a. I have been preaching on the subject of Trust for several weeks now. It is a theme that runs through the entire bible and includes Easter Sunday!
b. I would like to have you take a journey with me back to the days before Jesus’ crucifixion, to the time when Jesus is preparing his disciples for the tough times they will face when Jesus is arrested and killed.
3. Scripture passage:
a. John 13:36-37 Simon Peter said to Him, "Lord, where are You going?" Jesus answered, "Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later." Peter said to Him, "Lord, why can I not follow You right now?
i. Jesus had just finished telling his disciples, “where I am going you cannot come.” Of course, we know he is talking about dying, but Peter isn’t so sure.
1. Jesus had a habit of saying cryptic things like this, like “I am the bread of life” and “I am the door” and “If you destroy this temple I will rebuild it in 3 days”
2. So Peter, being the simple minded fellow that he was, had learned to ask Jesus what he meant whenever Jesus would say something he didn’t understand.
3. Peter isn’t just confused, he is also feeling “left behind.” Jesus has just told him that he can follow later; Peter is used to being right in the middle of things, and now he is being excluded.
4. So Peter gets a bit argumentative here when he asks, “Why can’t I follow you right now?”
ii. Jesus goes on to explain he is going to die, and Peter offers to die with Him but is told about his upcoming denial.
iii. So in the next chapter, chapter 14, Jesus tells them more.
b. John 14:1-6 "Do not let your heart be troubled; believe (trust) in God, believe (trust) also in Me. 2 "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. 3 "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. 4 "And you know the way where I am going." 5 Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?" 6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. 7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.
i. Jesus now has two of his disciples confused. Peter first, now Thomas.
c. But it is in verse 1 that we get an idea of the trust that Jesus is asking His disciples to give to Him.
i. He warns them not to be troubled (because of the events that will come to pass in the days ahead)
1. V.1: Do not let your heart be troubled; believe (trust) in God, believe (trust) also in Me
2. Troubled: (to agitate, trouble a thing, by the agitation or movement of its parts to cause one inward commotion, take away his calmness of mind,)
a. Jesus’ attempts to keep his disciples from being troubled fell on deaf ears. They didn’t really hear him, I am not so sure they wanted to hear him tell them he was going to die.
i. When you have an aging relative, and they start talking about death, do you know what we do? We try to change the subject, we try to get them to stop talking about it. Why? It makes us uncomfortable.
ii. I am sure that Jesus’ talk about being arrested and killed was very uncomfortable for the disciples to hear.
iii. Their status quo was about to be disturbed and they would not be ready for it.
b. Our circumstances often cause us to be troubled.
i. They shake us up, we become agitated when life doesn’t go the way we want it to.
ii. Our difficulties lead us to worry or fear.
iii. I saw a great anagram for Fear:
1. False Expectations Appearing Real.
2. Oftentimes our expectations of what will happen is worse than what actually happens. We allow our imagination to run rampant.
iv. Yet Jesus gave them the prescription for trouble. “Trust (believe) in God, trust also in Me.”
3. The prescription for troubled times is Trust – placing yourself completely in the care of another –
a. Put your full weight on Him. Let Jesus support you. Put it all on Him.
i. Recliner, chair, sofa, bed…all are designed to support your weight. That is why we get rest from them.
ii. Won’t you rest in Him today? Take the first step of trust and give Jesus your fears, your troubles, your expectations.
b. We are in troubled times. And they are getting more troubled.
c. There is one prescription for troubled times. Trust.
d. Place yourself completely in the care of Jesus.
e. Give Him all your fears, your worries, your troubles, your needs.
f. I heard a great saying this week. A pastor asked his congregation “how big is God?” to which they responded, “Big Enough.”
i. God is big enough to carry you and I through the most troubled times.
ii. God is big enough to carry you past our fears and worries and our deepest needs.
iii. How big is God? (big enough). Do you believe that?
d. V2-4: "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. 3 "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. 4 "And you know the way where I am going."
i. Jesus begins to talk about going places.
ii. He knew where He was from and where He was going and how he was going to get there.
iii. He knew that he would have to travel through the Cross to get to Heaven.
iv. This begs a question of each of us this morning:
1. Where are you going? Where is your life headed?
2. Have you ever played a game with a child where they make up the rules as they go? It is fun for the child but frustrating for you. A lot of us are living life like children making up the rules as we go. We don’t know where we are going, we aren’t even sure how to get there, but we are flying down this road of life at 75 miles an hour saying, “Gee, isn’t this fun!” oblivious to signs that say “danger ahead.” (slide with sign of Danger Ahead)
v. As a teen, college student, and a young man in my twenties, I lived my life that way. I had set goals and I pursued them. I made up the rules for my life as I went, dissolving my youthful idealism and morals that I had been taught and creating my own as they fit my circumstances. I bent every rule I made for myself and kept making up new ones to fit my needs. I was making up the rules of life as I was going along, but the further down the road of life I traveled, the further away from happiness I got.
vi. The things I counted as important, things like faithfulness, friendship, and love became more and more elusive to me. They got harder and harder to find.
vii. I became more and more jaded and cynical, wondering would anyone ever LOVE me? (it hadn’t even occurred to me that it was my responsibility to love someone else).
e. Maybe you are on that same speedway I was on, racing down the road, never touching the brake pedal, rushing for a destination that you don’t even know where it is or how to get there.
i. Maybe you are making up the rules for your life as you go, bending them to suit your needs, and seeking to find love somewhere. I hope that you have a wake up call the way I did one evening in April of 1980.
