Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled
Notes
Transcript
text: John 14:1-6, but we’ll read the first 14 verse for context.
1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.
2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
4 And you know the way to where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can 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 except through me.
7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.
13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
Context: Jesus has just told his disciples that one of them would betray him; he has told Peter that he would deny Jesus 3 times that night; he has hinted at his departure and even death. This is a very troubling thing for the disciples. So Jesus turns to them and says,
Let not your hearts be troubled, because God is in control.
Let not your hearts be troubled, because God is in control.
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.
We know that not all trouble in our hearts and souls is wrong or sinful, because Jesus has expressed that his soul was troubled.
Jesus said in John 12:27
“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.
And John tells us in John 13:21
After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
But here in John 14:1 he commands his disciples not to have a troubled heart. Why?
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.
Why would their hearts be troubled?
Because of the things he has just told them about his being betrayed and leaving them and Peter’s denial.
Why are our hearts troubled sometimes?
Because of negative circumstances beyond our control - a global pandemic, the increasing wickedness of our society and government, a personal health crisis, a crumbling marriage, struggles in parenting, personal financial struggles, loss of a job, broken friendships or relationships, and maybe even our own struggles with sin that we can’t seem to get victory over. All of these things and many more are reasons that we worry, feel anxious, and have a troubled heart.
But Jesus commands us not to be troubled. How can we have hearts that are not troubled in the midst of such negative circumstances?
The second part of v. 1 is the answer.
Believe. Trust. Rely on God instead of yourself.
When we worry or feel anxious or troubled, usually the problem is that we are trying to take control of something that is outside our control. The fact is that we are never in control of our circumstances no matter how much we feel like we are, so when we worry or have troubled hearts we are trying to live outside of reality and pretend that we are God and have control of our circumstances.
But when we try to take control of our circumstances, we will be frustrated and our hearts will be troubled, because we are not in fact in control. God is. That is why we must trust him.
Trusting God is the solution to our troubled hearts. We must release our perceived control of our circumstances to God, focus on what is under our control - our responses, and leave the rest to God.
This reminds me of what Paul says in Philippians 4:6
do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Don’t be anxious or troubled about anything; instead, trust God with it. Things are outside your control, but they’re not outside of God’s control. And if you know that God is good, you know that he is working all things for your good, even when you can’t see or understand how right now.
I want to draw your attention to the end of v. 1 again before we move on.
There are two phrases, and each phrase contains the same verb in Greek. But the complication is that the verb can either be a statement or a command in each case, which mathematically makes four possibilities:
You do believe in God, and you also believe in Me [Jesus].
Believe in God; you also believe in Me [Jesus].
Believe in God; believe also in Me [Jesus]. (ESV rendering)
You do believe in God; believe also in Me [Jesus]. (KJV rendering)
The last two are the most likely. Here I prefer the choice of the King James, which takes the first as a statement and the second as a command. This makes it mean something like, “You already trust in God, don’t you? You should trust Me as well, since I am God.” In my mind, this is the translation that best fits the theme of the passage, because one of Jesus’s points here is that the reason you can trust him is that He is One with the Father, He is in fact God himself.
Let not your hearts be troubled, because there is room for you in the Father’s house.
Let not your hearts be troubled, because there is room for you in the Father’s house.
In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
In my Father’s house
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
In John 2, the “Father’s house” refers to the Temple
16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”
Jesus claims that he himself replaces the Temple as the meeting place of God and man. His body is the temple.
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that no longer would people have to go to a specific place to worship God, but that true worship could take place anywhere, because He will inhabit his people by his Spirit.
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
So Jesus himself is the True Temple, the true meeting place of God and man, the One through whom we worship God. And if Jesus is the Temple and the Temple is the Father’s house, I think we can say in some sense that Jesus is the Father’s house. Jesus is where the presence of God dwells most fully and visibly.
So I think when Jesus talks about the Father’s house here, he’s not primarily talking about a place, but a person. Heaven is not primarily a place, but a person.
If there were a place called heaven, but Jesus wasn’t there, would you still want to go? If you could have the streets of gold, the pearly gates, and all the other glories of heaven but not Jesus, would heaven really be a glorious place?
I hope your answer is no! I want to go where Jesus is. That’s the point. Heaven isn’t about all those other things, as great as they are. It isn’t about the things we’ll have there or the other people we’ll see there, as much as we long for those things. Heaven is about Jesus, being forever with him, in his presence.
Here’s another cool connection:
6 but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.
