Synoptic Gospels John 14

We press forward in the Gospel of John, Chapter 14.

The Gospel of John, Chapter 14. Yeah, well, not much we can do about that.

Not much we can do about that. John, Chapter 14. Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.

In my Father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you, before I go to prepare a place for you.

If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself. Where I am, there you may be also.

And you know the way where I am going. Alma said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going.

How do we know the way? She said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the

Father but through me. Well, obviously, words that we have heard many, many, many times before.

Very frequently, these will be words that are quoted at funerals, for example.

This would be one of the texts that would be used primarily at a Christian funeral.

Though I certainly, as I imagine all of us have, experienced that situation where for various and sundry reasons, death automatically converts everyone.

And so, whoever the deceased is, all of a sudden, might have been a drunkard that kicked the dog and abused his children and his wife.

But as soon as they die, all of a sudden, they are wonderful Christian people who live wonderful lives.

And we do not know what we are going to do without them. And we have all experienced that. I'll admit, one of the hardest things that I've ever done was when

I was a hospital chaplain, very frequently, the people that would come to the hospital, and let's say they had a loved one die at the hospital, at the emergency room, or something like that, have no connection to a church at all, don't have a church family.

And of course, I'm the chaplain. So, but you do the funeral. And doing a funeral for unbelievers, especially when the family is unbelieving, sure.

Great opportunity to present the gospel, I know. But what they want you to say, and what they'll hand you to talk about this person.

And you just, it's, I don't know how folks do that for long periods of time. I only did it for a few years, and it was more than challenging at that particular point in time.

But these are words, clearly, that are spoken to believers. And so often, words of comfort found in the scriptures will be wrested out of their context and applied to those who, in their lives, never had repentance and faith.

They may have even heard the message. They ignored it. And yet, when

Jesus says, not let your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me, he's talking to his disciples, and he's talking about, specifically,

Christian faith. And so when these words are applied outside of the context in which the original author intends them, they are being abused, they are being misused.

And unfortunately, that happens very, very often. The command to not let your heart be troubled, of course, we saw the background of that before.

Jesus has already said, I am going away, as I said, the Jews, I'm going away, and you're not to be able to follow.

And so the immediate context is the idea, quite literally, of abandonment on the part of the disciples.

Their leader is going to go away. And in any situation where, clearly, there's strong dependence upon the disciples, this isn't the situation like you would have, say, in Buddhism or Hinduism where you have disciples of a guru, and the whole idea of your following this person is that someday you won't be a follower of this person.

You will have your own followers. You'll have your own disciples. And you're going to reach this point where you become the guru and maybe even go past the level of the one who trained you.

That's never the idea. In Christian discipleship, it's certainly not the idea in the relationship the disciples had with Jesus by any stretch of the imagination.

And so when you have the statement, do not let your heart be troubled, it's understandable.

Because Jesus has functioned as the very speech of God.

It'd be like saying, the word of God is going to leave you. And obviously, there's still great misunderstandings on the disciples' part as to the nature of messiahship and as to the nature of this role that Jesus has.

And we've had reason to mention this many times in our studies of the

Gospels. There is such a strong tradition in the

Jewish context in which these men lived, such a strong tradition about the messiah as a physical ruler, the messiah as conqueror of all the enemies of Israel, and all the nations flocking to Jerusalem.

And even on the night of his betrayal, whose could be the greatest once the kingdom's set up?

And it really is not until the Holy Spirit comes and there is a enlightening of the mind and an opening of the mind to understand these things that this changes.

And so they're going to be troubled. They're going to be very, very troubled when Jesus says, I am going away.

And obviously then, the discussion of the coming of the Spirit, which will be central to chapters 14, 15, and 16.

And the fact that Jesus' relationship with them is not going to cease.

The mode of the relationship is going to change. But the relationship is not going to cease.

In fact, it's ironic. Just yesterday at some point, someone came into our chat channel and said,

I don't get this. How is it that Jesus is said to be with his people when we know that he's ascended into heaven?

And all he did was quote John 14, 23, where by the power of the

Spirit, the Father and the Son dwell with his people.

It wasn't enough for that particular individual. But as it may, there is the answer to the question.

This is the mechanism whereby that relationship that they have with Christ is going to continue, but be changed.

So the disciples are unique in the history of the Church in that they both had that physical one -on -one, in -this -world relationship with the

Incarnate One. But then, because of that unique time in history, they see the crucifixion, they experience the resurrection.

