Come to Me | I am the Way, the Truth, the Life

If you would remain standing, we are going to read the teaching text for tonight. We stand during the reading of the teaching text to honor scripture as the word of God and not just human wisdom. This is John 14, verses one through seven. This is Jesus speaking. He says, do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. My father's house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I'm going there 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 that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you're 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 will know my father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Church City, how you guys doing? Good? You guys ready to go tonight? All right, let's get into it. My name is Tim. I serve as one of the executive pastors here.

It is an honor to be with you. Recently, there was a man in our church who was baptized at our morning venue location, Rodef Shalom, right in the basement. And as he was being baptized, he stood up to share his story of what life was like before he met Jesus. And he started by saying, I am one of the last people in the city of New York you'd expect to get baptized. And looking at his life from the outside, I'd have to agree with him. He was a committed atheist, not the half-hearted kind, but like the full-on atheist, smart guy, went to Harvard, landed an incredible career in finance. He was intelligent, he was driven. And when he moved to New York City, he did exactly what you'd expect someone like him to do. He climbed, he won, and by every external measure of success, he had arrived. But here's what nobody saw. Behind the closed doors of his apartment, behind the resume and the credentials, he was in a crisis. Not a financial crisis, not a professional one. Something deeper, something more subtle, something more quiet. It was a crisis of the soul. And as he followed his atheism to its logical conclusion, he just began to feel hopeless, more despair, more meaninglessness. Because if God didn't exist, then what was it all for? Like, why keep competing in this grand competition

that we all call life? And then one night, as he was sitting home alone in his apartment, he had a vision. Not like the religious kind of vision, but the kind that comes when your heart finally confronts the truth that you've been outrunning. And he described it this way. I had a recurring image in my mind that this competition I was living in was like walking up a glass staircase in the sky. One day I would fail, the glass would crack, I would look down, and there would be nothing beneath me, and I would just fall. Can you imagine giving the fullness of your life to a vision, only to get to the end, and to discover that it was the wrong vision entirely? Think about the imagery, glass staircase, beautiful from the outside, looks like progress, but in the end, it amounts to nothing. What I wanted to suggest to you guys this evening is that this image is not just his story, but this is the story of a human heart apart from God. And this is exactly what Jesus came to resolve. We're continuing forward in our series on the seven great I am statements of Jesus, and these are seven moments in the Gospel of John where Jesus looks at the deepest needs of humanity and he says, I am the answer to that. And today we're in John chapter 14, and just to set the scene,

this is the night before Jesus died. He gathers all of his disciples, his closest friends together in the upper room one last time to share a meal and to share instruction. about what was to come. He speaks urgently and passionately about what's gonna happen when he goes away, and the more he talks about going away, the more confused and frightened the disciples become. Now you have to understand that these disciples left everything to follow Jesus. In the first century, if your father was a fisherman, you fished. If your father was a carpenter, you became a carpenter. And so not only did they leave behind their families, but they also left behind their social identities, their financial security, their inheritance to follow this man, this Jesus of Nazareth, this Jewish rabbi. And now Jesus says, I'm going away. And they're wondering, have we made a mistake? Is he about to abandon us? Maybe he's not gonna deliver us after all. And maybe he's been the wrong one to follow. Jesus sensing this, he doesn't rebuke his disciples, but he actually responds with compassion. This is what he says in verse one. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me.

My father's house has many rooms, and if that were not so, would I have told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and I prepare this place for you, I will come back, and I'll take you to be with me so that you may also be where I am. And then here's this word. You know the way to the place where I'm going. Now Thomas speaks up first, and Thomas is a practical man. And he's got practical questions. He's like the guy in your community group who always just says exactly what's on his mind. And so he speaks up and he says, Lord, we don't know where you're going. So how can we know the way? Thomas is asking Jesus for physical directions to a place. He thinks that Jesus has some bunker out in the woods that he's planning to launch his kingdom from, and he's asking Jesus to drop him a pin. Now what Jesus says next is something so outrageous, so absolute, that it either changes everything or it means nothing at all. If this is true, it is the most important thing ever said. In human history. But if it's false, he's not a good teacher. He's a lunatic and he's a liar, and this whole gathering is for nothing. This is what he says. I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.

