Fitbit watch face: Spectrum Plus
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For my birthday I got a Fitbit Sense at a very good price as the Sense 2
had just come out. The default watch face that comes with the Sense is
called Spec...
Today I got to give a one-off sermon for the school holidays before we start a new series next week. This sermon was originally a talk for a funeral, and then I gave it at two aged care facilities and at our mid-week service before giving it three times today. The talk did grow in size, though each iteration, but I am not sure if the final was as tight as it was earlier. Anyway, below is more or less what I said
The Smith Street band have a line in this song that goes “no one gets lost anymore”. They actually named their whole album this phrase. This was an interesting reflection as today we have access to a map of the entire world in our pockets.
However, that is not entirely true. In November 2009 Eric Steward age 81, went out to get the morning newspaper in Yass and ended up driving to Geelong. After taking the wrong turn onto the highway he just kept on driving till after nine hours he stopped and asked for directions. Eric said he didn’t need satellite navigation as he had only been lost once before. (source)
Gone are the days when you had to drive with a street directory in one hand, trying to trace where you are, and count how many lefts before your turn. And heaven forbid if you get to a set of lights and you can’t turn right - which happened all the time in Sydney. So with the street directory in one hand, you would have to on the fly make changes to your trip by counting how many lights you have moved away from your desired turn. And who knows if your path that you chose to go was the most efficient or if there was an accident ahead. I know we are trying to crack down on people using their phones in the car, but I am glad we don’t still use street directories, those too can be dangerous. Our phones now can tell us the way to go.
While geographically we might have solved our problem of not getting lost, but existentially we may still encounter the feeling of being lost. Do you ever have that feeling, there is something out there, but I am just not sure what it is? Do you have the feeling that there must be something more to life than what we see? They say in the end you can’t take anything with you, but where are you in the end? What’s out there? Where are we going?
When you are talking to someone and they tell you some bad news do you have the feeling of not knowing what to say? In my Life Group on Tuesday nights, in the last two months, seven of our members have been to five funerals. And in the same time period, I have missed out on two more in Sydney. Like sometimes I wish there was a script and we both knew what it said so that we wouldn’t feel like we didn’t know what we were doing. What words do we say in these moments? What are we meant to be feeling? Sometimes the feeling of being lost is all too familiar.
In our short passage from John’s Gospel, Jesus is talking to his followers the night before He is about to die. Jesus knows this is going to happen, He has mentioned it at least three times before, but His followers didn’t understand that these next 24 hours are going to be hard. Their week so far has been going well with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and Jesus debating and winning against the religious rulers in the Temple. They had no idea things were going to turn so quickly. So Jesus tells them
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. (
Jesus seeks to settle His follower's hearts. He wants to give them a bearing to help in their troubles. Jesus says if you believe there is a God, also believe He is God. He wants them to trust Him. Up to this point in Jesus' life, He has said and done some things that hint or point to the fact that He was unique. He forgave people of their sins - something only God can do. He heals a bunch of people - something that was hard to explain and even raised His friend Lazarus from the dead. Jesus was doing these things to show that He is God.
He says to his followers, He is going away, to a place where He will make preparation for them. This place is His Father's house, which has enough room and space for all of them.
This place is where His Father is, and for some reason, Jesus thinks they know the way. I really don’t understand why Jesus thinks this. And it is a bit tough like you can’t really type “Jesus’ Father’s place” into Google Maps and get an answer. How could someone know the way to get to this place? And with the cross coming up, the subtext of all of this is that Jesus is going to die. Is death the way to the Father's place?
But good old Thomas speaks up, and I like Thomas, my middle name is Thomas, and I think he says what everyone else is thinking
“Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (
This is a great question, if you don’t know where Jesus is talking about how can you know how to get there?
But Jesus then replies with a strange answer to a question about place. He doesn’t give directions. He doesn’t mention what towns are nearby or how far you have to travel or how many right turns there are to this place. His directions are answered in a person. Himself.
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (
Jesus says, the only way to the Father and I assume to His place, is through Him. Though Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t say you have to be a good person to get to God. Or that you have to give a certain amount of money to charity, you don’t have to visit certain Holy Places and perform special rituals to get to God. Jesus says the only way to get to God is through Him. We just have to do what He said in verse one, to believe in Him.
Some people don’t like how exclusive this sounds, that Jesus is the only way to God. But that is just how directions to a particular place work. You don’t just generally go to a house when going home, you go to a particular location with a particular house number on a particular street. Is that exclusive, or just how directions and places work?
I live in a cul-de-sac, the only way to get to my house is to go up that street. So this means if anyone were to come to my house, they have to exclusively go up my street. And this is also true for knowing God. If you want to know God you have to go via Jesus He is that one-way street. It doesn’t matter how sincere you are, or how hard you try to get to God, if you want to go to the Father's place, you have to take directions from someone who knows the way.
People are lost without Jesus. Without Jesus, people will not get to God. That is why we do our one-wins-one thing. Are you praying for one person to know God? May you be praying for them, that they will know Jesus so they can know God. May you be praying for them to see that are lost and that they need directions. Maybe you could be the one who could tell them how to get to God. Maybe you can introduce them to Way, to Jesus. People can accept and reject help all the time, there is the cliche of men not asking for directions, and instead being stubborn. And people are like that all the time, but we can pray that God would help show them the way, that they would do verse 1, that they would believe and trust in Jesus.
