Jesus is the Way

All right, let's just start here.

If you're here for the very first time, my name's Justin.

It's nice to meet you.

We have spent this entire year doing something really interesting.

We've called it the whole story.

We've been going through the entire story of the Bible from start to finish.

We broke the story of the Bible down into 14 different series, and then all year long we've been going one by one through the entire story.

And it's been amazing, it's been incredible, it's been a journey, it's been a stretch.

And here we are, a few weeks ago, we got to the New Testament.

Now we're at Jesus.

And obviously, it's been about Jesus the whole way.

We've talked about Jesus every single Sunday.

There has not been one morning that we haven't talked about Jesus because the entire story of the Bible is about Jesus.

Jesus himself said that you search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but the scriptures point to me.

So it's always been about Jesus, but now we're in the moment when Jesus is in front of us.

Like he's there, he's talking, and we see him.

And so this entire last few weeks, we've been trying to answer a question, a question that I think every single one of us has to answer in our lives, and that question is who is Jesus?

Who is he really?

There's a story early in his ministry where he and his disciples are on a boat and there's this huge storm.

And the disciples are terrified, and they're fishermen, so if they're terrified, you know the storm has to be intense.

And Jesus stands up and he looks at the storm and he says, Silence, be still, and the storm stops.

And the disciples ask a really poignant question.

They say, Who is this man?

Even the wind and the waves obey him.

That is the right question.

Who is this man?

Who are we dealing with?

We've called this series that we're in the new human.

The new human.

Jesus is different.

He's unlike anyone else that's ever stepped onto the earth before, and that's very clear.

I mean, who else talks to storms and they obey?

Just Jesus.

And so we're not just looking at the things that Jesus did in his life or the things that he said.

We're looking at all of that over the next few weeks under the umbrella of who is he?

What do the things that he says teach us about who he is?

What do the things that he does tell us about who he is?

Because we've got to understand who we're dealing with.

We have to understand who he really is.

And honestly, guys, it's going to take us like all of eternity to really get that.

I shared this a few weeks ago.

I've been following Jesus for 20-something years, and you'd think that it at some point I'd be like, yeah, I get it.

I get him.

I'm good.

Jesus, I've got that wrapped up in my mind.

I can just tell you, yeah, here's who he is, and here's what he does, and I'm moving on to something else, but I'll never move on from Jesus.

Because there's yet to be a day in my life, there's yet to be a year where I haven't experienced some part of Jesus I've never experienced before.

That's just never happened.

He's amazing, he's incredible, and we could spend our entire lives just trying to answer that one question.

Who is this man?

And we would never run out of things to say.

But we're trying to do it in five weeks.

So here we go.

And so we're looking at Jesus through five basic angles.

And these are all statements that Jesus either says about himself or that are claimed about Jesus in the story of Scripture.

We've looked at Jesus being the one.

That's where we started.

Jesus is the one.

The one what?

The one that the scriptures foretold, the one that all the prophets talked about.

As you read the Old Testament, you see all these moments, all these little hints where someone is going to come, where God is going to do something different, something new, and Jesus lets us know in no uncertain terms that He is the one.

He is the one that the prophets spoke about.

And we looked at that a few weeks ago.

Last week, we talked about Jesus being the Word.

John chapter 1 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.

John 1 · chapter mention

And if you're like, what does that mean?

You can definitely listen to last week's message.

We talked about that in detail.

But it's a claim of divinity.

It's a claim that Jesus is God.

That he's not just a prophet, that he's not just a person who's filled with the Holy Spirit, that Jesus is himself God.

And we talked a little bit about this idea of the Trinity, and we said we would record a separate podcast for that.

That is up, by the way.

If you want to listen to a 30-minute conversation about what in the world is this Trinity thing all about, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, how does that all work?

You can.

We have that up now.

Today, though, we're moving on to Jesus being the way.

Jesus is the way.

Next week is He's the truth.

And then finally we wrap up with Jesus being the life.

But today is all about Jesus being the way.

You're probably familiar with this phrase, where there is a will, there is a way.

It's one of those sort of basic human wisdom phrases.

We have a lot of those in our culture.

Some of them are just garbage, right?

Like uh follow your heart.

That's in half the Disney songs that have ever been written.

Follow your heart and you'll be happy.

That's just bad advice.

That's just straight up terrible advice.

We got the high school students in the room this morning.

What's up, guys?

Don't do that.

Like most of us have followed our hearts to some terrible decisions in life, right?

Meaning that if you just do it makes you feel good in the moment, that doesn't tend to always lead to the best decisions.

