Truth for Troubled Hearts | Dave Sloop

Well, the very first words of our passage today, I don't know if you caught it, are, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. And I want to do my best this morning to take you into the shoes of those 11 men who are hearing those words. Each one of them was someone who, at the invitation of Jesus, had left everything to follow him. It was an honor to follow him, but there was a cost associated with it, to be sure. They left friends, family, career, community. They threw caution to the wind and they, at his word, they followed him and they were pleased to do it.

But the question that I want to consider with you this morning is why? Why would they so readily leave everything and follow him? You might have a lot of different answers. Maybe you think it would have been a pretty exciting and fascinating opportunity to see someone who could walk on water and multiply bread and raise the dead back to life. That was pretty exciting. Maybe you think it would have been pretty remarkable to get to follow around the greatest teacher who ever lived. Even some of the people that didn't agree with Jesus, they said, this man teaches as one who has authority. He's different. Or maybe it was because they had never quite seen anybody love like he loved. We could fill in the blanks with so many stories of people who everybody else walked past, but he stopped for and noticed. There was nobody like him.

And all of that is true, but none of that describes why they left everything to follow him. If you want to know why they followed Jesus, leaving everything behind, you can look at the beginning of John's gospel. Do you remember what Andrew said to Simon?

We have found the Messiah. — John 1:41

Or if you want to take what Philip said to Nathaniel, he runs out to Nathaniel and he says, you have to come. He says,

We have found him of whom Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. — John 1:45

We have found him. And, of course, Nathaniel responds and says, Nazareth, can anything good come from there? But after one conversation with Jesus, even Nathaniel says this,

Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. — John 1:49

His power was a confirmation that this is who he was, and his character told us the kind of person that he was, the kind of king he meant to be. But the reason that these men had left everything to follow him was precisely because he was the Christ. He was the Messiah, which meant he was the long-awaited anointed one. The long-awaited king of Israel, the son of David.

And when I say long-awaited, I don't know that we really understand just how long that was. In fact, let's just take how long it had been since this nation had had a son of David on the throne in Jerusalem. Do you know how long it had been? Over six hundred years. The last king in Jerusalem, a descendant of David, was a guy named Zedekiah and under his leadership, the nation had fallen to the Babylonian empire. I think it was in 589 BC. Here we are in 30 AD or so, over six hundred years. We as a nation just celebrated two hundred and fifty years. Imagine going back to the Declaration of Independence, doing it again, and then going another hundred and fifteen years or so. That's how long they had waited for a son of David.

But he was the son of David, and they knew it, and they were on the inner circle. They left everything to follow him because they were convinced that this is who he was. And for three years, they followed him knowing who he was and just waiting for him to tell everybody else who he was, but he was surprisingly guarded with his identity. Every once in a while, someone would say, wait a minute, you're Christ. And he would say, don't tell anybody. But not anymore.

Four days prior to this dinner that they're having, they had just followed Jesus into Jerusalem exactly how the prophet Zechariah said it would happen. He is the king. They were basking in the afterglow of that moment and the reason that we know that they were is because in Luke chapter 22, we read that these guys were daydreaming about what the kingdom was going to feel like. And they were jockeying for position to see where they were going to sit in the kingdom, who would be the most important, who would get the most notoriety and recognition. I mean, there were some fringe benefits to following this one and being on the inner circle of the Messiah.

And then, in the space of one meal, Jesus says to them, one of you is about to betray me. I'm leaving. You cannot come where I'm going.

Oh, and Peter, bestie, you're gonna deny me three times before dawn. Can you imagine the shock of that moment? I want you to suspend just for a moment your knowledge of where this is all going, that you know the end of the story, and just imagine being the disciples, and then listen again to the words that Jesus says immediately after he tells Peter you will deny me three times.

It's this: they aren't just losing the friend that they love, they are losing the future that they had imagined. And in light of that, listen again to verse one.

Don't let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God.

I wonder how this landed with those guys. How would it have landed with you? My guess is that for some of them at least, it must have felt like an insensitive pat answer. I mean, this is the problem with pat answers. It's not that they're false statements. Oftentimes there's at least a kernel of truth, if not entirely true. But the problem with a pat answer is that it's an overly simplistic phrase that doesn't really take into consideration the complexity of the pain that somebody is walking through. But that is not what Jesus is doing here.