And then, because of Acts chapter 2, they experience the coming of the

Spirit. And so they are the first ones to experience this new way of Christ's presence amongst his people and the building of the body of Christ in that specific way.

Now, it's interesting that the means by which Jesus says not to let your hearts be troubled is to command faith.

But notice the commandment of faith. Believe in God, believe also in me.

It is a two -fold object of faith. And I do not ever recall

Moses saying, believe in God and believe in me. I don't ever recall that happening.

I don't ever recall those words being brought forth. Always, even when the disciples do present the command to believe,

I'm sorry, the prophets present a command to believe in God, even when they themselves present themselves as individuals who are presenting the very words of God.

It's the word of God that is the object of their faith, not the prophet himself.

But the close association of father and son in John 14 is really going to reach its epitome, its height, the pinnacle of expression in John chapter 17, when in his high priestly prayer,

Jesus is not only going to say that to have eternal life is to know the father and the son, but then also in the context, likewise, of verse 5, where it's the father and the son that are glorious together in eternity past.

And Jesus prays for that glorification that was once his in the presence of the father.

So this closeness of relationship will continue all the way through.

You'll want to note it. But you'll also want to note the balance where the distinctions are made between the father and the son, because this will be,

John chapter 14 is one of the key texts that oneness Pentecostals will use to attempt to confound and confuse the persons of the father and the son.

To where, if you've seen me, you've seen the father, in their mind becomes, I am the father.

In the same way, John chapter 10, verse 30, I am the father, we are one, the verb is plural there.

It's not I am the father, but I am the father, we are one, specifically unified.

Remember, we talked about this rather extensively in the salvation of God's people.

So you have another example here of words that simply would not be fitting in the mouth of anyone other than Jesus Christ.

Believe in God, believe also in me. You're going to have prayer to Christ, here in only 14 verses, in the future sense of once he has gone back in the presence of the father.

You have all of this going on. And I think it's important that you note these things so that you know, really, where the foundation of our faith lies when it comes to this relationship of the father and the son.

In my father's house are many dwelling places, if it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you.

Now, as I mentioned last week, despite the fact that certain

English translations have deeply impacted even our hymnology in some instances, this is not in my father's house are many mansions.

I know that that certainly was my thought as a young child. And it certainly fits in with the individualism of American Christianity, that you get your own mansion.

If you get your own mansion, then you can sort of choose who you get to invite over and who you don't want to let in through the golden gates of your particular mansion.

And so you can still be just as individualistic as you want to be as we tend to be in Western society at that point.

But that's not what the term actually means.

It is a room, since it's placed within my father's house, and so in other words, my father's house has all the rooms necessary for all those who are a part of our family, the family that will be defined as those who are united with Jesus Christ.

And therefore, these disciples do not have to worry about, well, what about all these, you know, we're sort of late comers.

I mean, there is Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but will there be room for us? Or, looking in the future, might it be like, well, this gospel goes all across the world, you know, is our position going to be diminished the more and more there are people who are followers of the

Messiah as we are, or anything like that? No, the father's house is just as big as it needs to be.

There are many dwelling places therein, and if it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you.

So Jesus isn't just going for the sake of going for, no, reason, and it's not like I sort of, again, as a child understood that, well,

OK, but my mansion's unfinished, OK? And so Jesus is up there, and he's got the carpenter belt on, and he's doing, you know, putting the final, you know, well, he does the stuff for other people first, you know, the people who were before me, and then he'll get around to mine, and I don't know,

I was a kid, what can I say? But actually, now that I think about it, there's all sorts of books in your Christian bookstore today about speculations about what heaven's like and everything else.

Isn't there some really popular book about some kid over the past year or so that allegedly, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, OK, yeah. And, you know, if you want to sell a book, that's, man,

I don't know why I haven't figured that out. I mean, you know,

I'm working on this book. I finished writing the book, but there's still a lot of work to do after you finish writing the book, specifically indexing it and generating the bibliography and the glossary, because this is on the

Koran, so it needs to have a glossary to understand what in the world I'm talking about. And so I'm thinking about, you know, the hundreds of footnotes in this thing and all the hours of stuff that went into it.

And then a few weeks ago, Kelly and I go by a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and she wanted to get some little books to read to Clementine.

This was before she was even born. And so we go back to the kids section, and she finds the, oh, what was the one that she was just all excited about?

