your arms and you see that the arms on the shadow are moving. Now the shadow is real, but it's not the reality, right? You're the reality. You're the thing that the shadow is representing. Now God set up a lot of shadows in the Old Testament. They were real, but they were not the end reality. They pointed to something better, something more real that was to come. The temple system was a shadow pointing to a reality that was to come. Jesus is saying something magnificent when he says I am the way. He is saying that I am now going to the place where my father really lives, not a temporary place. I'm going to somewhere where my father really lives and I'm going there so that I can take you with me because I am the way. And since I am the way there is no longer a need for a man to make sacrifices on behalf of other men, there's no longer a need for a man to go through the one great curtain because I am the one man to make the ones final sacrifice for your sins forever. And I'm not doing it just one day of the year, I'm doing it once and it will be effective forever because I'm forever the way. The author of Hebrews summarizes it like this. This is an amazing verse. He says, therefore brothers and sisters, we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened up for us through the curtain which is his body. You hear all these phrases, the way, the curtain, the one man, Jesus is saying I am the priest, I am the sacrifice, I am the curtain, I am the way. And when he says I am the way, he is making a far bigger claim than I am the way for you to feel better about yourself spiritually. Or I am the way that your life can just be better because you believe in me. Or I am the way for you to have some religious experience or a blank slate so you can start over. He's saying something bigger and better than any of those things because what Jesus is saying is I am the way that you can be with God forever. And there is no other way that you can be with God forever except through me. Why is that? The reason that we cannot have access to God except through Jesus is because Jesus paid the debt that we all owe that we could have never paid. Have you ever found yourself in a debt that you just couldn't get out of? It's a terrible feeling, isn't it? Or have you ever been in a situation where you just found yourself unable to pay for the goods and services you've received? I experienced this twice in one day about a week ago. I went to Costco and I hadn't been to Costco in a while. And one thing I forgot about when you go to Costco is that at Costco you can only pay with a debit card. I didn't have a debit card on me. And I was unable to pay for the goods and services that I had received. I had to go home, find new payment. Within a couple of hours I found myself sitting in a barber chair and in my opinion a barber shop is the only place a grown man should get his haircut unless he does it at home. So I found a barber shop locally that I really like. It's the one you can picture. It's got the coat bottles lining the walls. The whole place smells like aftershave. It's very beautiful and comforting. I was sitting in the chair and this man who had been working, who had been cutting hair in that same chair since 1964. He was talking to me. I don't know what we're talking about, Auburn football or something, I'm sure. And it occurred to me. I wonder what kind of payment this place takes. I'm about halfway through my haircut, looking terrible. And I thought, yeah, I wonder. And so I asked him, hey, what kind of payment do you guys take? Oh, we take cash. I thought to myself, what's in my wallet? I know there's not a debit card there, at least clear that. And there's no cash in my wallet either. So once again, I found myself unable to pay for the goods and services I had received. I'm thankful for Grace. Grace and Mercy all extended in that moment. He didn't leave me with a gapped up head. He finished it and he said, you know, just come on back sometime and you can take care of it later. It is a terrible feeling to be unable to pay for what you've received, right? To be in a debt that you just can't get out of. When Jesus says I'm the way, He is telling us that I am the way for your debt to be canceled. Because it's not going to happen by you working yourself out of this thing. Your sin is so great that you can never have a relationship with God unless a sacrifice is made for you and that sacrifice has to count forever if you really want to have access to God. And Jesus says, I am the way to pay for your debt. I am the way that your records will be clean and you will be restored to God. I will pay your debt. I will make the way because I am the way. That is what Jesus is pointing to here and it is a beautiful thing. But one of the things that Jesus is saying when He says I am the way and no one can come to the Father except through me is that there is no other access to God except through Jesus. Exclusivity isn't popular in our society. It's not popular on the college campus. I will come up against this plenty of times at UAH. It is not popular to say that there is only one way to the Father, not at all, but it's what Jesus says. According to God there is no other access to God except through the one God man Jesus. Now I think most of us would agree with that. We would agree that there is only one way to God. Most of you are even shaking your head saying yes, you agree with that. The problem is though somehow we still manage to live our lives as if we don't believe it. And here is what I mean. We find other ways to approach God that have nothing to do with Jesus. And that is where the problem is for us because maybe it is the guilt that we feel because of our sin and we want to match that bad guilt with good works. And so we say I am going to do more church stuff. I am going to serve more. I am going