Sometimes it does, sometimes you get lucky, but not all the time.

Then you have other statements that are sort of like, yeah, they're like half true.

Like, for example, have an open mind.

Like that's half true.

I don't think it's fully true.

Like I wouldn't advise you to have an open front door in your home.

Just like keep it open.

You know, just let it be open all the time.

Whoever, whatever comes in, it's fine.

Same way with our minds.

I wouldn't say, yeah, just leave it wide open, be open to whatever is said to you, no matter who says it.

Maybe instead we should say have a curious but also discerning mind.

That would be better than just having an open mind.

So that one's like half true.

And then there's there's phrases like, where there's a will, there's a way.

And I think that phrase is pretty true.

For the most part, that that proves true.

Like, have you ever known someone who has an unbelievably strong will?

Or maybe have you ever married someone who has an unbelievably strong will?

It's amazing what you can do with a strong will.

Like it's really incredible.

I have four kids, I talk about them all the time.

I've got my three boys, my one girl, and I think they all have strong wills to a certain degree.

But my daughter so far, there's a lot of time left, but so far, Lily is far and ahead away when it comes to who has the strongest will.

And we saw signs of this from the very beginning.

Like early on, there'd be these moments where we would go, What is this gonna be like when she's 13?

You know what I mean?

So, for example, when she was five years old, we we were having a movie night.

We do this pretty often as a family Friday night.

We're gonna rent a movie, we're gonna watch it together, we eat dinner, then we go watch the movie.

And that night, my wife had cooked, and one of the things that she cooked was zucchini, and Lily didn't like zucchini, didn't want to eat the zucchini, and was adamant that she would not eat the zucchini, and she drew a hard line.

She was being stubborn, and so we had to respond in kind.

And we said, if you do not eat the zucchini, you cannot watch the movie.

And she looked at us kind of like, really?

Like, really?

You're gonna deny me movie night?

She's five years old.

And we were like, Yeah, we're gonna do it.

And so we're trying to sort of stretch it out.

We don't want her to miss the movie, right?

We want to do this all together, but we've also got to parent her, and so this is going on.

And by the time the meal's done, we're like, Lily, you still haven't eaten the zucchini, and she's just staring at us.

And we said, Okay, we're gonna go downstairs, we're gonna watch the movie now.

Bye.

If you eat the zucchini, come on down, but if not, stay here.

And so we go down, and again, we're trying to stretch it out.

We're sort of listening for her footsteps.

We go ahead and start the movie, we turn the volume up so she can really hear it.

Right?

The opening credits are going, and I hear some footsteps come down the stairs.

And there's Lily.

And I look at Lily and I say, Did you eat the zucchini?

And she just went like this.

She went, but like I could tell, I could tell, you know, like something's up.

Something's up.

And so I go upstairs to check, and sure enough, no zucchini on the plate.

And I'm thinking, okay, maybe she threw it away in the trash.

My boys have done that from time to time.

So I went and checked the trash.

No zucchini in the trash.

I come downstairs and Megan's like, legit, she ate the zucchini.

I'm like, that's gone.

Like, I didn't hear the toilet flush, so I think we're good, you know?

And so we watch the movie.

And when the movie is done, when it's finished, two hours later, I say, All right, guys, it's time for bed.

It's late, everyone's tired.

And Lily yawns.

And when she yawns and opens her mouth, I see something in her mouth.

And I said, Oh, oh, Lily, open your mouth.

And she's all of a sudden her face is like, and it hit me, she hasn't spoken once in the last two hours.

And when I asked her, hey, did you eat your zucchini?

She didn't say yes, she just went.

She opens her mouth, sticks out her tongue, and there are two giant pieces of zucchini sitting on the top of her tongue, which means my daughter is so strong-willed, then rather than just eat the zucchini and be done with it in two minutes, she sat for two hours with zucchini on her tongue, which I can't even imagine how horrible that is.

That is how strong-willed my daughter is, and so I know she's gonna accomplish great things.

Because where there is a will, and there is certainly a will in her, there is often a way.

That proves true very often.

I know Lily's gonna do great things because she has a strong will.

Willpower can take you far.

Like we went to the moon just because we wanted to.

We're like, we gotta we gotta get to the moon.

We did it.

Willpower.

But but like all human wisdom, there's a limit.

That's the way it is with any wisdom that comes from us.

There's always a limit.

There's always like an asterisk that says, yeah, except when it doesn't.

Right?

Where there's a will, there's a way, except when your will falls short.

And what we find is very often our willpower falls far short of what we need.

Let me give you an example from scripture.