Oh, A Bad Kitty Christmas, that's what it was, because we have one particular cat that tends to be rather bad.

And so she had loved The Bad Kitty Christmas, and so she hands it to me.

I turn the thing over. This thing's like, I don't know, 12 pages long, maybe, something like that.

I can guarantee you, there are no footnotes in this book at all, all right? And it costs $16 .99,

you know? And my books could be like $10 .99, you know? And it's just like,

OK, I'm in the wrong field here. But then I started thinking about it, you know, I don't want to put any pictures in a book on the

Koran. That would not be good. No, the whole Middle East would melt down, and Kentucky Fried Chicken's everywhere would be going up in flames, and so it would just be a really, really bad thing.

So anyways, I'm obviously in the wrong business along those lines. But how did

I get there? Oh, yeah, verse two. Moses is in the bulrushes, and this is how we got to verse two.

The idea that we have about heaven, I don't know.

We are given certain broad outlines. The fact that evil is not present and suffering is not present, and there is communion with God and things like that.

And I'm just a little bit concerned about taking some of the descriptions and running with them.

I mean, can you stub your toe on a golden street? I don't know, you know? What's the nature of time in the afterlife and all this kind of stuff?

I cannot answer those questions, and I'm not overly comfortable with where a lot of folks want to go.

And I think we should be aware of the fact that a lot of the imagery that we've seen in art and things like that doesn't come from scripture, but comes from medieval stories and things like that.

But one thing is, on Christmas Day, I was out doing a ride, and it became a very eventful ride for me.

Right toward the end, I wanted to get a certain number of miles. And I was coming back, and I said,

I need just one little extra loop. I go across a bridge and go over to 51st Avenue on the canal. And so I did that, and right as I got to 51st

Avenue, I was just turning around the canal and go back in the direction, and I'm listening to stuff.

I'm always listening to stuff on my iPod. And in the middle of this lecture, well, it's not even a lecture,

I'm listening to the Muslim hadith. I'm just about done with listening to the largest collection there. It's only taken,

I don't know how many hours. I've still got four hours left. It's probably taken 250, 300 hours of listening.

But I hear, help! In the middle of a hadith.

And so I stop, and I look, and there's a guy who's fallen into the canal, clinging to the bridge.

And he can't be seen from the road. The only place he could be seen from was my side of the canal, where I was.

And so I jump off my bike and go over there, and he was fishing, and he fell in.

And so the thing, the big long pole that you'd use to grab the fish with or something like that, is still up there.

I tried to use that to get him out. That wasn't happening. Physics were not on our side at that point at all, because he's soaking wet.

So now, he already weighs like 60 pounds more than me anyways, so you get him sopping wet, and now he's a whole lot more.

So the physics weren't working. And so I'm like, man, I need to flag somebody now. And right as I go clumping, because I'm wearing my cycling stuff, so I've got cleats in the bottom of my shoes and stuff.

I go clumping over the road, and I look down 51st that way, and I look northbound 51st. And what's coming down 51st

Avenue right then but a full size Glendale fire truck. So I'm like, ah.

And they turn their lights on and come over, because I'm pointing down the canal.

And so they got all their stuff out. And I went by again yesterday. He's not there.

So I figure they probably got the, because I took off.

I was sort of in the way, so I took off. And I really don't think they'd leave him there. But anyway, so I'm coming back, and I'm back in my own neighborhood, and I'm like, ah, just another mile or so.

There's one little loop I can do. They've repaved this one road, Camino de Esequi. It's real nice and smooth right now.

So it's nice to ride on. What happens? But there are Jehovah's Witnesses out going door to door.

So I go down, spin around, turn around, and end up talking with them. It ended up being a very interesting ride.

Let's just put it that way, that particular Christmas day. But if you talk with Jehovah's Witnesses, if you know what they believe, then you know that 99 .99

% of them that you'd be speaking with do not believe that they're going to heaven.

They are what's called the great crowd. And the great crowd will live forever in paradise on earth.

And only the Christ class, the anointed class of 144 ,000 individuals, they live up in heaven.

And Jesus is one of the 144 ,000. And so in having conversations with them on that particular subject,

I've often, when the subject of, well, where is heaven, and so on and so forth, I've often gotten past a lot of the rigmarole and stuff by saying to them, heaven, for me, is wherever Christ is.

So the promise that Jesus made to the disciples, remember, for Jehovah's Witnesses, these words are not addressed to them.