What Thomas was looking for was a map. He was looking for a set of directions or instructions that would ensure he was taken care of, but what Jesus offers him instead is relationship. Now I have two key points that I just wanna lead us through today. This is gonna be a simple sermon, and the first is this, is that the Christian life is about relationship, not religion. And number two, the way, the truth, and the life are found in a person, not a place. You guys got those memorized? Okay, let's go. So number one, most people, if you were just to ask them the question, what does it mean to be a Christian, they would say, well, it means to be good. It means to be a good person. It means to do good for God and for other people. And what Jesus is teaching us in this text is that Christianity is not primarily a set of instructions about a better way to live. It's not a complete set of answers to all of life's mysteries. Christianity is a relationship with a person who has all of those things in himself. You understand that? Knowing him is the way to those things. But here's the problem. You can know a tremendous amount about God,

and you can still perish to an eternity apart from God. You can tithe, you can memorize verses, you can serve and fast and lead community groups and you can still die without a relationship with Jesus. Salvation is not given because you excel in Christian practices. It's not granted based on how frequently you show up to a church. Salvation is found by knowing and trusting in a person. It's very different from religion. Religion at its core is a transaction. It's an attempt to reach up to God and gain his approval by your own effort and performance. One of the things that I fear we don't talk about enough is the unconverted Christian. You know, you guys just heard Keith talk about our mission statement about lost New Yorkers, but rarely do we talk about lost Christians sitting in church. But here's the thing. Jesus did all the time. Look at what he says in Matthew. Matthew 7, this is a sobering text. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons

and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you, away from me, evildoers. Now look at these people. They have the right theology. They know to call Jesus Lord. They recognize the deity of Christ. That's pretty important. And they're earnest about it. Whenever you repeat something in Greek, it's a literary way, like Lord, Lord, it's a literary way of expressing passion. So they're passionate. They know when to raise their hands in church and when to shout amen. They have experience in ministry. It says that they did miracles, many miracles in his name. They're giving prophetic words to people. They're even casting out demons from people in his name. Put another way, these are experienced Christians. By all modern ministry metrics and standards, these are the people that would get thrust into leadership in a church. But Jesus still says, I never knew you. I never knew you. So why does he turn them away? Well, they studied him, but they never trusted him. They served him, but they never loved him. They said all the right things about him, but their hearts were far from him.

They knew about him, but they never knew him. And by the way, this passage isn't intended to create fear. It should actually produce the opposite. It should produce relief, because what it means is that you don't have to work yourself into some super spiritual state to be confident that you're going to heaven. Going to heaven and salvation doesn't come from getting yourself into a spiritual state. It comes from humbling yourself and acknowledging your weakness. It comes from trusting in Jesus personally as your savior, as your help, as your guide, and as your life, and here's the good news. That's something a little kid can do. That's why Jesus says that those who enter the kingdom of heaven have to become like children. Charles Spurgeon, after preaching on this passage, he said, oh, but Jesus could never say to me, I never knew you, for he has known me for years as the beggar at his door. I would say to him, never knew me, Lord, never? Never knew me? I depended on you for my forgiveness. I leaned on you when I felt weak. I looked to you when I felt lost. I trusted you to fix what was broken in me. No, no, no, he could never say to me, I never knew you, for he will recognize me as one

who depended on him for everything. So I just wanna ask this question tonight. 2026, Lower East Side, here we all are in this room. Do you know Jesus? Not are you a Christian, but do you truly know him? Do you have a relationship with him? Can you look him in the eyes and say, I belong to him? There was a famous theologian named Harry Williams, and this guy was an incredible 20th century preacher. He reached a point in his ministry where he basically made a commitment with God that he would never preach anything that wasn't true to his own experience. And from that place, he preached some of the most powerful sermons of a generation. And he had this idea that there are essentially two kinds of knowledge, and the first is what he called outside knowledge. And this is a chart that I made this morning. Not bad. So the first is called outside knowledge, and this is the knowledge that we learn at universities. This is where you study and you memorize and you control information. But outside knowledge, it keeps its distance from you. You study it, but really does it change you at the soul level? By the way, us as New Yorkers, we're excellent at this kind of knowledge. This is what our education systems train us for.