Jesus, the night he was arrested, met with his disciples, and they had dinner together.

And Jesus is sort of prepping them for what's about to happen.

And he's hinting in very obvious ways that he's about to leave, that he's about to be gone.

And in that process, he says this in John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

He says, Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Trust in God and trust also in me.

There is more than enough room in my father's home.

If this were not so, would I have told you that I'm going?

I'm going to prepare a place for you.

And when everything is ready, I will come and get you so that you will always be with me where I am.

And you know the way to where I'm going.

No, we we don't know, Lord, Thomas said.

We have no idea where you're going, so how can we know the way?

And Jesus told him, I am the way.

He says, I am the way.

That night, the disciples, their willpower fell short.

Like big time.

They leave that place.

They they go, they they pray in the garden.

When they're in the garden, we see this interesting interaction.

Matthew chapter 26, Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, Sit here while I go over there and pray.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Jesus is prepping himself for the cross.

He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled.

And he said to them, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

Going a little farther, he fell to his face and he prayed, My father, if it's possible, may this cup be taken from me.

Yet not as I will, but as you will.

And then he returned to his disciples and he found them sleeping.

Couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour?

He asked that to Peter specifically.

Please watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

The spirit is willing.

He says, Hey, you guys have plenty of willpower.

He's just asking them to pray.

He's asking them to be strong.

He's asking them to stick with him to the end.

And he recognizes that they won't, that they can't.

He says, it's not that you don't have a will, it's that you have flesh.

Flesh being that natural part of us that falls short.

It's weakness, it's sin.

Name it what you want to name it.

It's like Jesus is saying, hey, where there's a will, there's a way, except when there's flesh.

And their flesh gets the best of them.

And they not only fail to stay awake, they fail to stay by Jesus' side, they abandon Jesus one by one, they run away, and they leave Jesus alone.

Why?

Because their flesh is weak.

Even if you have the strongest will, and if you know the story of Peter, who Jesus is talking to, there, Peter definitely had a strong will.

It will fall short.

And we all eventually find ourselves in situations where we've lost our way.

Where we don't know how we got here.

We don't know, we don't know how things got to this state.

Sometimes life's going amazing, we're in an incredible season, and it's just success, success, success, success.

Everything I'm doing in my career is great, my relationships are great, my kids are great, my marriage is great, my health is great, it's all awesome.

I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hand if everything is awesome right now, because the rest of us don't need to see that, but like honestly, it can it can surprise us sometimes.

We find ourselves in seasons where we feel like we've lost our way.

We ask questions like, how did I get here?

How did how did this relationship that used to be so close become so distant?

Maybe it's how did my my my passion for God and my my faith and my commitment to God, which used to be everything to me, how did it become so lukewarm?

How did how did things get here?

How did I get to this place?

We have a tendency to lose our way.

We all get a little wayward from time to time, no matter how strong our will is, no matter how determined we are, no matter how hard we work, and Jesus comes to say to all of us, hey, I get it.

But I've got good news.

I am the way.

Jesus is the way.

Now, and what he means by this, and we've got to unpack this, so I want to go kind of big picture to small.

Ultimately, what we have to understand is big picture, he's talking about something major.

He's talking about salvation.

He's talking about salvation.

That he is the way to God, he is the way to have a restored, right relationship with God.

Sometimes people say, saved from what?

And it's weird because in modern American Christianity there's been this sort of aversion to just say things as they are.

I don't know if it's like a fear of offending people.

What are we saved from?

We're saved from the consequences of sin.

Plain and simple.

Romans chapter 6, verse 23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

That's harsh language, right?

The wages of sin is death.

But we all know that that's true.

We all believe that.

We had a whole series on that earlier this year, and you may not have been here for that, but the whole series was about how serious sin actually is.

It was called So Much Blood.

That was the name of the series, because we were in a portion of scripture.

It's just like there's animals being sacrificed and people being killed, and it's just blood, blood, blood.

Why?

Because sin is serious and it leads to death.

We know that's true because we see it in our lives all the time, right?

When you have sin in a relationship, you see the death of trust.

You see the death of self-respect.

You see the death of sometimes like human love.

That can die because when we sin, when we betray, it's destructive.

Sin is always destructive.

Even if you're someone who's put your faith in Jesus, sin is still a destructive force in your life if you let it, if you let it go unchecked.

But sin in all of Scripture, we see is something more than just destructive.

Sin is divisive.

Sin divides us from God.

But not maybe in the way that you think.

The very first story we have of sin in the Bible happens in the Old Testament, the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve, they eat the forbidden fruit, right?