These words are not addressed to them. The vast majority of the New Testament is not actually addressed to one of Jehovah's Witnesses who's part of the great crowd.

It's only addressed to the anointed class. And there's only like 7 ,000, 8 ,000 of them running around these days anyways.

And the chances of you ever running into one is very, very small, and you'd have to basically be in Brooklyn, New York to run into one of these individuals, because, of course, that's where their headquarters are.

So the point is that Jesus says, if I go and prepare a place for you,

I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. That is the promise to every believer, the idea of limiting that, well, this is just for the 12, or this is just for the, quote, unquote, anointed class, or something like that.

These are words for all believers, everyone who believes, as Jesus says in verse 1, believe in God, believe also in me.

The person who has faith in Jesus, Jesus says, I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

So there is this promise. And, of course, we see in Paul's words, he is torn between two things, to remain on here, which is most needful for the church, or to depart, and to be with the

Lord. I think it's one of the strongest arguments against forms of conditionalism and soul sleep and things like that, is that if the apostle really did think that when he died, he was going to cease to exist, and for whatever amount of time, no longer be in the presence of Christ, only to then enter into his presence at some time in the future.

Even if he doesn't experience conscious existence during that time, I think the very idea of that would be utterly abhorrent to his thought.

It would somehow be expressed in his words, it is not. Instead, it seems very clear that for the apostle, when he said, for me to live as Christ, die as gain, to depart and be with the

Lord, that departure and being with the Lord are instantaneous things. It's not, I'm going to depart, and then

I'm going to cease to exist for a while, and then eventually get to be with the Lord. That's not how it works.

And so this promise really is a promise for everyone.

And again, it's easy for us to hear these words, because we have an appropriate view of Christ, we understand he can say these things.

Try to fit any of this into the mouth of one of the prophets.

Because I will come again. I, Isaiah, will return and receive you to myself.

I don't want to go to Isaiah. How could any true follower of the one true

God want to go to a particular prophet? I want to go to that individual. That where I am, there you may be also.

Christ's presence defines heavenly bliss. And it's easy, again, for most of us who've been raised in the faith, it's like, well, yeah, but it's this kind of stuff that you need to keep in mind.

And to recognize there is just this entire realm of information that demonstrates that the liberal views of Jesus, the culted views of Jesus, are utterly impossible in the mindset of any of the biblical writers.

But we frequently miss them, because we're accustomed to hearing Jesus speak in that way.

But then Jesus says something. And you know the way where I am going.

You know the way where I am going. And Thomas said to him,

Lord, we do not know where you are going. How do we know the way? And so Jesus' response to them is a verse that we,

I would imagine, even if you don't have a list of memory verses, that you specifically review for whatever purposes,

I would imagine if you've been a believer for almost any period of time, you have memorized

John 14 .6. I think there are a fair number of unbelievers who have memorized

John 14 .6, in the same way that I think the majority of NFL football fans have memorized

John 3 .16. Or at least the reference. They may not know what it says, but they know there's something important about John 3 .16,

because there are people in the stands at every football game that are holding signs up that say that.

So there must be something important about it. Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through me. Now, the vast majority of discussion of this text does not take place in the context of saying, this was an answer to a question from Thomas, where Thomas is saying, we don't know where you're going, and how then could we know the way, because you can't know the way unless you know what the destination is.

Well, what road should I take? Well, where are you going? You've got to know where you're going first before you can discuss such things as roads, ways, travel, et cetera, et cetera.

So Jesus' response seems to be, it seems to me anyways, that what he was doing was by stating the question the way that he did, by making a statement, and you know the way where I am going, was to prompt this very question from the disciples.

It seems rather obvious to me. And it is interesting that his response is that I am the way.

That's not what Thomas was looking for. Thomas is still thinking he's going to a specific place, a mountaintop in India someplace, as various new age groups would tell you.

Something along those lines, not to the answer that is actually being given,

I am the way. So the way to the Father's house is through Christ.

Now, these words, of course, are incredibly offensive to many, many, many people today.

They are incredibly offensive to liberal

Christians. And I use that term in the way the world does. I would say that a large portion of what calls itself liberalism today is not

Christianity. If you deny the resurrection of Christ, you deny the deity of Christ, it's not

Christianity. It's a nice religious social club, but you need to come up with a different name. Because when

Christians down through the centuries have been willing to give their lives for certain things, and you are willing to sell them off for a pittance, please don't call the resultant religious hodgepodge of things

Christianity. It's not. It's amazing today how adamant people are.