Learn the material, pass the test, become the expert. But the second kind is very different. This is called inside knowledge. Inside knowledge has a life of its own. This is the kind of knowledge that gets under your skin. It's personal. You don't master it, it masters you. Think about the difference between reading a bunch of parenting books and actually holding a newborn baby for the very first time. One, you study and read. The other one changes everything about you. I remember falling in love with my wife. I was reading all the Christian dating books. If there's been a book written on Christian dating, I promise you, I have read it. I knew about attachment theory and healthy boundaries and communication. That's all well and good. It's the outside knowledge. But then I met Riley, and Riley liked hiking. Now I don't know how much you know about hiking, but hiking's basically walking. But as you walk, you just choose to suffer, and that's what hiking is. Now I don't know who invented hiking, but I don't think they liked people very much. So I drew this graph to actually show you guys what hiking looks like, if we have that slide.

Yeah, there it is. It was like somebody looked at just a perfectly flat surface and they said, what if we just inverted it and we walked up? And ever since, people like me have been suffering. But Riley liked hiking, and I liked Riley, and so I liked hiking. I remember the first time that we went on a real hike, I was out there on the trail, breathing heavy, looking at every rock like it had just personally wronged me, and she's up way ahead, like 100 yards, just smiling, dancing around like a gazelle, and she points to a tree and she says, isn't it beautiful? And I'm like, yeah, it's so beautiful. Meanwhile, I've got a rock in my shoe and I can't feel my right knee. Here's my point, when you actually fall in love, when another person gets under your skin and into your thoughts, into your heart, whether you plan for it or not, you'll just start changing. You'll start doing crazy things. You'll go hiking. And here's why, you're not in control anymore. You've been mastered. And what Williams would say is that when it comes to God for so many of us, we want to treat him like the outside knowledge, we want to master God without being mastered by him. Williams writes this, God can never be the outside

kind of knowledge. The conclusion of a philosophical or scientific investigation for a cool head and a cold heart never led any person to know any sort of love, least of all the love which surpasses knowledge. The love which surpasses knowledge. And so the question is, which one describes your knowledge of Jesus? Do you know about Jesus, his teachings, his theology, his place in history, or do you truly know him the way you would know your closest friend? Do you know what it's like to cling to him in pain and disappointment and confusion, what it's like to trust him when you can't see your way out of a problem? Do you know what it's like to feel him moving in the depths of your soul, comforting you and assuring you and guiding you? Now someone might ask, well pastor, how do I develop that kind of relationship with Jesus? How do I form that sort of intimacy? I'll just say this, it doesn't happen all at once. It takes time and patience and consistent choices to trust him in the big things, in the small things, and what happens is you start to look back on your life and you see his hand of faithfulness guiding you at every step of the way. You start to recognize his voice and you learn

what it feels like when he's convicting you and he's comforting you and he's calling you forward. And this is what John 14 is all about. So first, the Christian life is about relationship, not religion, you guys got that one? Okay, number two, the way, the truth, and the life are found in a person, not a place. So first Jesus says, I am the way, and when he says I am the way, the way speaks to direction. So when Thomas asked Jesus to show him the way, I think he's asking a question that all of us ask at some point, which is how can I live my life so that it ends up in the right place? Yeah, what way can I live so that I'll be happy and safe and secure and at peace? And the subtext behind that question is that so often we think safety and happiness and peace are found in a place over there and Jesus will be a helpful guide to getting us there. But Jesus is saying, I am not a means to an end. I am the way, I am the place, I am the end destination. This is what he means. Some of you guys have heard my story, I graduated college with a degree in petroleum engineering. And at the time, petroleum engineering was one of the most desirable degrees in America because oil prices were at an all-time high. I graduate, I land the dream career working at the dream company. It's a lucrative industry at one of the most

