Jesus Is The Way

Getting lost is sometimes a terrifying thing! 

In 2007, I began a job driving across the Yorkshire region delivering drugs to surgeries and pharmacies. 

It was a good job and I enjoyed it to no end because it had the freedom of the road coupled with the fact that when I got the bags of goodies, I was pretty much my own boss, so long as they got delivered. 

I would pick up the drugs in the morning, deliver them and then collect the afternoon ones for those people who had to have emergency medication of one kind or another in the late afternoon. 

Now they gave the drivers something called an ‘epod’ which is a device that you send a message on and can put a signature onto, so that the surgery staff would sign for their goods. It was like the things delivery companies now use, but a very basic one.

But it also had an in-built satnav on it and it was a very basic version too. By today’s mobile phone satnav standards, it was useless and when we were learning the routes, we had to fill the post code in for each delivery and drive to them to find out the way there and back, as well as short cuts. 

When we went live, we would be doing fifty drops in a morning and thirty in an afternoon so we needed to know the route well.

Once, about two days in, I punched in the satnav numbers and letters and it took me to the top of what was effectively a cliff side. 

The pharmacy was at the bottom of this sheer drop. 

I was parked at the top. 

The satnav sweetly said “your destination is fifty yards in front of you,” or some such comment. 

I am not going to repeat what I then said! But suffice to say that if I had followed its command, I would have died a horrible death! 

Then there’s one of my family members, who relies on her satnav to come to our home. She knows where we live, but panics and relies too much on the satnav, fearing she will get lost, which she does even with the satnav! 

It is a simple journey, mostly motorway and then two weird bits as you get to our estate, but she still insists on using the satnav and does not trust the thing! 

I kept telling her, “trust the satnav. If you take a wrong turn it will get you to us by a different route but you will get here.” 

But no, that is something she cannot do and she has got lost more than once. 

The satnav is there for us as a guide, a way to tell us, when we are not too sure, which road to turn and which not to and there has to be an element of trust, but even I have come unstuck with my satnav (and not knowing Sheffield that well yet) I have got very, very lost. 

Sometimes, even the trusty satnav fails us. 

But Jesus never does!!!

The good news in this idea, is that there is a thing that we can remember today that will keep us on the straight and narrow, or as one famous poet once hinted at, the road less taken. 

I refer, of course, to the words of Jesus, as found in our bibles. He alone should be our route, our way, our truth and our life, forever and a day! If he is not, then we are in trouble. 

Jesus said that he was the way, the truth and the life, but what did he mean, both then and for us today?

I offer three thoughts for you all, that may help us think of Jesus and his words. 

Firstly, he is the way to eternal life. Without Jesus, we have nothing, no hope of salvation, no eternal joy, just a life that begins, has a series of soul draining activities and then … 

Nothing. 

To me, that is a negative I cannot abide. When life is harsh (and we only have to think of Covid to see that this is true) we need hope. 

We need hope that there will be a brighter, better future. We need hope that our faith is grounded in something solid, something true and something positive and to me, I cannot think of anything more positive than the message that Jesus brings to this lost and sad world of ours. 

So what, or who, do we hope in today? 

We might hope that people in this world see war as a bad thing and not a necessary thing, that love will win out over hate, that cures for things like Cancer can be found, or that we would all simply be able to see the back of this thing called Covid. 

But if our hope is in the Lord, as I am sure it is for all of you, then how does this help us to see the world in a more positive light? 

Is Jesus everything to us? Is he your way to eternal peace and holiness? 

If he isn’t, then perhaps we need to ask why not? 

Jesus is the truth for a modern world who at times, sadly don’t even recognize the truth when it hits them in the face. 

When in front of Pilate, Jesus is asked “and what is truth?”  Whenever I watch that scene on television or DVD, I always say one thing. 

“Yo looking at him!” 

Jesus is the truth in a lying world. He is the truth when all seems to go to pot in our lives and he, for me, is the one thing that has kept me sane through numerous testing times, for my faith in him gets stronger each time harsh times come. 

Why? 

Because I can lean on him, with faith and thanksgiving, for being my truth, my way to the father, my counselor and my friend. That’s how important he is to me and he should be to everyone in this world too. 

However, the truth is something that should be of worth in this world, but it is something that sometimes, we tend to water down, isn’t it? We know the truth, yet we say something else, to make it softer for others to take. 

We do not want them to be offended. 

The same is true of the good news of Jesus Christ, for in places, over recent years, I have heard one alarming thing happening from the pulpit and it is what I would call a watering down of the gospel of Jesus Christ into something that is insipid and ineffectual. 

Like when you cannot lie but you want to tell the truth when asked how you are and you say, “I’m fine,” the truth can and often is  distorted into something weaker and often, egocentric. 

Of course, we really know that the words, “I am fine,” mean “I am Frustrated, Insecure, Neurotic and Excitable,” don’t we? 

Only kidding! 

Jesus is our Way, our Truth and he must always be our Life, because knowing Jesus as we do, is the most important thing we’ll ever do in our existence here on this mortal coil. 

Knowing Jesus means we have life in all its abundance. If you are not sure, check out the last bit of John 10.10 again and see what I mean. 

Knowing Jesus is so important and the only way we can keep that going is if we pick up our bibles once again, especially like me, if you have slowed down in recent times, in that department. 

About four years ago now, I was at a crossroads in my faith. I had stopped reading my bible and only read it when preparing for a service or sermon. It sounds awful, I know. 

But then, Vanessa, my wife, issued me a challenge, saying “try reading a chapter a day and making notes, for your sermons.” 

So I began to do so, reading Matthew 1 and so on. By the time I got to the end of Matthew, I thought okay, now Mark and Luke and by the end of that, I realised I had a book, of sorts, which needed editing and then was published. 

Now I was a published author and one more thing had happened. My faith had grown during that time, back to where it was before – and some!

So, I did the same for John, Acts, Romans, right through to Revelation, publishing them all as I went. My faith increased as my knowledge increased and before too long, Genesis began and recently, I finished Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. 

So now, I had written about all of the bible as we know it!

But the things I learnt helped me to understand God and Jesus more, on a personal level and that is what I am urging us all to consider today, to know God and Jesus just that little bit more, to get closer to God and to be able to follow him and his ways, in a better way than we have in the past. 

May the Lord help us in our journey. 

Amen