to be nicer to people, I am going to do better so that I can pay for my guilt. That is naming another way to God besides Jesus and the road's name is you. Or maybe it looks different for you. Maybe you think that you are already basically good enough to make it to heaven. You don't feel this guilt of bad sin but you think well I mean I am not that bad then you have named another way to heaven and it is not Jesus. Or maybe you are on the complete other side and you think your sin is too great that even Jesus can't forgive you. We need to know that what Jesus offers all of us is restoration to God. You are never bad enough, you never will be good enough. But Jesus has said I am the way for you to be restored to God. I have cancelled your debt, I have restored you to God if you trust in me because I am the way. It is a comforting message to know that we have real access to God even right now. And we can trust that this is true because Jesus then goes on to say I am not only the way but I am the truth as well. Now just a couple of chapters later and what appears to be literally just a few hours after Jesus makes these promises, the events really start to play out. Jesus is betrayed by Judas, Peter denies him three times and when Jesus is arrested he goes before the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate. And they have this really interesting interchange between this governor and the Savior. And the governor asks Jesus why are you here? What is your mission? And when he says why are you here he doesn't mean like why did you get arrested? He is saying like why do you exist? And Jesus says something really interesting. He says I have come to testify to the truth. That was his response to that question. For this reason I was born, for this reason I came into the world to testify to the truth. Jesus' own stated mission in life is to testify to the eternal truth of God. That he is saying that everything I do in my life, everything about my ministry is true. Now what is this truth? What is this eternal factuality, this grand truth of God, this no wrongdoings, no imperfections, no misunderstanding, the only thing that is true forever, Jesus saying is I am the embodiment of that. But how could Jesus a man be the embodiment of truth? Because we are full of non-truths, aren't we? But Jesus himself says I am full of truth, I am the truth. The answer to that question can only be in his nature. That Jesus is man, but Jesus is God. The only way Jesus can be, the only way that he can be the eternal message of God is that if he is God, Jesus is fully God and fully man. Now Kelly and I just moved here a month ago from Salt Lake City, Utah. That's where I was working this young church plan that I mentioned earlier. So we were there for two years, kind of completed our two year mission of the Mormons. So Mormon joke, you can laugh, my Mormon friends have laughed at that joke. We were there for two years working with this young church plant and the majority religion in Utah is Mormonism, literally the city that we lived in was 90% Mormon. And so most of our relationships were with Mormons, either past Mormons or current Mormons. And we had good relationships, enjoy the ministry that God gave us there for a couple of years. One of the things that I knew to be true about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that they have a very different understanding of who Jesus is than traditional Christianity does. I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it was different. And here's the way it's different, I want to explain it to you because I want to make a point that the LDS church or the Mormons believe that Jesus is, they say fully God and fully man, but what they mean is that Jesus was a really good man who became God. And he was like the best man that ever existed and he achieved some kind of God's status. Now they would go on to say that we believe Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we could be forgiven and so we could have the atonement to be with God forever. They say those things, but what they actually mean behind that is Jesus was really good, he was like the best and he became God and he died so that he can make up for the lack of goodness in my life. Like I'm basically good and Jesus kind of finished the picture. Now what I came to realize it took a while, but what I came to realize is that if you have that understanding of Jesus, then it's going to affect the way that you understand salvation. And here's what I mean because if you don't believe that Jesus is eternally God, then Jesus' sacrifice cannot count for eternity. Okay? Jesus' sacrifice for your sins is as only good as his nature is. If Jesus is not eternally God, then his sacrifice is not eternal for you. And so the way this manifested itself in the lives of my Mormon friends is that if you pin them down on this, they will tell you they cannot have absolute assurance in their salvation. They cannot be sure that they've ever done enough or believed enough to get what they want in the end. And it's a sad picture. It's a sad picture because more often than not, I have friends telling me I can never be sure that I've done all I can. So your belief in Jesus, your belief in understanding the nature of Jesus will very much inform the way that you understand your own salvation. That's the point I want to make. Now you need to know that if you believe that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, and then if you believe that Jesus really did die on the cross for your sins and resurrect gloriously three days later, then you have all that you need to have to have absolute assurance that your salvation is good. And it's good forever. You can have absolute confidence to know that since Jesus is the eternal message of God, you're good with Him. You know, we confess our sins and