That Christians have no right to define their own faith. Have you noticed that?

Muslims have the right to define their faith. Oh, yeah, yeah, you bet. And Buddhists and Hindus, they're all, they can.

But Christians specifically, and I think it's directly related to the self -loathing of Western society that has been the result of the takeover of our educational system by leftists.

The best way to get people to no longer care about the values of the past is to demonize the people who exemplify those values in the past.

So all the founding fathers are terrible, horrible, nasty, ignorant men that were just, you know, they should be whipped and chained and everything else.

And that way, you're willing to abandon what your culture has felt was good and right and proper and grab hold of something else.

Well, it's sort of hard to avoid the fact that Western culture as a whole has been deeply influenced by Christian values,

Christian holidays. I've said many times, one of the first things that struck me when

I went to the UK starting in 2005, and it looks like I'll be heading back there in just a couple months, is wherever you go, even as secular as Britain has become, as secular as Scotland has become, as secular as Ireland has become, wherever you go, if you just raise your eyes from the cobblestones, you are going to see not only churches, and many of them have been turned into nightclubs now, but they're still there, but carved into the stone, the very names of the cities, the very names of the streets testify loudly of the role that Christianity in all sorts of different forms, many of which we wouldn't agree were

Orthodox, but Christianity as a whole has had in those particular places.

And so as a result, it seems that this self -loathing of our own past includes the loathing of Christianity, and therefore, the denial to us of the right of self -definition.

And so if you try to at all say to someone, well, that's not

Christianity, if you try to point to the outrageous, tiny, little family cult of Fred Phelps and his whacked -out family, and believe me,

I've met him. I walked right up to the man in Salt Lake City once. And I actually got about 37 seconds before he gave the distress call to call all of his cult followers to shout me down and get rid of me.

The way that I got my 37 seconds was I said something.

I mentioned that I was a Baptist. That got me about 15 seconds.

And that I had just recently debated Barry Lynn on the subject of homosexuality in New York.

That's what gave me 15, 17 more, no, no, 20 more seconds.

Anyway, 22 seconds. Thank you. So 37, that was OK. 22 seconds. And if you're wondering why it only lasted that long, he was like, oh,

OK, you know. And then I made the mistake of quoting from Ephesians that we are to speak the truth in love.

And as soon as I said in love, he yelled out, God hate her, which is his way of calling his mind -numb zombies to, they were the walking offensive.

And they just immediately got between me and him and just started yelling, God hate her, God hate her. It's deep intellectual conversation that takes place at that particular point in time.

But that's how cults are. Anyways, society wants to say, that's you, that's you.

And you want to go, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. So here, they violate this, they violate this, that's you, that's you.

At the same time, you see those wonderful, loving Christians over there, the ones that don't judge anybody.

They don't believe any of this silly stuff. Oh, in fact, oh, I forgot to either tweet or blog this.

But if you want to listen to an amazing example of why the

Anglican Church in England is dead, deader than the proverbial doornail, listen to last week's unbelievable radio broadcast.

Available on iTunes, I highly recommend it. If for anything, it gives you an idea of what's coming our direction, there was an

American evangelical, who I would consider to be way to the left of me, and yet he was the conservative, actually defending at least an element of historicity in the

Christmas story. And then they had this Anglican teacher. And I don't even know how to describe it.

If you've ever seen a British comedy where there's a kindly little

British fellow who's in his 70s, and he grows flowers, and he wears a little nice little cap and has a little teeny, tiny dog that my cat could kill, that kind of thing, that's what he sounded like, all right?

Just, just, ah, ah, ah, ah. But he was the most raving heretic you'd ever, but the nicest little heretic you'd ever want to meet.

And he just kept interpreting everything as a naturalist. And Justin Brierley, the host, would go, so you just don't believe there are miracles.

Oh, there's miracles. I'm a miracle, and you're a miracle. We're all just miracles.

But no, Jesus wasn't virgin born. That's ridiculous. It was just amazing to listen to this.

And then at the end, he goes, you know, I go into parishes, and I teach this stuff, and I tell people they don't have to believe all these fables and myths that we've been told.

And oh, they're just so pleased and so happy. They're relieved. They don't have to believe things like the virgin birth or the resurrection or things like this.