Jesus is not just lobbying them a Christian cliché. "Let go. Let God." "Hey, God works in mysterious ways. You'll be alright." That's not what he's doing here. See, he's not standing above their pain just tossing them some saying. Jesus is sitting at the table with 11 men whose lives have just been upended. And Jesus is about to walk into the suffering that will cause all of it. Jesus knows how bad it's about to get. In fact, it's worse than he would even tell them here.

In Luke's account of this, chapter 22 of Luke, he's going to say, "If you have a cloak, trade it in for a sword. It's about to get bad." And Jesus says, the truth about me, the word must be fulfilled. I will be numbered with the transgressors. It's gonna get bad for you and I won't be here. I'm leaving. Just imagine the fear of that moment.

It begs the question: how is it that Jesus, knowing how bad it's gonna get, could say to them, don't let your hearts be troubled? See, this next 11 verses is going to answer that question for us. And it is a truth that we need because there's some troubled hearts in this room. And if they're not troubled now, at some point in your life, you will experience a disruption to a future that you had imagined.

And the question is: what is the truth that troubled hearts need? And here's how we're going to tackle it today. We're gonna take it in reverse. We're gonna start at the end of the passage and work our way backwards because here's why. The comfort that Jesus offers right at the beginning of this passage in verses one through three, it is met with confusion—first of all by a guy named Thomas. He's like, "Hang on, Jesus. I need some more detailed instructions here." And then secondly, Philip is gonna need some tangible proof. And Jesus' response to both of them helps us to have context for the comfort that he offers in verses one through three.

And so what we're going to see today: the truth that troubled hearts need—first of all, the proof that you need; secondly, the path you must walk; and third, the prize that awaits.

Let's start in verse seven. It says this:

From now on, you do know him and you have seen him.

And Philip responds to him: "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." Philip says, I need some proof. I need to know in the moment of my disrupted future that there is a God out there, that he's not just out there, that he's right here, that he's close.

What Philip is asking for is this: this need to see God is deeply human. And the other thing that I want you to notice about it is that this is not unique. His need to see God, his hunger to see God—it's not unique, it's universal. In fact, I would say that this is perhaps the most fundamental meaning of what it is to be human. It is to long for the God that created you. It is a desire to see him.

You might not have ever named it as such in your life, but it's there. It shows up as a desire for significance, for fulfillment, for pleasure, for joy, for intimacy. The desire underneath is this: we reach for all kinds of things to satisfy what we think are those desires, but what it actually is is a desire to see the God for whom we were made.

And when we are in the furnace of suffering, when we are in pain, it is especially potent—not because our need for God increases when we are suffering, but because all of the substitutes that we reach for show themselves for what they really are in our moment of pain: frauds. They do not hold water. They are empty. It is like a cup with a hole in the bottom, constantly drained. Whatever we reach for to fill our lives up, it is constantly draining out of the bottom.

And we deeply need what we need is to see God.

Now Philip's words here are about to be met with a gentle rebuke from Jesus. He has some strong words for Philip. But before we talk about what Philip got wrong, let's give Philip credit for what he gets right. If you notice here, what he says is, "Show us the father, and it is enough for us." That word means sufficient. It's enough. It's all that we need. All that we need is to see God. Philip is spot on about that. It is what you need. It is what I need most. We need to see him. We need to know that he's there.

But see, Philip, he wasn't wrong about what he needed. He was wrong about what he lacked. Listen to how Jesus responds to Philip. He says, "Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip?" If you actually do a little study on this, there's not too many times that Jesus calls someone by their name when he's asking them questions, especially when he's rebuking them. Most of the time he says their name, you wish he didn't. Simon Peter gets most of them, but here he says, "Have I been with you this long and still you don't know me, Philip?" And then he says this, "Whoever has seen me has seen the father. How can you say, show us the father?"

This is not the first time Jesus has said something like this. He's saying to them, if you've seen me, you've seen God, which is an outlandish claim, by the way, but it's not the first time he said it. He has said things like this over and over and over again throughout the gospel of John, most recently in John chapter 12, in his final public address, his final public sermon. This is what he says in John 12:45:

Whoever sees me sees him who sent me. — John 12:45

The first thing that we learned from Philip is that it is possible to be with him a long time, but to not understand what we have in him. It is possible to know him but to not really have fully realized the benefits of knowing him. To experience the satisfaction, the deep abiding soul thirst quenching satisfaction of knowing Christ. It's possible to be like Philip. I wonder how many of us here have been with him for a long time, and yet we hadn't really taken him at his word.