When it comes down to it is about trust in Jesus and what He says about how to get to God. Is He telling the truth or not? And what would He know about all of this anyway?
I think we can trust Jesus, for the day after He spoke these words He was dead in the tomb. The one who said He was life was dead. But after three days, He rose again. That first Easter, He walked out of the tomb, never to die again. He had tasted and swallowed death. He had passed through and conquered death and has now made a way for us to get to God. Jesus knows the way, as in the beginning He was with God and He has been with Him for all eternity. All those who trust in Jesus can follow His path and Jesus says He will bring them to His Father's place. Jesus is the Way.
Only those who think they are lost, only those who will put aside their own ways of earning favour with God, only those who know they need directions and ask Jesus for help will find the Way, and the truth is we are all in need of being found.
And the good news is, Jesus came to seek and to save those who are lost. He came for those who haven’t made it. He came for the ones who need help, and He made a way for us, by dying and rising again, in our place. So we can live with His Father forever. May we be praying for those who do not know the Way that the path maybe clear to them.
The Arctic Tern is a bird that is famous for its migration path. Every year this small bird (its about 30-40cm big) travels from the Arctic to the Antarctic. It lays its eggs in the North and then flies to the South to breed. Every year they fly between 50-90 thousand kilometers. Somehow when the eggs hatch in the Arctic these birds just know to fly to the Antarctic. It is insane. They somehow know, where and how to travel these impossibly long distances.
Jesus came for us who was lost, to bridge the impossibly long distance that we had with God. We were separated from God and no long distance travel would mean we could get near God. It wasn’t a geographical problem, but a moral one because of our sin.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. (
We couldn’t just try harder and work our way up to heaven, we couldn’t just think about things and be smart enough to work out some Golden Path, we can’t even behave in a way good enough to see God on our own merit. Sin had separated us from God. But
[Jesus] came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. (
Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We need to remember that Jesus doesn’t just provide us with some magical treasure map for when we die. His way isn’t just for the end of life, it is for us now. We need to follow Him now, because what He tells us is true and gives us life now and to the full.
Our God, Jesus is the Good Shepherd who guides us along the right paths. Even if we walk through the darkest valley, we don’t have to fear, for our shepherd, our guide, knows the way. Jesus is the Good Shepherd and His sheep hear His voice and they follow.
In the next chapter of John, Jesus tells His disciples that He is the vine and they are the branches. They are to remain in Him otherwise they will be cut off. Jesus makes the way for us and so we are to continue on this journey with Him. We can’t just punch in the directions on our phone and then decide, nar I don’t like this path, I want to go another way and still expect to arrive at the same location if we don’t listen to the truth.
The disciples don’t turn away, there is no where else to go, for Jesus has the words of eternal life. They continue to follow Jesus, and although the world didn’t like them, they continued on, because they knew that Jesus is the way. He is the truth and He offers us Life to us all.
Jesus has prepared a place for all those who believe in Him. And we can trust Him, for He has tasted death for us and has overcome the grave. Jesus came so that we can go back to God.
If I go out to some place I haven’t been before, when I get in the car I ask Google Maps to take me home. But where I live right now in Kambah, will not be my final address. No matter how many moves I make in this world, I know that my final address will be with the Father. I know some of you live with you parents and one day you will move out to a place of your own. Some of you have moved down here for a job. Some have to downsize or are thinking about moving to smaller place. That can be hard. I visit people in nursing homes who have had packed all their stuff and sort it out to just fit in one room, and it is likely that they will die where they now live. But know that wherever you may end up in this life, nursing home or otherwise, that is not going to be your final home. There is another place.
Jesus promised His followers
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. (
The Christian hope is that Jesus offers Life to all, and a way for us to come back to our Creator. And so at the end of our days, we can with David say the last line of
Gone are the days when you had to drive with a street directory in one hand, trying to trace where you are, and count how many lefts before your turn. And heaven forbid if you get to a set of lights and you can’t turn right - which happened all the time in Sydney. So with the street directory in one hand, you would have to on the fly make changes to your trip by counting how many lights you have moved away from your desired turn. And who knows if your path that you chose to go was the most efficient or if there was an accident ahead. I know we are trying to crack down on people using their phones in the car, but I am glad we don’t still use street directories, those too can be dangerous. Our phones now can tell us the way to go.
This place is where His Father is, and for some reason, Jesus thinks they know the way. I really don’t understand why Jesus thinks this. And it is a bit tough like you can’t really type “Jesus’ Father’s place” into Google Maps and get an answer. How could someone know the way to get to this place? And with the cross coming up, the subtext of all of this is that Jesus is going to die. Is death the way to the Father's place?
Some people don’t like how exclusive this sounds, that Jesus is the only way to God. But that is just how directions to a particular place work. You don’t just generally go to a house when going home, you go to a particular location with a particular house number on a particular street. Is that exclusive, or just how directions and places work? 
The Arctic Tern is a bird that is famous for its migration path. Every year this small bird (its about 30-40cm big) travels from the Arctic to the Antarctic. It lays its eggs in the North and then flies to the South to breed. Every year they fly between 50-90 thousand kilometers. Somehow when the eggs hatch in the Arctic these birds just know to fly to the Antarctic. It is insane. They somehow know, where and how to travel these impossibly long distances.
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