Trust in the Lord

Today we are wrapping up our sermon series “The Lord Revealed.” We have been allowing the Gospel of John to speak to us and guide us into an understanding of the various ways God is revealed to us and how this understanding should help guide and direct our lives.

This week we turn our focus to the importance of “Trusting in the Lord.” Our scripture comes from John 13:31-38.

31 When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

33 “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

36 Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”

Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

37 Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”

38 Then Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!

Please pray with me…

No matter the circumstances one of the most important aspects of choosing to follow someone is for us to be willing to trust that person or group. There are two schools of thought regarding trust. They are that we give trust, or we make a person earn our trust.

If we decide to give trust, we are deciding that we are going to believe that person until they prove otherwise. We are going to trust that they are going to do what they say, and we will be willing to help them accomplish their goal.

The alternative is to make someone earn our trust. Under this concept a person would have to prove to you that they are someone who is trustworthy. We would be unwilling to follow that person until we believe they deserve to have us follow them.

Neither one of these two are wrong but what can happen is that a person can end up becoming so jaded that they set too high a standard for proving trust and nothing ever gets accomplished. That is why I believe to initially giving trust is important.

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Regarding Jesus one of the most difficult parts of our faith is a willingness to trust that God is with us when he is asks us to do something or as in today’s scripture Jesus tells us that something will occur. Peter cannot believe that Jesus is leaving him.

A couple of weeks ago we spoke about how when anxiety hits, when we find ourselves in a place where we don’t know what to do next, we will often revert back to an area of our lives where we are comfortable. We discover in today’s text another subconscious action that can end up taking place.

We have Jesus offering up some information and advice to his disciples. Part of what he is telling them is that he is leaving them. Peter only seems to hear these words. His focus seems to only be on the fact that Jesus will no longer be with them despite the more important information and advice Jesus is passing on to them.

This was a very emotional time for the disciples. Jesus is speaking to them in the upper room right after some events have just occurred. The disciples had eaten a meal with Jesus. Jesus surprises them by washing their feet. We then have him announce that one of them will betray him and Judas walks out.

As Peter and the other disciples are processing all of these events and information Jesus announces that he is leaving them for good. This is too much for Peter to handle and he has this conversation with Jesus in which he promises to never walk away from him.

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We need to be willing to trust in the Lord. We need to be open to what God desires to say to us. We need to believe that what we hear from the Lord is the truth. Scripture tells us that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus is the way. This is why we should be willing to follow him. One way that this is sometimes explained is that Jesus acts as our attorney before the Father. He tells the father that we are worthy of having our sins forgiven and to reside with him forever in Heaven.

This is all that the Father needs to hear. The word from Jesus that we are good enough allows us to be good enough in the eyes of the Father. The Father trusts the son enough to believe what he says is true without the need for another witness or any additional proof.

This makes sense especially when we look back at how last week’s scripture ended. We have Jesus making the statement that he and the father are one. Jesus is reminding us that these two may be separate individually but they are one when it comes to their thoughts and actions.

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Jesus also could be considered to be the way through the help that he left us, the Holy Spirit. We hear him in other parts of scripture speak to his disciples concerning his leaving by emphasizing that through the Holy Spirit they will be able to do even greater things than him.

The disciples had to be asking themselves the question “how can we be greater than the Messiah?” The answer is simple; Jesus was one person attempting to spread his message to as many people as possible. There will now be many people spreading that message to the world.

The Holy Spirit helps direct us into the ways that God desires for us to speak, to love, and to serve those around us. It is through allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us and us being willing to trust and follow him that we are able to become the person that God desires for us to be.

We find in our first reading Paul offers us one of the best examples of relying on the Holy Spirit. We are told in this short passage that Paul was kept from entering one area, stopped from entering another area, and then given through a vision of where he was to go.

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The Holy Spirit attempts to have us follow the will of God. We should listen and trust the Spirit. Sometimes that may mean “trusting our gut.” We feel we should or shouldn’t do something or go somewhere. We should assume that the Holy Spirit is attempting to keep us from advancing further.

We also may at times have a situation to where we are told to stop but decide to ignore the request from the Holy Spirit and we choose to continue to move forward. We may receive a stronger nudge from God telling us to stop.

We don’t know in this description if the Holy Spirit is not allowing Paul and his companions to enter Bithynia through an actual physical barrier or if Paul received such a strong message that he knew that was something they weren’t supposed to do.

I have a feeling these two situations would eventually lead Paul to ask the question, “OK God where do you want me to go?” It is at this point that I believe he received the message that he was to go to Macedonia.

Here is the part for us to focus on, as soon as he received a clear message on where he was supposed to go the scriptures tells us that he “got ready at once.” There was no hesitation, they got up and left.

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Many times,it is not a lack of trust in God, it is us not desiring to do what God wants us to do. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to speak to that person. We decide we are going to ignore what God wants us to do.