Hebrews 3:6 tells us that those of us who believe with a persevering faith (the universal church - all believers of all time) are his house, that is, the house of Christ, the place where Christ dwells by his Spirit. So if Jesus is the Father’s house and we are Jesus’s house, we are also by extension the Father’s house. God himself lives in us.
This is what the Father’s house is about. Not as much a place as a person. A deep, intimate relationship with God himself through Christ and his work for us on the cross.
Many rooms (mansions?)
You may have noticed that the ESV’s rendering of v. 2 is quite different from the traditional King James rendering which says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”
Obviously the word “rooms” doesn’t mean the same thing as “mansions” to us. Why are these translations so different? (or are they?)
Let’s consider what the word “mansion” meant to the translators of the King James compared to what it means today.
A Handbook on the Gospel of John John 14:2
The King James “mansions” comes originally from Tyndale’s translation, at which time the word “mansion” merely signified a dwelling, and not necessarily a large and luxurious one, as in contemporary English.
The Greek word μονή here translated as “mansion” by the KJV in v. 2 is translated differently in v. 23 of this same chapter.
King James Version (Chapter 14)
23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
So in v. 23, it’s translated as “abode”, that is a dwelling-place, or a room, a place to live. It has nothing to do with the size of the place or how nice it is, it simply implies that it is a place where someone lives. And it’s the same word and the same idea in v. 2.
Mansions today
Today when we think of mansions we probably imagine multi-million dollar homes, thousands and thousands of square feet, perhaps large gardens, a large swimming pool out back, nice furniture inside, maybe even some famous paintings or artwork, just the nicest house we can imagine.
Room, not mansion
It may be hard for us to change ideas we have about heaven, but it’s important to let Scripture inform our thinking here. Jesus is not saying that we will each have our own individual large, expensive house in heaven. As we already said, heaven isn’t about things but about a person - Jesus.
And Jesus’s point to his disciples is that there is enough room for them - and for us - for all who will believe in him. There is plenty of room in the Father’s house.
If it were not so
Jesus wants to assure his disciples and us that what he is saying is true. He is telling them these things because they are true and trustworthy. We can count on what Jesus says. There is room for us in the Father’s house.
I go to prepare a place for you
When Jesus says he is going to prepare a place for his disciples, what does he mean?
Is there something wrong with the rooms? Does he need to go build the rooms, get the furniture, decorate, or fix things up so they’ll be ready? Consider what he says to the believers in Matthew 25:34.
34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
It’s not that our heavenly home is in disrepair or in need of any kind of work. It’s been ready since the beginning of time.
What must be prepared then?
What has to be prepared is a way for sinners to live in the presence of a Holy God.
When Jesus talks about going to prepare a place for us, he’s not talking about going to heaven to get our homes ready there, he’s talking about going to the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. He’s talking about his suffering and death. He’s talking about bearing the wrath of God against all our sins so that we could be forgiven, and giving us his perfect righteousness so that we can live in the presence of God forever without being destroyed because of our sin.
Our sins must be forgiven, and our relationship with God must be restored if we are to live with God forever. This is what Jesus was on his way to prepare.
This is why Jesus had to leave his disciples for awhile. He had to go to the cross and die and then rise from the dead in order to prepare a place for us.
So Jesus’s preparing a place for us isn’t about him getting heaven ready for us, but about getting us ready for heaven. And he has accomplished this once for all time by his death and resurrection.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
I will come again
These words from Jesus have to be so comforting to his disciples. He has just told them that he is going away - leaving them - and they are devastated, troubled in their hearts. Now he tells them, “Even though I’m going away, I will come again.” I’m coming back. Yes, it’s true that you can’t go with me where I’m going now, but don’t worry, I’ll be back.
And I don’t think he’s talking about his Second Coming here. Many have interpreted this to refer to a Rapture or the Second Coming, but I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about; remember whom is he talking to here? First and foremost, the 11 apostles.
He’s not talking to them here about end times things, something that’s thousands of years away. He’s talking about his resurrection from the dead and his appearances to his disciples following the resurrection.
He was going away - that is, going to die on the cross to prepare the way for his disciples and us to be with him. But the story didn’t end with the cross. Jesus didn’t stay dead.
He would come again - that is, he would come back to life again, and he would come and appear to his disciples for a little while longer and spend more time with them before ascending to his throne.
So while there may be an application to the Second Coming as well, the primary focus of Jesus’s words here is on his resurrection from the dead and his return to be with his disciples awhile longer before ascending to the Father.