You know the story.

Even if you haven't grown up in church, you know the story.

They're in the garden, there's fruit, they're naked, it's all fine.

And then God's like, don't eat from this one tree.

This one tree, tree of knowledge of good and evil, don't eat from it.

If you eat from it, you will die.

They eat from it.

Then they hear God walking in the garden.

Which is amazing just to think about.

They must have been so close to God that they could recognize him by his footsteps.

That's pretty incredible to think about.

They hear God, they've sinned, what happens?

They hide, they run away.

God finds them very quickly.

But they hide.

They separate themselves from God.

Why?

Because of sin.

Sin divides, it's a divisive thing.

And we look at the story of Scripture, and you just see this division that exists in the hearts of people.

And it's so difficult for people to approach God, to know God, to understand God, to interact with God.

Sin makes people afraid of God.

There's an amazing story where God wants all the people of Israel to come up this mountain.

His presence is going to come onto the mountain, and it's this like thick cloud and it's craziness.

And all the people, when they see it, they're like, nah, mm-mm, nope, don't want to.

And they tell Moses, hey, you just go for us.

Like, you, you go.

Come on, Moses, you go, you be with God, we'll hang back here.

And like, I kind of get it, but they could have been in the presence of God, like in a way that almost no one ever has before, or maybe since.

And they don't.

Why?

Because we see this time and time again in Scripture.

When you come face to face with a holy God, you feel, whoo, you feel it.

You feel the distance that exists between his holiness and where you're at.

So, for example, Peter, that strong-willed disciple of Jesus, the very first moment that he uh he begins to follow Jesus, he may have had some interactions with Jesus before, we don't really know, but the moment where Jesus calls him to be a disciple, Peter's fishing.

We see Peter fish many times in the Bible.

He's not good at it, apparently.

Every time he's fishing, he can't catch anything.

Like that's always the story with Peter.

And so Peter's fishing, and he's not caught anything, and he's been fishing all night long.

And Jesus shows up and he says, Hey, why don't you throw your nets to the other side of the boat?

And Peter sort of says, Hey, you know, I'm a fisherman.

Like, thanks.

Like, what do you, you know, it's like if you were doing your job and some random person walked up and was like, Hey, have you tried this?

You'd be like, But just to humor him, Peter throws the nets to the other side, and the nets fill with fish to the point where they're breaking.

And they haul in all the fish, and it's it's such a haul that it's like the boat is sinking.

Like it's that.

And Peter recognizes who he's dealing with in that moment.

He recognizes this isn't just some man, this is this is the Messiah.

And so we see this in Luke chapter 5, verse 8.

Luke 5:8

It says, When Simon Peter realized what had happened, when he realizes who Jesus is, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, Oh Lord, please forgive me.

I'm such a sinful man.

In the presence of a holy God, that's what happens.

Like sin, it's this destructive, divisive force inside of all of us, and we all have it.

We've all done it.

We've all been really good friends with sin at some point in our lives.

And when you come into the presence of a holy God and there's sin in your life, you're like, oh, I don't belong here.

I shouldn't be here.

Please, like, go away from me.

I don't belong in your presence.

We see that in the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah is a prophet, and he's brought into the presence of God, and the same thing, he just falls down and he says, like, depart from me.

I'm in, he says, I'm an unholy man, an unclean man with unclean lips.

That's what happens when sin is in the presence of God.

There's a division.

And we can't, as people, figure out a way through that.

Like, how can we, as broken people with sin in our lives, ever find a way into a relationship with a holy God?

Religion does not give us the way.

Following a set of rules does not give us the way.

We've tried that, been there, done that, doesn't work.

Sacrifices, they don't give us the way because eventually you just run out of stuff to sacrifice.

And Jesus says, I am the way.

I am the way.

Like he's not, he's not pointing to the way, he's not telling us the way.

He says, I am the way.

You need me.

I want to give you an interesting picture of that.

John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

It says that Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the temple, and a crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and he taught them.

And as he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, and they put her in front of the crowd.

Teacher, they said to Jesus, This woman was caught in the act of adultery.

The law of Moses says to stone her, what do you say?

They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him.

But Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.

They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.

Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

And when the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.

And then Jesus stood up again and he said to the woman, Where are your accusers?

Didn't even one of them condemn you?

No, Lord, she said.

And Jesus said, Neither do I.

Now go and sin no more.

This woman was caught, brought before Jesus, brought before a holy God, exposed in her sin.

And we can only imagine the kind of shame and embarrassment that must have been running through her mind.

And the law said that she could be stoned.

She's facing death.