This can lead us to regret choosing not to follow God and it may prevent or delay what God desiring to happen to occur. God can do the work without us, but he desires for us to be willing to join him in serving those around us.

Or in the case of Peter, Jesus told him what he would do but he struggled to believe that he would do what Jesus said he would do. Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times before the next morning.

We know that occurred as was predicted. We also are aware that it led Peter to be filled with guilt to the point that Jesus pulled him aside and asked Peter three times if he loved him. Peter’s answer each time was “yes”.

We may not always do what we should do but what we have to make sure happens is that we don’t allow guilt and shame to prevent us from serving the Lord. Jesus made sure that Peter knew that he still needed him to serve him and at the same time reminded Peter that what he did wasn’t because he didn’t love him.

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Jesus is the truth. We should be willing to trust and follow the Lord because He is the truth. We know that Satan and “the Lord” our opposites. Satan is a liar and “the Lord” is the truth. Jesus attempts to help us by doing and saying what is best for us. Satan attempts to sway us through what will be worse for us.

How a person views scripture can impact their view of what it means for “the Lord” to be the truth. This can impact how much trust a person may be willing to put in the Lord. This is called the inerrancy of scripture which is the doctrine that the Bible is fully truthful in all of its teachings.

There are different views on how inerrant scripture is. We are going to look at 5 of the ways that scripture can be viewed.

Absolute Inerrancy-All parts of scripture are “fully true.” This means that any “apparent discrepancies can and must be explained.

Full Inerrancy-This is similar to absolute inerrancy in regards to theological truths. The difference is that as for historic and scientific information the writers are using information as it appears to the “human eye.” It may not be exact but “they are using popular descriptions from that time.

Limited inerrancy-The theological truths are inerrant but the scientific and historical references “reflect the understanding at the time it was written. Another way of saying it would be that “God did not reveal science or history to them.”

Inerrancy of purpose-The purpose of scripture is to bring people into a personal relationship with Jesus and scripture accomplishes its purpose. The purpose of scripture is not to “communicate truths.

Accommodated revelation-“The Bible came through human channels”, and thus cannot be trusted as the word of God.

That is the five. Where you believe you fall among the five effects your view on God and the truths concerning God expressed within scripture. Our view of inerrancy also can affect how much we trust God because if we doubt the truthfulness of scripture we can lose some of the power of these stories.

Scripture isnot the only way that we can view the truth. We can find truth also in the ways our lives have been impacted by Jesus. Our examples and the examples of those around us can also help us to trust in the Lord.

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Our stories can also have an impact on how others view the Lord. It can be through our stories that those around us can receive an understanding of who God is and how he is at work around us. This can lead them to have to decide what they believe.

We can help those that we meet that our not yet followers of Jesus through relaying our trust in God and how God can also help them on their life journey. It is through expressing how God has transformed our lives that can help lead someone else to decide they want to trust Jesus to be their Lord and Savior.

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Our last aspect is that Jesus is the life. He is the life in that he offered us eternal life through his actions upon the cross, but he also showed us how we should choose to live our lives. Jesus impacts our lives both hear on earth and after death.

Jesus conquered death and shows that nothing on earth has control of him. This can also be reminder for us that through being a follower of Jesus our bodies may die and decay our Spirit lives on. Jesus gave us eternal life.

We also have his example throughout scripture on how we are to choose to live our lives. We find within today’s scripture two ways that we should choose to live our lives with God. They are that we should glorify God and the second is that we should love one another as Jesus first loved us. These are the last statements that Jesus is giving to his examples prior to his eventual arrest and death.

When we are trusting in God, we will find reasons to glorify God. We will have things occur in such way that can allow us to  see “the Lord” at work and therefore lead us to thank him for what he has done for us.

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We glorify God when we worship God. We have already today through the songs we sing, our call to worship, our pastoral prayer and I hope through this sermon. We are acknowledging through our worship service that our God is greater than us and deserves our praise.

We should choose to glorify God not only on Sundays but every day. One way that some choose to live this out is through what is called Examen. This spiritual exercise has you pause at the end of each day and focus and thank God for the ways that he has impacted your life.

If this would not work for you, we also can make the decision to pause throughout the day and thank God for what he is doing. We should give God our praise each day and ask for him to help us become the best person that we can be.

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One way we become the best that we can be is to choose to love those around us as Jesus has loved us. Just like many aspects of Jesus’ ministry this becomes something that we might not be able to live up too but offers us a goal for us to strive towards.

It is Jesus’ focus on love that has led us to have “Love all People” as a part of our mission statement. Jesus becomes our example of how to live this out upon the cross when we have him stating concerning those who put him there for his father to forgive them.

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We need to trust that the Lord is at work in us, through us, and around us. We should believe that “the Lord” will be with us and help us as we are living our lives the ways that he desires for us to live. Let us be an example for others to follow both individually and as a church on what it means to “trust in the Lord.