profitable moments in a generation. I was engaged to get married and as I look back on my life, it just felt like everything was just up and to the right. Couldn't have been going better. I had the career, I had the girl, I just had the whole future mapped out. I was even serving at a church. And honestly, as I look back on that season, Jesus, he was there, he was a part of the plan, but he was a supporting character at best to help me accomplish that. pushed my vision. And then within a year, the whole thing fell apart. Oil prices collapsed, my dream project got shelved, and one night I come home to meet with the woman that I was engaged to get married to, and she didn't say much, but she just put the engagement ring in the palm of my hand, and she left. I remember this moment where I was holding the ring in my hand, and I looked down, and I see the light reflecting off the diamond, and I'm thinking to myself, I have built an entire life in my mind, a very specific life, and I'm watching all of it just dissolve through my hands like sand. It was a glass staircase kind of moment. And I was completely broken, it was a dark night of the soul, and it was in that brokenness with nothing left to lean on for the first time in my life that I stopped reaching for the vision,

and I started reaching for Jesus. I remember I would wake up early in the morning before work, and I would just sit with Jesus in his word day after day, because it was literally the only thing that brought me comfort. And what I found was that slowly over that year, I wasn't just reading the Bible, the Bible was reading me. I wasn't mastering faith and religion, but Jesus was mastering me. He wasn't helping me get somewhere else, he was becoming the somewhere. He was the destination that I never knew I was supposed to look for. And this is just the point I wanna make. The happiness and the contentment that you seek, the peace and the security that you seek, it's not found in some place over there. It's found with a person in this place, right here, right now, fully available to you. When Jesus says he is the way, it's important to understand that he's not just talking about the way to happiness, he's also talking about the way to heaven, to eternal life, and that matters, that's important. Jesus says in verse six, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Now to understand why Jesus says this, we have to go back to the very beginning of the story, to the first three chapters of your Bible.

This is the Garden of Eden. This is a moment when humanity had direct, unmediated access to the presence of God. It says that Adam and Eve would walk in the garden in the cool of the day with their father. There was no barriers, there was no religious system, there was no intermediaries, it was just God, the father, and his children in open communion. And then the fall happened. Adam and Eve eat from the tree, the tree that they were forbidden to eat from, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It says that their eyes were opened, and sin enters the human story for the very first time, and Genesis three records what happens immediately after. It says after sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim, angels, to the east of the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. Did you catch that word? So the angels were placed to guard the way to the source of life because God said that if you eat from this tree, you will certainly die. And they ate, and death entered the story. And the entire rest of your Bible, as you read through it, every single law, every sacrifice, every prophet, every temple, is the story of humanity asking one desperate question. How do we find our way back to God? Moses' law tried.

The sacrificial system tried. Philosopher after philosopher has tried. Secularism is trying. New Age is trying. And they've all fallen short because none could fully close the gap. None could restore what was sealed in Eden. So when Jesus stands up in the upper room, arms spread wide, and he says, I am the way, he is not just saying, I'm giving you directions. He's making a cosmic announcement that he's reversing humanity's deepest and oldest crisis. He's saying that through my death and resurrection, the barrier of sin is removed. The way to the Father is open, and I offer that life to you. This is why in all four of the gospels, they describe this moment that happened right when Jesus dies on the cross. The second he dies, it says that at that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. You gotta understand that the curtain of the temple was what separated the holy of holies, the presence of God, from people. And when the veil was torn, when the temple was torn top to bottom as God would tear it, not as a man would tear it, it was a symbol to show that the way has been restored and the presence of God is available

to his people in Christ Jesus. This is good news. We got so familiar with this stuff, but what this means is that if you're here tonight and you're in Christ Jesus, you can now approach God's throne of grace with what? With confidence. Confidence and boldness to receive mercy and to find grace to help him, help you in your time of need. Whatever problem you're going through, you can come to the throne of grace. It's a throne titled grace, not a throne titled judgment. And if you're here and you wouldn't consider yourself a Christian, this is even better news for you because what it means is that you qualify. You don't need some type of religious intermediary or a guru to get you to God. You don't have to be a good person or pull your life together. You need to only do what that man from Harvard did, which is to fall at his feet, believe in his name, repent of your sins, and trust in him to receive his gift of grace. So when Jesus says, I am the way, he's saying, I am the way back to God. Next he says, I am the truth. We live in an age of Yelp reviews, and I say that with some grief in my heart.