we repent of them, but our sins are not taking us away from our Father. We have been forgiven. You have absolute assurance in that. Not only assurance in your salvation, but you can be sure that everything Jesus has said and done counts forever, that the promises He makes in His Word are good today. And it has sacrificed for you as good forever. We have all that we need because our Savior is the eternal truth of God. We have all that we need even for direction in our lives. And you know, sometimes I find myself very confused going back to the color by numbers. She, you know, very confused, not understanding how the butterfly is going to become a butterfly. And I want to do everything I can to figure out what God's doing in every other way except talk to Him about it. You know, I get counsel. Counsel is a good thing, but it's not the only thing. And I read books and I try to figure out directions and put all these things together. Instead of talking to God, God, what are you doing? Jesus, how are you at work here? If He's the eternal message of God, we have all that we need for direction in our lives, for assurance of our salvation, for confidence in the good news of what He's done because Jesus is the truth. And sometimes Jesus's simplest messages are often the hardest for us to understand. And that's when He says, "I am the life." I think sometimes we automatically assume we know what that means and we don't think about it. I want to think about it for a minute. It's the last color to crayon that Jesus picks up. He says, "I am the life." What does He mean? Now what God desires for us now and what He promises through Jesus is that we will have fullness of life. He says that in another place. When Jesus reveals Himself as the good shepherd, He says, "I've come that my sheep may have life and have it to the fullest." You know, we hear it, but sometimes we don't believe it. We say, "Jesus, you've come that I may have life to the fullest, but my life is not very full right now." And here's why, it's because we disconnect what Jesus promises with what our reality really is. And so what we try to do is to find other things in our lives to give us life rather than the one who has promised to give us life. And here's what that can look like. We put it on our spouses to complete what's lacking in our lives. We put it on our spouses and we think that they should make up for any dissatisfaction I have. And we put expectations on them. They don't fulfill those expectations and do what they said they were going to do or do what I expect them to do whether I verbalize it or not. We put all these expectations on them and then when they disappoint us, we take it out on them. We manipulate and we get frustrated and we take it out on them. And what we've done is we've put it on our spouse to give us life and only Jesus has promised to give us life. Or maybe we put it on our children. You know, we want to raise our kids to be these certain people and we raise them with these expectations that maybe they'll lack up for what I missed out on when I was a kid or maybe they'll turn out better than I turned out. You know, we put all these expectations on our kids of what we want them to be and then they choose other things. They become different people than what we expect and then we take it out on them. We become disconnected with them or frustrated by them and what we've done is we put it on our kids to make up for what's lacking in our own lives and we want them to promise to give us life when only Jesus has promised to give us life. Maybe it's your job or your career that when your boss doesn't acknowledge the work that you've done or you don't get a promotion that you feel like you deserve, you get frustrated and mad and angry and you take it out on the people around you, it's because you're trusting in your job to give what only Jesus has promised to give and that's life. It could be a number of things. It could be more stuff, it could be satisfaction in things, you know, another car, more clothes, those kind of things. Stuff never satisfies but Jesus has promised to satisfy. He is the only one who has promised to leave you wanting no more. That's what he wants from you to want no more, to lack no more, to hope no more and that's why he says I am the life. He's leave us wanting more, people leave us disappointed, stuff never satisfies but Jesus does and we forget and we turn a lot of other things and what we need to do is confess those things and repent of those idols in our lives and say Jesus, I want to believe you here, give me life and when Jesus promises to give us life, he's not promising to make life easy. These are two very different things, sometimes we put that on Jesus and he didn't promise that. Remember one place in the Gospels when Jesus, I remember where it was but someone said, Jesus, I want to follow you, I want to follow you Jesus and he says, you want to follow me? The foxes have holes, the birds have nests, I have nowhere to lay my head tonight. Do you want to follow me? Jesus didn't promise life would be easy but he promised that life would count and that he would give purpose and rest and hope. Not only does Jesus promise life now but what he promises is life forever. The heart of the Gospel is that Jesus will go to the Father which he has done and he will come back to take all those who trust in him to be with the Father forever and that's where real life exists. Remember the context of this passage is that he's wanting to comfort those who are mourning and who are disheartened and so he tells them that I must go to my Father's house, remember? And then I have to go so I can come back to take you there with me. In other words, I have come so that you may have life but now I must go so that you can have life forever and that everlasting life is not some boring float on