I will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
The emphasis here again is not on a place but a person. It’s not about a place where Jesus will take his disciples, but that they will be with him, now in a proper relationship with God because their sins have been atoned for, they have been forgiven, and they receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ, because of Christ’s death and resurrection, which he was about to accomplish.
There’s a lot in these verses, so let’s try to summarize what we’ve seen again.
Heaven isn’t primarily a place, but a person.
It isn’t primarily about having things or seeing our family and friends, but about being with Jesus.
Jesus was going to have to die for us so that we could be with him.
But Jesus would also rise again and conquer death so that we could be with him.
Let not your hearts be troubled, because you know the way to the Father.
Let not your hearts be troubled, because you know the way to the Father.
4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
You know the way
Jesus doesn’t ask his disciples a question here, but instead makes a statement: “You know the way to where I am going.” I think maybe he says it this way because he wants his disciples to ask the question that they did in v. 5, because he wants to tell them the answer that he gives in v. 6.
Certainly he knows their confusion. He knows they don’t understand completely yet. But he also knows that they know more than they think they do. They did in fact know the way, even though they didn’t realize it yet.
Where I am going
This phrase appears multiple times between the end of ch. 13 and the end of ch. 14. In most if not all of the times Jesus uses these words, he has a double meaning. He was going to die on the cross. That was the first place he was going. But after he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, he was also going to ascend to the Father as he says in v. 12 and again in v. 28, so this is another meaning of these words. He was going to die on the cross for our sins to remove every obstacle for us to be in the presence of God forever, and he was going to ascend to the right hand of the Father where to this day he makes intercession for all believers. So Jesus probably has both of these things in mind, though perhaps now the emphasis is more on the second - he is going to be with the Father, and I think that because of the end of v. 6, where he says that that is our goal as well - to get to the Father.
We do not know … how can we know?
Thomas speaks up and objects, “No, Jesus, we don’t know where you are going, so how in the world can we know the way to get there?”
And Thomas’s question here sets up one of the greatest and most well-known statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John - v. 6.
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus is the way to the Father
Thomas actually did know the way, he just didn’t know that he knew. He knew Jesus, and Jesus is the way.
There are three things that Jesus says about himself here in v. 6: He is
the way,
the truth,
and the life.
But the first word (“way”) is the most important in the context, which we can clearly see by how many times this word is used in these verses.
v. 4 “you know the way”
v. 5 “how can we know the way”
v. 6 “I am the way”
v. 6 “No one comes to the Father excepts through [by way of] me.”
Notice again the emphasis of this verse: Jesus isn’t merely the way to get to a place called heaven, he is the way to get to a person called God, the Father. This is what the gospel is about—not merely getting to heaven, but getting to God. Being forgiven of sins and restored to a right relationship with God so we can live with him forever. And the only way this can happen is through Jesus, because he is the way.
Jesus is the way to the Father because he reveals the truth of God
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did.
Jesus is the way to the Father because he has the life of God
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.
We get this life by trusting in Jesus
40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Application
Application
What’s troubling your heart today?
Maybe the way things are going in the world or in our own country or state have you worried or troubled. Maybe your marriage is falling apart. Maybe you’re struggling to make ends meet with the bad economy we’re in. Maybe you’ve lost a job. Maybe you’ve lost a friend or family member. It could be many other things as well. Why is your heart troubled today?
If your heart is troubled today, as our hearts often are in this broken world, hear again the words of Jesus as he says to you, “Trust in Me.”
Surrender control of your life and circumstances to God.
Believe the promises of Jesus.
If you are trusting in him, you can know that there is a place prepared for you
Come to Jesus and believe in him.
Jesus is the only way to get to the Father, which is where you need to get to.
Have you heard the expression, “Home is where the heart is”?
Here’s a biblical expression from this passage: Home is where God is.
Just as our earthly “home” isn’t primarily about a physical location, but about being with those we love, so our “heavenly home” isn’t primary about a location, but about being with Him whom your soul loves, the one for whom you were made - Heaven is about God.
I hope that thought makes your heart happy today, and that your heart will not be troubled, because you believe the promises of Jesus and you have the hope of being with God forever because you know the One who is the only Way - Jesus.
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Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled, part 2 (review v. 1-6, then preach v. 7-14)
Let not your hearts be troubled, because Jesus is God and reveals God to us.
Let not your hearts be troubled, because Jesus is God and reveals God to us.
7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
Let not your hearts be troubled, because there is work for you to do.
Let not your hearts be troubled, because there is work for you to do.
12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.
13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.