Especially in a place like New York, I don't know about you guys, but before I try a new restaurant, I'm reading the Yelp reviews. Before I watch a movie, I'm reading Rotten Tomatoes. Before I buy anything on Amazon, I'm scrolling to the bottom and I'm reading all the one-star reviews because that's where all the entertaining comments are. I can't trust the five-star reviews because I know it was the owner's cousin. And usually I settle right in the middle on three stars where there's just a healthy amount of honesty and cynicism. But like, those are the reviews I can trust. We rarely experience things anymore without first consulting what other people think about them. And here's what's fascinating, is these reviews shape our experience before we even walk in the door. My wife and I last week were at a restaurant in the Upper West Side, and I'm already a little suspicious because Kevin from Ohio gave it two stars. And Kevin writes in long paragraphs and he uses big words like unacceptable. Now, I don't know anything about Kevin, but all of a sudden I'm putting my trust in him that Kevin's opinion matters and that Kevin's an authority in my life. Now, here's my question for you.

Where did you get your review of God from? Because a lot of people are living their spiritual lives based on a review that somebody else left. It could have been a bad church experience, could have been a painful experience with a Christian, a harsh parent, could have been a TikTok video that challenged your faith. Fill in the blank, whatever it is for you. What happens is that version of God starts to get passed around until it barely resembles the original, and we believe it and we live from it. But here's the thing, this isn't a new problem. This isn't a modern day 2026 thing. This was a human problem. The Garden of Eden was not just a moral failure, it was a truth problem. So when the serpent comes to tempt Adam and Eve, he wasn't coming with obvious evil. The serpent represents the devil, Satan, by the way. The serpent came with a lie about who God was. This is what he says in verse four. This is the serpent talking. "'You will not certainly die, "'for God knows that when you eat from it, "'your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, "'knowing good from evil.'" You guys catch what the lie was? Very simple. God is withholding something from you.

He can't be trusted. Maybe he's not a loving father after all. And we believed it. And ever since that moment, we have been living with a distorted picture of who God the Father is. It's like a grainy and out-of-focus photo. This is why A.W. Tozer wrote this incredible commentary. He says, "'What comes into our minds "'when we think about God "'is the most important thing about us. "'The most concerning fact about any man "'is not what he may say or do, "'but what he conceives God to be like in his heart. "'By some secret law of the soul, "'we tend to move toward our mental image of God.'" So what Tozer is saying is that a distorted picture of God doesn't just affect your theology. It shapes your entire life. If you picture God as distant, you will keep your distance. If you picture God as a demanding boss, you'll spend your life performing. If you picture God as withholding, you'll spend your life striving and restless. But if you picture God as a loving father, you'll run to him and throw yourself on him because that's what a little kid does. So when Jesus says, I am the truth, he's speaking directly into that wound. He's saying that I am the corrective

to the lie that was told in the garden. I am the full revelation of what God the Father is actually like. Look at what he says back to Thomas in verse seven. "'If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.'" And from now on, Thomas. You do know him, and you have seen him. So here's what this means. You're here tonight, you wanna know what God is really like? Not the cultural version, not the version on TikTok, not the distorted version, but the true and the living God, you wanna know what he's like? Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus weeping at the tomb of his friend, Lazarus, fully God and fully undone by grief. Look at Jesus kneeling to wash the feet of the man who was about to betray him to his death. Look at Jesus eating with the prostitutes and the tax collectors and the worst of the worst, all the people that the religious leaders wrote off. Look at Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultery while her accusers had stones in their hands. Look at Jesus on the cross, stripped, beaten, and forsaken, and still looking at the people who punished him and saying, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they're doing. And when you see Jesus, you see the Father. That's what God's really like, and that's who Jesus came to reveal. This is like that moment in Narnia