The Comfort of the Incarnation

But here's the second thing that I want us to consider. The context of this, as we saw from the beginning, he is giving truth to troubled hearts. He is giving assurance to people whose future has been disrupted. And so here's the question: What comfort does Jesus mean for us to draw from his incarnation? His incarnation is the theological term for the fact that he became human, that that was something that actually took place in history, that God, the one that made all that out there, he became a baby, he became a human being. What comfort does he mean for us to draw from that fact?

Here's what I think it is. The fact that he became a human being, on the one hand, tells us that this is what God is like. He is the image of the invisible God. And if you want to know what God is like, look at that man, look at the way he treats people, look at what he can do, listen to what he says. Now, we have a sense, we know what he's like. He got close enough that you could see him and see what he's like.

But there's something more here. See, the miracle of the incarnation is not only that now we know what God is like, but the incarnation is proof that God knows what you are like, that he has quite literally gotten into our skin. He's walked in our shoes. He understands what it is to be exhausted, tired, hungry, abandoned, rejected. He has suffered grief. He has suffered loss.

How is that a comfort? Because when you are suffering and you cry out, "God, I need to know that you're here. I need to know that you get it." He does. This is the beauty. In Hebrews chapter four, it says this about our savior, our high priest:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize. — Hebrews 4

He's not just empathetic, he is sympathetic because he has tasted the pain and the suffering of being human. He's able to sympathize with us in our weakness. And therefore, in verse 16:

We can draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we might receive mercy and grace to help in our time of need. — Hebrews 4:16

When you are suffering, when you are hurting and you need to see God, the comfort that we can draw upon is the comfort of the fact that the God of the universe became flesh to suffer and die for you. And when we cry out to him, he gets it. He deeply identifies with humanity. I mean, just that is the most ridiculous thing that God would condescend to that degree.

The Path Forward

Secondly, what is the path that we must walk? Philip needed some tangible proof. Let's listen to what Thomas needed. Jesus says here, "You know the way to where I'm going?" And Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

See, if Philip needed proof, Thomas, he needed a plan. Write it down. Here's a pencil, Jesus. Write it down, and I'll just kind of do what you say. Our future has been completely upended.

Just tell me what I'm supposed to do. It's not that simple. Listen to how Jesus responds to him. He says:

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. — John 14:6

Thomas says, show me the way, give me the plan. Jesus says, Thomas, where I am going? The reason I'm going there is because you can't get there on your own. Instructions will not help you, Thomas. In fact, my father gave instructions about fourteen, fifteen hundred years ago on a mountain. There were 10 of them, and you cannot keep them, Thomas.

He says, you don't need me to point the way. He says, I am the way. Thomas, you don't need someone to show you how to get there, you need someone to walk a path that you cannot walk on your own.

The Meaning of Salvation

This is what salvation is, by the way. It is not you and me finding our way to God, it is God who has found his way to you and has brought everything. Every provision for salvation is bound up in the person of Jesus Christ. He lived a life that you could not live with perfection. He fulfilled in his life the righteous requirements of the law. And then he goes to a cross that you deserve and absorbs the wrath of God so that you might have access to the God for whom you were made.

That is the path that we must walk, which of course isn't a path that we walk. The only way that you get there is if you are hidden in him and he carries you there. Salvation belongs to our God.

Now, in the context of this, he is offering comfort. So let me ask this question. How does Jesus' exclusive offer of salvation—saying, I am the only way to get there—which by the way, this is not Jesus being exclusive. He's just being honest. He's not saying, you have to come through me, only me. What he's saying is, none of you can get there without me. It's only by me that you will ever get there. You have to trust me. It's not so much he's being exclusive, he's just being honest. This is the path to get there.

The Prize That Awaits

But then finally, I want you to notice the prize that awaits. Let's jump up to verse one. Jesus says:

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? — John 14:1-2

Here's the first thing I want you to notice. I want you to notice the standard that Jesus is inviting his disciples to hold him to. He says, if it were not true, would I have said it? In other words, Jesus says, I do not say things unless they are true. Do you believe that about Jesus? That when you read something in Scripture, it's actually true? He's saying, you can take it to the bank. If I said it, it's true.

When did he say it? Earlier in chapter 13, Peter wants to go, and he says, you cannot follow where I'm going now, but afterwards you will. In other words, you will, Peter. The place that I'm going—first to the cross and then to my father—you can't get there on your own, but you will eventually follow me. And he said, if I said it, it's true. He is inviting his disciples to hold him to this standard: if I said it, it's true. And he's inviting us to do the same.

And then he expands on the promise here. Here's what he says: there's a place that I'm going, and you're gonna come there too. He calls it his father's house.

