John 14:1-4
14:1 "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3And 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. 4You know the way to the place where I am going."
How do you get up when you’re down?
• Listen to Jesus. The disciples were at this point very troubled to hear that Jesus would leave them.
• And Jesus knew that. What can He say?
How are you going to comfort someone who is sad, when you know that the road ahead will not be easy?
• What can you say to them, if you know that they will most like face persecutions and hard times ahead?
• We can’t change the circumstances, so what words of comfort do you have?
We need to listen to Jesus here.
• If He is One who truly understand human needs and sorrow, then His words of comfort are worthy of our attention.
• His answer will be the antidote to troubled hearts today.
Are you sad about some things? Discouraged? Listen to what Jesus said here.
(1) Trust in God, trust also in me.
That’s His first response - faith! We need to trust Him!
• The circumstances will be tough, but we can trust God.
• Each time we’re troubled, this is what we need to apply.
• We need to tell ourselves, “Just trust Him!”
Jesus’ answer sounded so simplistic, but that’s the real issue.
• We are troubled because we just couldn’t trust Him fully.
• When some men came to tell Jairus, the synagogue ruler, “Your daughter is dead, don’t bother Jesus any more.” (Mark 5:35) Jesus answer was simple: “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
• Too simplistic, we may say. We need to DO something!
• Very often, the something we can do is to leave it to God.
Trust me, Jesus says. “Can you really trust me?” that’s the question.
• No wonder we’re troubled, the real problem is that we just cannot truly trust Him.
• That’s why many have said that the problem is not the problem. It is our attitude to the problem.
• I’m sure most of us have read the “Serenity Prayer” printed on bookmarks or cups: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…” That’s the ability to trust God and be at peace.
ILLUSTRATION: You’re In Good Hands
Dr. W. A. Criswell talks about the kind of faith we have by comparing it to an operation. If you’ve ever had surgery, you go in and the anaesthetic is administered usually by a mask. They tell you to count to 3 and you will be out. They put the mask over your face and you think to yourself that the gas is never going to be able to knock you out. You confidently count 1, and then you’re out like a light. You put yourself into the hands of the surgeon completely. You’re as helpless as a newborn baby.
It is not only the committal of our lives - it is not only full trust, but it is the abandonment of any hope of any kind in anyone else or in any other way. It is a resignation of ourselves to Christ. There is nothing else to save. There is no one else to turn to.
It is easy for us to trust in things that we can see and touch.
• We have a little bit of Thomas in us.
• Remember, Thomas said, "Unless I see the nail marks in His hands & put my fingers where the nails were, & put my hand into His side, I will not believe it." (John 20:25).
• John 20:29 “Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
• Heb 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please God…”
Someone puts it: “Faith is a walk in the dark with your hand firmly planted in the hand of a God you can’t see.”
Don’t see God through the lens of trials. See trials through the lens of God.
So what is true faith in action? The Bible shows us…
o Abel believed God and offered a sacrifice.
o Noah built an ark. Abraham packed up his belongings and left home without knowing where God was leading him.
o He also laid his son on an altar, to offer him up.
o David went out and fights Goliath with stones in his hand.
o Peter stepped out of the boat and walked on water.
When you know the truth, start acting like it.
• And we keep doing so until sorrow and fear loses its grip on you.
It’s something like this:
ILLUSTRATION: You Are the Answer to the Prayer
There is a story of a new convert who decided to test the effectiveness of prayer. Kneeling at the church’s altar he prayed for God to give shoes to a little girl he had seen barefoot that morning.
Some time later he drove by her home to see if she had her new shoes. This routine went on for a number of days. Still no shoes.
Finally, again at the altar the man said, "God, I’m giving You one more day. If You do not give that little girl some new shoes by tomorrow, I’m going down to the store and buy them for her myself."
You’ll experience the reality of what God says when we act in faith.
• Do something with your faith. Step out and act on it.
• Faith does not grow overnight. It grows because we act on it, one step at a time.
• It’s the same on the opposite direction - faith does not grow cold overnight. It is eroded by weeks or months of neglect. In the face of busyness at work, setbacks in ministry, family difficulties, or a calamity, or other (pleasurable) distractions that the world has to offer, it is easy to neglect our fellowship with God. And before you know it, the closeness once shared with God is lost.