when the whole landscape goes from cold and gray and dark to flourishing with color and life and vibrancy. This is the picture of God that Jesus came to restore. So you might just ask, well, what do I do with all this? Like, how do I respond? I think Jesus gives us a clue right here in verse one. I love this. He says, you believe in God? You're here, you believe in God? Believe also in me. Believe in me, Jesus. Trust me, receive me. In whatever problem you're facing in your life right now, depend on me, count on me, receive my love. Open your heart to me. And this is why John Owen, the greatest unkindness that we can do to the Father is to refuse to believe that he loves us. Just think about that. You might've come in here tonight and you think that the greatest unkindness that you can do to God is to sin, to fail morally, but Owen would say, no, no, no. The greatest unkindness you can do is to refuse to believe that God loves you because when you refuse to believe that God loves you, you're not just doubting a feeling. You're calling God a liar. You're saying, I know you sent your son to die for me, but I still don't fully trust you.

I still feel like I have to earn it. I still feel like I have to perform for you. And that breaks the Father's heart. I feel like maybe God brought some of you here tonight just to tell you that he loves you. We hear this stuff all the time, but do you guys realize that the creator of the universe loves you? He desires you. There's something about you when you wake up in the morning that stirs his affections in a way that we in our limited capacities don't even have a way of understanding or articulating. God loves you. That's a good word. So Jesus says, I am the way and the truth, and finally he says, I am the life. The primary theme of John's Gospel is that Jesus brings life to things that are dead. He specializes in it. Jesus brings sight to dead eyes, puts breath in dead lungs, and he brings life to dead hearts. So I just wanna ask you the question, again, very different from are you a Christian, but do you have the life of God flowing through your heart? Jesus promised us in the book of John that if you believe in him, that you'll have rivers of living water flowing through you, and I just wanna ask, is that your reality tonight?

Are you stepping into the fullness of God that he offers? So I think that there's a lot of people who are technically theologically alive, but they're not really living. Maybe you show up, you serve, say the right things, but there's just no flow, there's no fragrance, there's no life. There's a dryness to the soul that you quietly made peace with. I just wanna say, that is not the life that Jesus died to give you, you understand that? He promises so much more, do not settle. Do not settle when abundance is available to you. The problem when we read our Bibles and we read the word life is that we only read the word life, but in the Greek, it was translated two different ways, two different words for life that mean two different things. The first is the word bios, say bios. Bios, this means to be in a state of existence. It's biological life. This is your heartbeat, it's your metabolism. It's the rats running through the park. keeping your head above water, making it through the week. And I think most of us, if we're honest, we're just living bios, we're surviving, we're existing. But when Jesus says, I am the life, he uses a completely different word. He says, zoe, so say zoe.

Zoe. And what zoe means is the fullness of life that belongs to God himself, meant to be shared with human beings. It literally means possessed by vitality and strength. And Jesus makes this promise to all of us in John 10. He says that I have come that they may have zoe, life, and have it to the full. Some of the other translations say have it abundantly. So different from survival, so different from just coping and managing your anxiety and your sin, just well enough to function and to get through the day. This is the full life, the abundant life, the life that overflows. Psalm 36, they feast on the abundance of your house, you give them drink from your river of delights. How many of you guys woke up this morning, just took a big old drink from the river of delights? And it says, for with you is the fountain of life. You can put up those pictures. These are two different pictures of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. And one was taken in the winter and one was taken in the summer. And I think this is interesting because it's the same fountain, same conditions. Or I'm sorry, completely different conditions. Both are beautiful, but one is flowing with life and the other one is just cold and still and empty. This one here on the left, that's Bios, just existing.