1. I was in trouble. My job had gone through some changes, I was an asst. Kitchen Manager at a hotel restaurant, demoted a peg from an outside salesman (who couldn’t get along with his boss). After a few weeks of this I was feeling like my road had a big “dead end” sign on it.
2. While managing that restaurant, I noticed that among the waitresses that worked there, that one was different than all the others. She had a demeanor that was filled with joy and a sense of purpose – different than most folks who were simply struggling to survive another day or another week.
3. So one evening while doing my paperwork just before the restaurant was to close at 11:00 pm, I sat in a booth of the café and listened to this waitress talk to the lone remaining customer at the counter. He was a policeman, who had seen the worst that Pittsburgh had to offer. And she was telling him that Jesus Christ could make a difference in his life and in the world. It sounded so idealistic. They argued back and forth and she concluded the conversation with a challenge to the policeman, “why don’t you read the book of John in the bible and then tell me what you think.”
4. I don’t know what that policeman did but I went home and dug out the bible I was given in high school, found the book of John, and began to read. It was in the third chapter that a powerful realization hit me. God was seeking a relationship with me and I had been running FROM Him. It wasn’t just that I was running down a road toward nothing…I was literally running away from Him. I was rejecting His love for me. I was refusing to receive His love.
5. All those years seeking someone to “love me” and suddenly I found Him in the same room as me, speaking to me from the pages of my bible. I didn’t know any religious mumbo jumbo, I only knew that I didn’t want to run any more and that I needed to stop and receive His love.
6. So I cried out to Him and asked Him to change my life.
7. The next morning I awoke a new creature. God had taken my dead life and given me a new life. I could see, hear and taste. Everything was brand new. My problems were still there, but now there was something different. When I called out to Jesus, He was there. He got me a new job two weeks later. He led me to a group of caring Christians who accepted me as a family member and friend. All those things I sought and could not find on my own, God gave me in an instant.
8. He became the reason for my life and remains that way today.
ii. I saw Jesus in that young woman (Kay Schurr) and her family and her dad (Harry Schurr, a local pastor at the Bible Truth Chapel in Murraysville, Pennsyvania.
iii. I found the risen Savior, who took me, a dead man on a dead end street and made me alive. He put me on the road to eternal life and put His Spirit in me and gave me direction, purpose and love.
f. v5-6 " Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.
i. Jesus addresses Thomas’ curiosity about where he is going and sets up one of the most powerful truths that we can imagine. Jesus clearly and without ambiguity, declares that He and God the Father are One in being.
ii. Jesus tells us 3 truths in this passage:
1. Jesus did not come to create a religion but a relationship.
a. I am the way, the truth and the life. – not “I know the way, the truth and the life”
b. He didn’t come to create a system, a set of doctrines, a list of do’s and don’ts. He came to engage you in a life changing relationship where He is at the helm of your life.
2. The only way to God the Father, is through Jesus.
a. If there was any other way to God, any other way for mankind to be united to the Father, any other way for the sins of man to be forgiven, God would have done it.
b. The only way it could be done was for the pure, sinless, incarnate Son of God to be the substitute for each of us, to bear our sins and emerge victorious on Easter Sunday.
c. Jesus would not have had to suffer the most horrible death imaginable, Jesus would not have had to experience separation from the Father, literally Hell itself…
i. If there was any OTHER way to God.
ii. He is the only way to God. He alone is the way, He alone pays the price, He alone is the embodiment of all truth.
3. If you have seen Jesus you have seen the Father.
a. Jesus and God are One in being.
b. Not in a metaphysical new age sense that says that God is all and in all, but rather, of the exact same essence of divinity, holiness and character and love.
c. Jesus is the embodiment of God.
4. So what is the message of Easter.
a. It is one of letting go of the trust we place in ourselves and our own direction, our own rules and ideas, and placing oneself totally in the care of another.
b. It is of a risen Savior who lives, not just in eternity and in heaven but in the very lives of the people He has brought to life.
c. Jesus, the sacrifice for our sins has been raised, the sacrifice accepted, our sins forgiven, our future certain, our destiny decided. No more dead end roads. Jesus doesn’t just know the way, He is the way.
d. If you have been running from God, racing down life’s road on your own, trying to figure it all out, changing the rules, the stories, searching for love, meaning and life…today you can stop running.
i. Jesus waits for you today. He is risen. He wants to change your life! Won’t you let Him turn your life right side out?