You can’t really trust someone you do not know.
• This ‘faith in God’ will then be just a slogan for you. It is powerless.
• Make the decision to TRUST God, despite what you see and feel.
• Cling on to our fellowship with God and the disciplines of the Christian life.
2 Tim 1:12 “That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.”
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And then Jesus said in verse 2:
“In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.”
This is the 2nd antidote to troubled hearts, which is closely linked with trust.
“If it were not so, I would have told you.”
• In order words, Jesus has already told the disciples all that they needed to know, to stay faithful and strong.
• All that we needed to know, in order for us to survive the challenges of today, has been revealed to us in the Scriptures.
• It’s all in here – in the Bible. “If it were not so, I would have told you.”
(2) So we need to get back to the Word of God, and remind ourselves what He has said.
• If we need to know, God would have revealed it.
• Ps 119:105 "Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light for my path."
The great preacher D.L. Moody said,
“I prayed for faith and thought that some day it would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith didn’t seem to come. One day I read in Romans that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” I had up to this time, closed my Bible and prayed for faith. Now I opened my Bible and began to study and faith has been growing ever since.”
Rom 10:17 says "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God."
• Don’t just get the Word into your head; get it into your spirit.
• Prov 18:14 “A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?”
• Take authority over your circumstances and begin to believe God’s Word.
God promised the children of Israel a land.
o It took a while for the promise to be fulfilled, but they did step in eventually.
God promised a Messiah, and that took a long time.
o But it was fulfilled eventually. Jesus did come.
Jesus promised us He is coming back for us.
o This too took a long time – we’re already into the 20th Century and He’s still not back yet. But He will, eventually.
We will grow impatient over many things, but just take His Word for it.
There is no situation I can get into that God cannot get me out.
We need get into the Scriptures in order to gain faith.
• If Jesus has already told us all that we need to know in life, to overcome our troubles and not be discouraged, then we need to search the Scriptures.
• Each time you’re down, get back into the Bible.
• That is the only way. Without the Word, there is no faith, and without faith, all we’re relying upon is ourselves. STUDY the Scriptures.
ILLUSTRATION: The Blind Skiing - Robert W. Sutton
A television program preceding the 1988 Winter Olympics featured blind skiers being trained for zigzag skiing, impossible as that sounds. Paired with sighted skiers, the blind skiers were taught on the flats how to make right and left turns. When that was mastered, they were taken to the winding slope, where their sighted partners skied beside them shouting, "Left!" and "Right!"
As they obeyed the commands, they were able to negotiate the course and cross the finish line, depending solely on the sighted skiers’ word. It was either complete trust or catastrophe.
This is a picture of the Christian life.
• In this world, we are in reality blind about what course to take.
• We must rely solely on the Word of the only One who can truly see all things.
• His Word gives us the direction we need to finish the course, alive and unhurt.
• Hearing Him out is critical to our finishing the course well.
Conclusion
Do you have burdens this morning that you think you cannot bear?
• Are you troubled? Do you feel lost?
• Whatever your burdens are this morning, the solution to a troubled heart is still the same – trust Him, and recall what He has already said in the Word.
• Learn to trust Him fully.
ILLUSTRATION: No Trust or Full Trust - Haddon Robinson
Years ago, Monroe Parker was traveling through South Alabama on a hot day. He stopped at a watermelon stand, picked out a watermelon, and asked the proprietor how much it cost. "It’s $1.10," he replied. Parker dug into his pocket, found only a bill and said, "All I have is a dollar."
"That’s ok," the seller said, "I’ll trust you for it."
"Well, that’s very nice of you," Parker responded, and picking up the watermelon, started to leave.
"Hey, where are you going?" the man behind the counter demanded.
"I’m going outside to eat my watermelon." "But you forgot to give me the dollar!"
"You said you would trust me for it," Parker called back.
"Yeah, but I meant I would trust you for the dime!"
"Sir," Parker replied, "You did not trust me at all. You were just going to take a ten-cent gamble on my integrity!"
You cannot trust Him just a bit!