But the one on the right, that's Zoe, flowing full of water, those little green trees that are growing on the inside. I don't even know how that's possible, but that's the fullness of life that Jesus intended to offer us. I just wanna ask to those of you that are here tonight, which one of these pictures is a picture into your heart right now? And why is it that so many Christians are living on the left when the right is fully offered to us? There was an incredible Chinese Christian writer by the name of Watchman Ni. And he was a guy who wrote on this and he eventually died in a communist prison for his faith. And he said that among those who have life in Jesus, you find two distinct categories. In one group, life is confined. It's restricted, it's imprisoned, it's literally unable to come forth. And in the other, he says the Lord has forged a way out and the life is released through them. This is fascinating. Same salvation, same Holy Spirit, but in one group, the life is flowing. And in the other group, the life is imprisoned. And he shares this insight. Anyone who serves God will discover sooner or later that the great hindrance he has in the Lord's work

is not others, but himself. Our outward self is not in harmony with our inward self. We are thus rendered incapable of obeying God's highest commands. It's not that the Lord's life can't cover the earth, it's that we imprison his life. It's not that the Lord can't bless the church. It's that his life is so confined within us that nothing is flowing forth. And here's what he means. When you became a Christian, the Holy Spirit took up residence in your spirit, in your inner self, the part of you where God dwells. But then there's your outer self. This is your personality, it's your habits, it's your need for control, it's your carefully constructed image, it's your fear of being seen as weak or inadequate. And what Ne would say is that the outer self, if it remains unbroken, it becomes a shell that just keeps on growing. It becomes a shell that traps the life of God inside. In Mark chapter 14, there is this beautiful story, one of the most beautiful stories in the gospel. And it tells the story of a woman named Mary. And Mary had a rough past, but she started following Jesus. And she approaches him in a house where he's sitting with some of the religious leaders and his disciples. And it says that she brings in this alabaster jar

filled with a very expensive perfume. It was pure spikenard. Bible says that it was worth a year's wages. So just imagine dropping down to Macy's this evening and picking up $150,000 bottle of perfume. That's what she's carrying. And you know what Mary does with that bottle? She sell it and give it to the poor. No, she shatters it. She breaks it right at Jesus' feet. And the religious leaders go nuts. They're like, what are you doing? And suddenly the whole house is just filled with this beautiful fragrance, beautiful aroma. And Jesus looks at her and he says that the act that you did was so beautiful that wherever the gospel is preached, this story will be told in memory of you. Now here's what I think the gospel writers are teaching us is that if the jar remains unbroken, the fragrance stays trapped. The perfume was there, but nobody could smell it. Nobody could benefit from it. It was trapped inside the container. And I just think for so many of us, we're still treasuring the alabaster jar. We're thinking that its value exceeds that of the life inside. I don't know what it is for you. It might be your competence.

It might be your reputation or your image. It might be the version of you that gets praised in this city. And you think that if I break this, if I lose this, I'll lose everything. I just want to ask, is it possible that the very thing that you're protecting is the thing keeping the life of God trapped inside? I'm so grateful that Jesus didn't protect the jar. I'm so grateful that Jesus didn't come down off the cross because for Jesus, it wasn't his reputation or his image. It was his very life. And out of that brokenness came life for the entire world. The jar had to break, and so does ours. I just want to close with a story from a book that I came across recently called 27 Summers. And it tells this beautiful story of a man named Ronald Olivier, who spent 27 summers in a maximum security prison in Louisiana. When Ronald was 16 years old, he was regularly dealing crack cocaine. And one day, he got into a fight with some guys who he thought were trying to steal his favorite San Francisco 49ers jacket. So he jumps on the bus to get away, and one of them grabs him by the jacket, pulls him off the bus, and so Ronald panics, pulls a gun out of his pocket, shoots the guy twice, and kills him.