That's the consequence that she's facing for her sin.

And we can say that that's not fair, that that's too harsh.

You know, it's a long time ago, it's a different set of laws, but that's what she's facing.

And Jesus becomes, in this moment, in like reality, he becomes her way out.

He becomes her way of salvation.

Jesus stands in between her accusers.

And her.

And he defends her.

Not by claiming that she's innocent.

Right?

Not by saying what she did wasn't a big deal, but by exposing the real truth that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And he says, okay, whoever has no sin, throw the first stone.

They all leave, and Jesus looks at her and he says, Hey, where are your accusers?

Like, who condemns you?

And she says they're gone.

And think about what it must have been like for this woman to have Jesus look her in the eyes and say, I do not condemn you either.

He saved her life.

He in that moment was her way to salvation.

And it's the same for all of us.

And we can never lose sight of this.

I mean, if you've been following Jesus for 20 years and you've heard this over and over again, it can never, it can never get to the place where it doesn't move your heart.

Because what Jesus has done for us is even greater than what he did for that woman.

Because Jesus, it's like if we're that woman, it's not like Jesus just stood in the way and defended us.

Jesus said instead, hey, why don't you stone me in her place?

That's what he did for all of us.

It's not like Jesus just defends us like he does this woman.

No, Jesus actually takes our place.

He dies on the cross as a substitute for our sin.

It would have been as if he would have said to the people, to the crowd that day, hey, you're right.

She's guilty.

She sinned.

Death is what's deserved.

Kill me.

That's what he's done for us.

That's what he's done for you.

And so this claim that Jesus is the way, he is the way to salvation, he's the way to forgiveness, it's because Jesus did what you could not do.

He died in your place.

He took the punishment for your sin.

And when he died on the cross, the last thing he said was, It is finished.

It is done.

He has paid the price in full.

And now, if you believe in Jesus, if you have faith in Jesus, you have a way.

You have a way to a right, restored relationship with God.

Does that move anyone else's heart?

Like that that is what that's what Jesus has done for all of us.

And I think we live in a culture that's lost sight in many ways of how serious sin is.

And so sometimes we we struggle to feel the weight of what Jesus has done.

Maybe part of us believes that, yeah, if he hadn't done that, like maybe there still would have been another way.

No, no, no.

Scripture's clear, there's there's one way.

He is the only way.

The wages of sin is death, and it's just that it became his death, not ours.

So when he says he's the way, he's the way to salvation, but it doesn't just end there.

It isn't just like, cool, check that box, I put my faith in Jesus, now I'm good.

Because we see time and time again that Jesus is the way for everyone in every situation of life that you can imagine.

Like I said earlier, no matter how much willpower, no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we work, no matter how bad we want it, we all tend to lose our way at some point in time, in some sphere of life.

We lose our way.

And time and time again in the story of Jesus, we see Jesus be the way for people to get where they're supposed to be.

So take, for example, the story of a man named Zacchaeus.

You guys probably know that story, a lot of you do.

Zacchaeus is a little dude, and he's a tax collector, he's a crook, he's a criminal, he's a thief, he extorts money out of people.

He's rich because he's taken what rightfully belongs to other people for himself.

He's like the most hated man in his area.

Jesus shows up in his town and he says, Hey, Zacchaeus, I want to have dinner in your house.

I want to be your guest of honor.

This makes everyone mad, everyone's angry.

How in the world can Jesus, this supposed teacher, this supposed rabbi, some even say the Messiah, how could he go be the guest in that man's home?

If he knew anything about that man, he would never go near him.

And Jesus says, No, Zacchaeus, I know you, I want to be in your house tonight.

And they have dinner together.

And it's like one of those great mysteries of scripture because we have no idea what Jesus says to him.

Like we have no clue.

It's just Zacchaeus, they're hanging out, they're having dinner, and then at the end of the dinner, here's what Zacchaeus says.

He says, I'm forever changed.

In fact, I'm gonna give back everything I've ever taken from anyone, I'm gonna give it back with interest, and then some.

Like he goes from being this selfish man who's all about himself, who's all about greed, who's all about taking whatever he can get for himself.

And one meal with Jesus, one dinner with Jesus, and he's like, I'm giving it all back, and then some, and Zacchaeus becomes this picture of generosity.

One meal with Jesus did that.

Jesus was Zacchaeus' way out of selfishness.

It was his way out of this horrific, greedy life where he was consumed by what he desired and what he wanted.

If you've ever been in that place before and you're you're obsessed with yourself, if you're honest, you're like, hey, I'm all about me, and I think about me, and what people have done to me, and what people should do to me, and how people have wronged me, and what people have said about me.