They can actually have a faith that makes sense to the world. And I just,

I listen to that, and I go, there it is. There it is. I just wish

Justin had said something along the lines of, so, from your perspective, we don't want to cause a stumbling block to the world, right?

To which he would have said, oh, of course, of course. Just gone through every description that Paul gives in 1

Corinthians 1 and 2, and he would have gone, oh, yes, the world's wise. It was amazing.

And I can guarantee you that, even though it didn't come up, his interpretation of this text would have been quite intriguing, but somewhat disconnected from the intentions of the author.

These words are exclusivistic. And if you are offended by exclusivism, then you're offended by God being

God. And you're offended by God being personal. Now, that's why so many people, they love

The Force. Disney has bought the Star Wars stuff. I'm not sure that Darth Vader with Mickey Mouse ears is really quite the same thing as it used to be.

But there's supposed to be some more Star Wars movies coming out. And that was a great intro to Buddhism, because that's the

Force, but it's impersonal. You can't offend the Force.

It's like offending a river. It's just a river. It's a bunch of water molecules flowing one direction.

Fundamentally, that's what it is. And if you're offended by the exclusive claim that Jesus says,

I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me. He's talking about the

Father's mansion, OK? This is the context. We're talking heaven here.

Whatever else heaven is called, here it is. No one comes to the

Father but through me. This is a, the world hears that as an offensive, egotistical, unloving restriction of our freedom to follow our own will.

But is that what it was? And can we even allow a conversation to take place when that is the accepted definition of what these words are actually indicating?

One of the things we have to start recognizing, if we are going to take advantage, while we still have advantage, of speaking out in our land, then we have to, from the very beginning, challenge the presuppositions of the questions and the way that they're framed as we have opportunity to speak with people.

You watch this, I mean, I'm going to mention him in the sermon this morning, but Pierce Morgan.

Anybody know Pierce Morgan? Someone out there doesn't like him.

Pierce Morgan, leftist from England. Actually, I got kicked out of England. But leftist from England.

Have you noticed, he's here within the past couple weeks, that he, not only does he think we need to get rid of the

Second Amendment, but he believes that the Bible needs to get an amendment itself. The Bible needs to get an amendment so that the

Bible can catch up with where we are today and embrace the profaning of marriage.

See, so we need the process of amending the Bible. And this is a very ignorant man.

I mean, oh, that's a, no, he's ignorant. I mean, these elite live out in this other place, the world, where they don't think they have to do study.

They don't actually have to read the other side. You know, when I went to seminary, at least in, in the seminary I went to, it was hardly conservative, but at least in our circles, we actually read what the liberals had to say so we could respond to them.

I can guarantee you something, in liberal seminaries, they do not read what we have to say. They don't think we have to say has any meaning whatsoever.

And so they are more than happy to get a second hand summary of what we say that may be completely inaccurate, but that's good enough.

I've been there. I know. I've experienced this over and over again. And the elite of our media today, oh, the ignorance that they have on almost any biblical subject whatsoever is shocking.

And so if you actually dare get into a situation where you're talking either with someone like that, or with someone who just follows in their line, you have to, the first thing in your mind constantly has to be, is the question that this person is asking, or is the statement this person is making, does it contain particular false presuppositions that will make it impossible for my response to make any sense to them?

And they may not like your backing up the truck to deal with those issues, but it's the only way to have a meaningful conversation, if they even know what a meaningful conversation is.

And I say that in the sense that the study of logic and rational analysis of truth in our society has gone out the window.

It has absolutely gone out the window. It is amazing to listen to these things. And so that sort of leads us to the second statement and the truth, but we don't have time to get there today.

And don't worry, we are not done with this verse. We will certainly press on with John 14, 6, the next time that we are together, which may be next week,

I think. We will see. I'm not certain about that. I will actually be, if you want to pray for me, will be teaching at Cornerstone Seminary over in Northern California Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, coming back

Saturday night. And when you do like six or eight hours of teaching one day, if you're a student, you think that's tough.

Try to stand up front. It's absolutely exhausting, but that's what we'll be doing. I'm looking forward to that. And let's close the word of prayer.

And dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have taken out from our hearts that rebellion against your truth so that we can confess that Jesus is the way, the truth, and life.

No one comes to you but by him. We thank you that that is a gracious statement.

It is a statement demonstrating that you are the one who saves and that you do so freely. We thank you for that truth.