The man was unarmed, and because crack cocaine was involved, it was considered first-degree murder in Louisiana, which was punishable by the death penalty. Ronald was convicted at 16 years old, and he was put into a holding cell to await his sentence. And he wrote this. He said, in that cell, in the darkness of that cell, I knew the judge was going to come back with a death sentence. He was gonna make an example out of me. So there I sat, pronounced guilty, actually guilty, completely alone. I remember the worst moment of my life was the sound of the door locking and the footsteps of the guard walking down the long, empty hallway. I was all alone, and I was so afraid. He said he kept expecting his mom to somehow show up because she'd always been the one to rescue him when he was in trouble, but this time his mom wouldn't come. As he sat in the darkness, just out of the blue, he said it was like a bolt of lightning, he remembered something that his mom had said to him years prior. She said, Ronald, if you ever get into a situation I can't help you with, just call on Jesus, and he'll help you. And so he did, trembling, he got down on his knees

and he said, Lord, I know that I haven't paid any attention to you, but if you will keep me, if you will keep them from sentencing me to death, I will serve you with the rest of my life. And he said that in that moment there in that cell, I don't know exactly how to explain this, but suddenly I was surrounded by a presence I'd never felt before, a peace and a love like nothing I'd ever experienced. When he was summoned back into the courtroom for sentencing, he walked back in a changed man. He didn't say a word, but unexplainably, they reduced his charge to second degree murder, which carried a life sentence without parole, not the death sentence, but life. He was taken to this maximum security prison in downstate Louisiana, one of the most brutal prisons in the country, but he went in a changed man because God had kept up his end of the deal and Ronald was determined to keep up his side. He got involved in a Bible training program and eventually he enrolled in a Bible degree program and he earned his bachelor's degree in New Testament studies. He became a pastor inside the prison, leading dozens, if not hundreds, of his fellow prisoners to faith in Jesus. And 20 years later, through a landmark Supreme Court ruling, and by the way, this is the famous ruling, Miller versus Alabama, that was argued

by Bryan Stevenson in the movie Just Mercy. Ronald was granted his first parole hearing which was a day that he never thought would come. He said that he walked in ready to make his case before the judge, but before he could say a word, the judge raised her hand. She said, Mr. Olivier, I've read everything about you, and she holds up this thick file. For 27 years, you've lived as a changed man. This folder is filled with story after story of how you loved and served the men around you and how every corner of this prison is saturated with the love of Jesus because of you. I don't need to hear anything more. I declare you a free man. She brought the gavel down, and Ronald said, That was the second time I've been released from bondage, and the second release from physical prison was not nearly as important as the first. The first release happened 27 years prior, when I was on my knees alone in that jail cell with just Jesus, and there I was released from my sins and set free to live for God. The second release came because of my good deeds, but the first release, the real release, was granted because of the good deeds of Jesus who lived and died in my place. And Freds, I just want to say that I've got good news for you. He can do that for you, too. Maybe you're here tonight, and you feel like your life is hopelessly irredeemable. I promise you it's not. Just call on Jesus. Maybe you're here, and your heart feels cold and dry, and you just want the life of God to fill you. You can just call on Jesus. Maybe you're here, and you're facing a problem, and you feel like there's no way out, and you're just having a hard time trusting Him. Just call on Jesus. Maybe you've been climbing the glass staircase like I was, building something beautiful, but you're realizing that you're standing on nothing. Just call on Jesus. Maybe you're here, and you just know a lot about God, but you're realizing for the first time that maybe you don't truly know Jesus. You can call on Him. You can invite Him into your heart. Jesus says that I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. Let's come to Him, and let's receive His grace. I invite you guys to pray with me. Well, Father, we just want to come before you this evening and just say thank you.

God, thank you for the gospel. Lord, I'm aware that my story is no different than Ronald's. The same bondage that he was set free from, I was set free from 15 years ago, and I just thank you, Jesus, that you're still in the business of setting the prisoners free. God, I thank you for the redemption that comes in Christ Jesus, that you don't leave us alone, that you don't leave us as orphans, but you send us your Holy Spirit to comfort us, and to assure us, and to guide us. Lord, I just pray right now that there would be a release of the Holy Spirit, a release of the life of God in this room. I pray that you would bring life to dead hearts. I pray, Father, that you would bring freedom to people who are in bondage. Lord, I just pray, God, that you would bring healing to those who are hurting. Jesus, I pray that through the power of the gospel that you would do for us that what we cannot do for ourselves. We come to you in humility. We come to you in our weakness, and we just say, Holy Spirit, come. We love you and honor you. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.