And it's just kind of me, me, me, me, me.

That's a horrible way to live, right?

The people who are the most focused on themselves are often the people who are the least happy.

And for Zacchaeus, Jesus was the way out.

One meal with Jesus.

And Zacchaeus is like the most generous person you've ever heard of.

Whatever, whatever difficult situation you find yourself in, sometimes when you've lost your way and you're far from the person that you want to be, Jesus is your way.

He is your way out of that and into a whole new life.

He says, Behold, all things are made new.

There's this woman that Jesus meets at a well, John chapter 4, if you want to read it.

John 4 · chapter mention

It's a great story.

And this woman is stuck, like she's stuck in a cycle.

I don't know if anyone else can relate to this, but sometimes we find ourselves in places in life where we're like, why do I keep doing the same things over and over again?

Like I've tried this before, I've done this before, it didn't work, I'm not happy, I'm not fulfilled, and yet here I am, and I'm doing it over and over and over.

Maybe it's an addiction, and you're just like in this cycle of repeat, get better, get worse, rinse, repeat, it's just over and over again.

She's stuck.

And she's stuck in just dead-end relationships.

She's been married five times.

She's been divorced five times.

She's batting a thousand on divorce.

Like that's that's impressive.

Five marriages, five divorces.

Now she's living with someone that she's not married to, and she has one interaction with Jesus, one moment with Jesus at this well of all places.

It's like she's running an errand and she bumps into Jesus, and after this, she's forever changed.

And we don't get to see all the details of how her life changes, but it's clear in the story that she is a different person after spending time with Jesus.

She was stuck, Jesus was her way forward.

Her way forward.

He gave her purpose.

He gave her life meaning, he gave her life calling.

Your life has purpose, your life has meaning.

You have a calling.

You may not know what it is yet, you may have not heard it from God, but it is there, it exists, you were made for a purpose.

And you spend time with Jesus, and he will tell you that purpose.

One moment with Jesus, and he was her way forward, out of that garbage that she was stuck in.

For Peter, Jesus was a way back.

I think sometimes the most difficult journeys that we could ever take are those journeys where we have to go back.

Like we have to go back to where we we used to be.

It takes a lot of humility to say, hey, I've I've gotten off track.

I'm not where I ought to be.

And instead of just moving on and going somewhere else and pretending like none of it ever happened, you actually have to go backwards and try to restore.

And I guess tough.

It's tough to do.

I remember when I was in high school, I was playing golf with my dad.

And uh I don't like golf.

I love my dad.

My dad's probably gonna watch this.

Dad, it's all good.

It's 25 years ago, we're good.

But um we were trying to beat my my older brother and his friend in golf, which was impossible because my older brother is really good at golf, and he could beat us by by like himself.

But we would do a scramble.

If you've ever done that before, it's like you take the best shot, me and my dad versus my brother and his friend.

And my dad, I remember driving there that day, and my dad was like, This is our day.

He's like, This is our day.

He's driving the car, he's going, son, we're gonna do it today.

And then the very first hole, uh, we double bogey.

If you don't know anything about golf, that's bad.

Um, they got an eagle.

If you don't know anything about golf, that's really good.

So it's done.

Like hole one, it's over, it's done.

Hole two, my dad uh hits a shot and it's in the sand.

If you don't know anything about golf, that's also bad.

And so he takes his sandwich, and uh, that's the club that's designed to get you out of the sand, and he tries to hit the ball of sand, it doesn't work.

So naturally, what any man would do in that situation is he takes the sandwich, he throws it into the woods.

Um then we get in the car and we drive on.

About three or four holes later, my dad says, Hey Justin, I need my sandwich.

I apparently was the caddy as well.

It's okay.

And I'm like, uh, yeah, it's not in your bag.

And he's like, Well, where is it?

And keep in mind, I'm like still a high school student, like I'm not an adult at this point, so I'm trying to like navigate this real real well.

And I was like, uh last time I saw it was on the second hole.

I don't know if you remember, but you you threw it into the woods.

I haven't seen it since then.

And he was like, You didn't get it?

You didn't go.

I was like, nah, I know, I'm sorry, I don't and he says, I need you to go back.

And so I get in the car, right?

And we drive back and we go into the woods and we find it.

And I know it's a silly story, and I'm not trying to make fun of my dad.

I love my dad, and I've had plenty of moments like that, like plenty.

But there was like this it was a really humbling thing to drive four holes backwards and go search through the woods just to find a club that was there because we threw it there.

Right?

We're a team, so I owned it too.