In my father's house, there are many rooms, and one of them, fellas, has your name on it. — John 14:2

There's room for you in my father's house. There's a place.

But then, secondly, he goes to prepare it. Now, this is an odd concept. What is he doing when he prepares the place? I can assure you, it's not this: Jesus is not up in heaven hanging wallpaper. There's no problem with your room in heaven. Heaven is quite fine. It doesn't need adjustments. Heaven is prepared for you. What's the problem? You are not prepared for heaven.

When Jesus says, I go to prepare a place, here's what he means: I need to go make you able to get there. There's nothing wrong with heaven. There's something wrong with you.

Who gets into heaven?

To those who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. — John 1:12

You notice he calls it his father's house? Any dads here? Who lives in your house? Your family, your children, and maybe a Blue Ridge fellow. For the most part, your family. This is true of God's house too. To live in his house, you become a child, and there's only one way that you can become one. It is by trusting in his work for you and walking a path that you could not walk, becoming sin and imputing to you his righteousness. So that one day, when you stand in front of the father, instead of being consumed by his holiness, he will say, paid for by the blood of my son. You're covered in his righteousness and you come in to his house.

But there's something else that I want you to notice here as we close. When we think about the prize that awaits for those who believe, here's what it is.

He says, if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. Here's the second thing, it's the second if-then in this passage. He's saying, first of all, if I said it, it's true. I only say things that are true. And then secondly here, if I go, I will come back. In other words, I don't start things that I'm not prepared to finish. If I stepped out of heaven, embodied flesh, endured unfathomable suffering for you, you can be sure I'm coming back to get you. The very reason I came here, this is not the end of the story. I am coming back.

But then notice the prize here. If you've heard nothing else today, this is what I want you to hear. Jesus says, here we go, Jesus says this, that where I am, you may also be. I have come not just so you could be in paradise, I've come to bring you to myself. The prize of human existence, hear this, whether this feels true or not, it is true. The prize of human existence is not paradise. It is a person. It is Jesus Christ. It is knowing him. That is the key. It is the secret to life. It is literally all that matters.

You were created. You were created by him and for him. We were made by Jesus Christ. We were made for Jesus Christ. And to the degree that you are living for something other than Jesus Christ, you will feel, at best, empty. At worst, you will be destroying your life. And many of us sit here today in the wake of the destruction of some of our choices, and the reason is because we've been living out of accord with our design. He has made you for himself. And therefore, the deepest, most satisfying, most fulfilling thing you could ever do is actually know him, is actually enjoy him, to be with him.

Isn't this beautiful too? Do you hear what Jesus is saying? He's saying, I'm coming back. Why? Because you are his prize. I am coming back to take you to myself that you may be where I am. The goal isn't paradise, it is knowing Christ Jesus.

The Glory of God in the Face of Jesus

Let me close with this verse. This is how Paul understands salvation.

For God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. — 2 Corinthians 4:6

It's a lot of words. Here's what Paul is saying. Here's what salvation is. It is God, in the same way that he said, let there be light, and it was light. He's saying there's one universal truth that you need to be woken up to, and it happens in your heart. And here it is, the glory of God in the face of Jesus.

Moses said on the mountain, let me see your glory. Because man, when he gets in touch with this truest part of who you were made to be, what you need, what you wanna see, whether you're in pain or whether you're in peace is, I want to see the glory of God. It's what Moses wanted. Philip says it here too. Show us the father and it is enough. It is enough. Moses' desire was right. Philip's desire was right. What's the key? The glory of God that they long to see, it is in the face of Jesus Christ.

It is true for you too. What you need more than anything else on the planet is to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You will try to see the glory of God in your career, in your spouse, in your children. You will try to see it in your bank account. You will try to see it in the bedroom. You look a lot of places, and all of those will leave you feeling empty. The only place, the place that you were designed to feel alive, to feel satisfied, is in the face of Jesus Christ who came to live the life you could not live and to die the death that you deserved in order that you might belong to his family and live in his house, to be with him forever and forever.

Maybe today would be the day for some of you that you come home for the first time, and maybe for some of us who have been like Philip with him a long time, today, you would start living as if what he says is actually true.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the truth of this word. Thank you that you are the way, the truth, and the life. You don't point the way to salvation, you provide the way to salvation. You don't give us truth like it's some secret code. You don't give us life as if it's something in your pocket that you hand to us. What you give us is yourself. And to the degree that we trust you, that we feed on you, we begin to realize the whole point of being human. God, I pray that that would become true for people in this room today. In Christ's name, amen.