the clouds watching a harpist concert, singing kumbaya and four-part harmony. It's a real life that Jesus promises, a true physical, also eternal life where we are in fellowship with other believers who are nothing but enamored with the greatness of God and that we are eating and we are enjoying each other and we are worshiping together forever. I'm pretty sure your worship group may be leading us there. I would not be surprised. But we will be with God forever, singing and dancing and living life forever. It is a forever life of living and that's what Jesus promises those who trust in him. That's what he's doing here. He's providing life because he is life and he lives forever. And just as there is no other way to the Father except through Jesus and there is no other truth outside of the truth that Jesus embodies, there is no other life to be lived outside of the life that Jesus promises both now and forever. So using one colored crayon at a time, Jesus is giving this beautiful, vibrant picture of who he is. What was moments ago, simply a black and white sketch, now Jesus holds out this beautiful picture of himself to be worshiped and adored and known. And what I love most about this picture that Jesus paints of himself is that it points to something really great. I want to close with this that what Jesus is pointing to, what his very nature and person points us to is the completed picture of the way things were before the fall of man and the way things are actually going to be forever. Here's what I mean, I got a lot of this from study. This is not my own stuff. I don't want you to think it is for Dr. James Boyce and others who have done some tremendous work on this. Think about this. Before Adam and Eve fell into, in the garden, life was really good. They had wonderful fellowship with God. They walked with him. They talked with him. Life was really good, truth, reign, supreme. And because there was no sin, there was no death, only life and really good life. But then through Adam and Eve's disobedience sin entered the picture. It entered their hearts. It entered the world and it changed everything. Because of the curse of sin, they no longer experienced fellowship with God. Instead they were ashamed and they hid. Instead truth now had been compromised, deception, reign, supreme. Something else entered the picture that hadn't been there up to that point and that was death. When Jesus comes, he reverses those curses that came with a fall. And we understand that better as we understand Jesus to be the way and the truth and the life. Because through Jesus there is no longer alienation from God. That that used to exist has now been reversed because of Jesus, because he is the way. And through Jesus, deception does not reign supreme anymore. Your truth is on the throne once again because Jesus is the truth. And through Jesus, even death is reversed. No longer does the curse apply that death will reign, but instead Jesus reverses even that last enemy because he is the life. Jesus is in the business of restoring things back the way they used to be and he is in the business of redeeming things for the way they should be. And because he is the way we can have fellowship with God in his glory forever, because he is the truth, we will not be deceived when we trust in him. For the truth of his character will be the very heir that we breathe. And because he is the life, we will never know the devastation of death again if we trust in him. This is the beautiful picture that Jesus now holds out for all those who would put their trust in him as a kind reminder that he is the way to the Father. He is the truth of God and he is the eternal life that he promises. This is why you as the village church exist. You are to point others to the way. You are to teach the truth to live as sons and daughters of God in this community as you come to worship the life. You are to make that way, truth and life known all throughout this community. And our UF exists for the same reason, at A&M, at UAH, that we hope to point others to the way and truth in the life. It is our hope that students throughout the campus of UAH will have a greater purpose and hope and rest as they come to see the beautiful Savior that is Jesus, as we proclaim him boldly and faithfully and as genuinely as we can. If you are a believer in Christ, you need to know that you have real access to God because of Jesus' sacrifice for you, not because of your goodness and not despite your badness. If you come through Jesus, you have access to God forever and you have real truth to base your life on because Jesus is the eternal Word of God and you have real hope for real purpose in your life even now because Jesus is the life he died and he lived again so that you can live with him forever. If you're not a believer in Christ, I'm really glad that you're here because you need to know that Jesus promises these things for you too, that where everything else around you has failed, Jesus will not because he is the way for you to be restored to God forever. He is the truth to be trusted and he is the life that will give you all the purpose and hope that you could ever dream of. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for painting a picture, for coloring in what can be very confusing and even lost in our own minds, help us to believe it though. We are doubting, we get so caught up in ourselves and in the worries of today, fears of tomorrow, in our own sin and shame that we forget who you are and what you promise or fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, that we would look to him and have tremendous hope and purpose in our lives both today and forever more. We ask through Jesus the one great high priest, the one sacrifice, the curtain, the way through him we pray. Amen. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]