And sometimes we have to do that in life.

Like sometimes we have these moments where we mess up and we say the wrong thing, we do the wrong thing, we misjudge somebody, whatever it might be.

And we can either just keep going forward, pretending like it never happened, or we have the humility to go backwards and try to restore what's been lost.

That's really tough.

Very few people do that.

Peter had that opportunity.

You know, Peter was bold.

He was he was a man of strong will.

In fact, he told Jesus uh right before he betrayed Jesus and denied that he ever even knew him, he said, Hey, even if these other disciples betray you, I never will.

And he said that out loud in front of the other disciples.

That's how bold Peter is.

And he's so strong-willed, you kind of believe him.

I'm like, Peter's special.

He's the one that walked on water, like he's the one that first said Jesus was the Messiah.

Like, Peter's, he's an awesome dude.

But his willpower falls short, and he denies Jesus, and he leaves Jesus, and he betrays Jesus, and he ends up destitute.

And what does he do?

He goes back to fishing.

That's all he knows how to do.

And then one day, this is after Jesus has risen from the dead, but Jesus rises from the dead and and and then he shows up, but then he kind of disappears again.

There's this period of time where Jesus is just like showing up randomly.

It was a really interesting time.

And Peter, he feels like a failure.

He's messed up, he's lost his way.

Right?

He was a disciple and he was like the leader of the disciples, other than Jesus.

Like Peter was kind of second in command.

That's the idea that you get from the dynamics, and now Peter's just a fisherman again because he blew it.

He blew it.

And so he's out on a boat, he's been fishing all night, and he hasn't caught a thing.

Sound familiar and on the shore there's this person.

But they're kind of at a distance, can't see, and this person yells out, hey, like, how's it going?

Anything biting kind of thing?

And he's like, probably just so angry and upset.

And he already, he's already he already hates himself because of what he did to Jesus, and he doesn't want to have an interaction with this stranger, so he says, Yeah, no, no, haven't caught anything.

And this guy goes, Why don't you throw your nets on the other side of the boat?

Sound familiar?

And so Peter is just like, why does this keep happening to me?

And uh, and he does, he throws the nets over, and and once again, the nets are overflowing with fish.

And it's like that at that moment, Peter goes, It's Jesus.

And he just jumps out of the boat.

Just leaves the boat, leaves the fish, jumps out.

And then he and the other disciples go back and they they drag the fish, you know, onto the shore, and Jesus is there, and they sit down, and Jesus cooks them breakfast.

Like he's waiting on the shore.

There's a fire, and he he cooks them breakfast and they eat together.

And he has this interaction with Peter.

And he asks, Peter, do you love me?

And Peter says, Yeah, Jesus, of course I love you.

And so he asks him again, Peter, do you love me?

And Jesus is like, I or Peter rather says, Yeah, I already told you, I love you.

And then one more time, Jesus says, Peter, do you love me?

And Peter says, Yes, Lord, I love you.

Peter denied Jesus three times the night that Jesus was arrested.

He denied that he even knew Jesus three times.

And so Jesus gives Peter this opportunity three times to declare his love for Jesus.

And it's this restorative process.

And he takes Peter all the way back to that first moment when he called Peter to be a disciple, and he lets Peter know that, hey, Peter, that calling I put on your life, it still exists, it's still legitimate, it's still active, you can still be the man that I called you to be.

You don't have to go back to fishing for fish.

I called you to be a fisher of men.

That is still on the table if you want it.

For Peter, Jesus was a way back.

And I say this and I don't know if this I think some of us here today, just because of how life works, maybe you found yourself in a place.

This might be for a very specific person, I don't know.

But maybe you found yourself in a place where where you're you're a little lost, you're like wayward, you go, how did I get all the way here?

How I used to be there, now I'm here, and you're like, how do I get back?

How do I get back to where I used to be?

It could be your marriage, it could be some other relationship in your life, maybe it's a relationship that you have with one of your children, or maybe it's a relationship that you have with a parent.

And you go, man, we used to be so close and it used to be so good, and now it's so far, it's so distant.

How do I get back?

And you can't figure out how that could even be possible, but I'm telling you, Jesus is a way back.

He is a way back.

And what that looks like, like what does that look like practically?

You just spend time with Jesus.

Like, I don't have like a list of here's five things to do with Jesus, and then you're you know, then you're forward, you're back, you're out.

Like, Jesus is your way, he's your way to salvation, he's your way out, he's your way forward, he's your way back, he's whatever way you need to go, Jesus is the way.

But all you've got to do is be with him, is to know him, to be in a relationship with him.

That's all it is.

That's all that it takes.

That's like why we we don't know what Jesus said to Zacchaeus at that dinner, but apparently one meal with Jesus changed his life.

One interaction with the woman at the well, and she's forever changed because she was with Jesus.

One breakfast with Jesus changes Peter, and he goes back to being the man that he was called to be.

All you gotta do is be with Jesus.

He is alive, he is real, you can know him, you put your faith in him, you put your trust in him, you pray to him, you worship him, you think about him, you're obsessed with him, and you find a way back, forward, out, whichever way you need to be, because that's what Jesus does.

That's who Jesus is.

He is the way.

And he's your way, and he always will be.

Let's take Lord's Supper together.

We're gonna wrap up, we're gonna close.

We've got two people getting baptized, by the way.

That's awesome.

In fact, I have kind of a fun thing to say about baptisms in a second, but I want to get through this first.

If you're new, we always take Lord's Supper together.

It's something we do every single Sunday.

You don't have to, you're not required.

When you walked in, there were little cups with juice on the tables that you walked past, and if you didn't grab one, you're free to grab one now.

But again, totally up to you.

This is a little meal we take every week because Jesus asked us to.

Jesus actually said, When you get together, do this to remember me.

And every single week, this gives us this moment to get our eyes on Jesus.

Not that we haven't had our eyes on Jesus already, but if we ever forget, this helps.

This meal is so interesting because it represents Jesus' death on the cross.

The bread is his body that was, that was crucified and killed, the blood is, or the juice is rather his blood that was spilled.

And I think it's so interesting that I was thinking about this all week long.

The thing that keeps us from being the people we ought to be, the thing that makes us fall short, time and time again, is our flesh.

Right?

That's what Jesus said.

Hey, your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak.

Where there's a will, there's a way, except when flesh gets involved.

And we all have that.

We've all got flesh, we've all got stuff.

And so, how did Jesus solve the flesh problem?

He became flesh.

I mean, it's really interesting when you think about it.

Like, Jesus, Scripture says over and over again that Jesus, the Son, came from heaven.

The book of John, like if you just read the book of John within the first three chapters of John, at least four or five different times, you're gonna read that Jesus came from heaven.

John the Baptist tells his disciples that Jesus came from above.

Jesus, the Son, left heaven, left the Father, and he became flesh.

John chapter 1, verse 14 says the word was made flesh.

John 1:14

So to solve our flesh problem, Jesus Himself became flesh and he did what we couldn't do.

He lived the perfect life that we can't live.

So that when he went to the cross, he wasn't dying for his own sin.

He wasn't paying a price for his own shortcomings, he didn't have those.

Because of that, he was free to pay the price for ours.

And this meal reminds us of that.

Hebrews chapter 12, verse 24 says that you have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the blood of Abel.

Hebrews 12:24

Abel was a man killed in the Old Testament, and scripture says that his blood cried out for forgiveness, or for rather for vengeance, that Abel's blood cried out to God, asking for vengeance, but the blood of Jesus cries out to God, not for vengeance, not even for justice, but for forgiveness.

It says that we have Jesus who mediates a new covenant.

In other words, Jesus makes a new way.

Jesus has made a new way for all of us to know God.

And if you put your faith and your trust in Jesus, you have been forgiven, you have been saved, you are part of the family of God.

He has made a way, he has been the way for you, and you never have to live a day, an hour, a moment of your life separated from God.

It's a closeness that you can have with God that no sin can ever separate.

Sin can still be destructive in your life, but it can no longer separate you from God because Jesus has made a new way.

And when we take this meal together, we remember that.

It's a beautiful thing.

So let's do this.

Let's take the bread and let's pray together.

Pray with me.

Father, we thank you for this piece of bread and what it represents.

It is your son's body.

Jesus, you became a flesh to break the curse of our flesh.

You took on our weakness and yet remained strong.

So that when your body was broken on the cross, it was not broken as a punishment for your own shortcomings, your own mistakes, your own sin.

It was a sacrifice on behalf of ours, and it paid the price in full.

And we thank you for that, Jesus.

Let's take the bread.

Let's pray for the juice.

Lord, we thank you for this juice.

We thank you for what it means, what it represents.

Your blood spilled to pay the price for our sin.

And just like Hebrews chapter 12 says, this blood cries out for forgiveness.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Your blood, it's it's still speaking, it's still working, and it's still speaking out on our behalf.

It's purchased forgiveness for our sins.

You are the way, and you're our only way for forgiveness.

And we thank you for this, Jesus.

Let's take the juice.