The Way

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.Anxiety disorders are highly treatable, yet only 36.9% of those suffering receive treatment.People with an anxiety disorder are three to five times more likely to go to the doctor and six times more likely to be hospitalized for psychiatric disorders than those who do not suffer from anxiety disorders.Anxiety disorders develop from a complex set of risk factors, including genetics, brain chemistry, personality, and life events.

It's not uncommon for someone with an anxiety disorder to also suffer from depression or vice versa. Nearly one-half of those diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

Appeal (v. 1)

This verse is separated in tow parts, a positive statement and a negative statement.

Do not be troubled

Here we find ourselves reading one of the most common verses read at funerals. While this is certainly an appropriate verse for such an occasion I believe its application goes way beyond those rarer circumstances and into everyday life.

The word for “troubled” here means: disturbed or terrified. I think we could also summarize what Jesus had in mind with the word “worried”.

Consider the context

Jesus was visibly troubled Himself

He is talking about leaving them.

There is a betrayer in their midst

Peter has just learned that he will deny the Lord three times.

These men has left everything to follow Jesus and now He is leaving them.

Do believe

An incredible statement of divinity.

You should have the same trust in me as you do God.

This is either blasphemy or if it is a true statement it means that Jesus is God and is worthy of our worship.

This is also the justification for why their hearts should not be troubled.

It is an invitation to let their belief in Him overrule the trouble in their hearts.

This is an invitation still open to believers today. While we are not facing the same circumstance as the disciples there is an overarching truth that is timeless. Trust in Jesus can overrule any trouble in our hearts.

This can easily become a very deep rabbit hole. Things I believe about troubled hearts.

What does the Bible say about worry? - In short it says that the believer should not worry.

Philippians 4:6-7 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Matthew 6:31-32 “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

Is it always a sin to worry? - No, there are two types of worry.

Healthy worry

Sinful worry - This is the kind of worry that Scripture addresses.

When does worry become sinful? Worry becomes sinful when it produces unbelief.

Anytime worry displaces God as the center of your heart it becomes sinful.

This type of worry is a form of unbelief because at its core is a lack of trust in God.

You can see it implied in our text. Don’t be worried but rather believe.

What about people that struggle with anxiety disorders?

Being frank: If you wouldn’t tell someone with cancer that the only reason they are sick is because they lack trust in God, then you shouldn’t say the same thing to someone struggling with an anxiety disorder.

There are many circumstances where anxiety disorders are medical problems and they require at least in part medical solutions.

That doesn’t mean that there is no spiritual element to their worry.

I have been blessed to be surrounded by many people with anxiety issues throughout my life and here is what I have learned.

Those who struggle with anxiety on this level have the greatest victory when they approach it from two fronts.

Medical

Spiritual

There are many people who are in denial about the true nature of their problem.

They believe that all worry is sin and if they could just pray harder and love God more then they wouldn’t have this problem.

Other’s are quick to point out that it is a medical problem but refuse to admit that there is at least a spiritual element to their problem.

Can I have victory over my anxiety?

Absolutely

Be careful how you define victory. Victory doesn’t mean that the struggle will never be there.

In Philippians 4:6-7 Paul gives two spiritual medication for worry. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Prayer

Thanksgiving

Promise (v. 2, 3)

This promise has two ingredients, a place and a person. It is important to note that Jesus here reveals to His disciples that while He is leaving there is a day coming when they will join Him.

Place (v. 2)

What we know about the “place”.

According to Jesus it is located in His “Father’s house”

This is clearly a reference to heaven.

Twice when Jesus cleansed the temple He referred to the temple as “His Father’s house”. Why is “His Father’s house” heaven here but the temple earlier? The temple and the tabernacle before were designed by God to be a representation or an earthly shadow of the heavenly temple in which God resides. The temple represented God’s presence in Israel and it was often referred to as God’s dwelling place, but it was never more than an earthly representation of a heavenly reality.

Hebrews 9:18-25 Therefore even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the Law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “THIS IS THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT WHICH GOD COMMANDED YOU.” And in the same way he sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with the blood. And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.

Jesus describes this place as having many mansions.

Mansions is an unfortunate translation that has caused many to think of heaven in materialistic terms.

Literally the term “mansions” should be translated “dwelling places” or “rooms”.

A house, in this case His Father’s house” doesn’t contain mansions but logically it would contain many rooms.

What is being pictured is groom in ancient Israel who spends a year of his engagement period building an addition onto his fathers house as the dwelling place for his bride.

Jesus our bridegroom is going to His Father’s house to prepare a place for His bride, the church.

In modern terms, the dwelling places might be pictured as rooms or apartments in the Father’s spacious house. The emphasis is on heaven’s intimacy, where “the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them” (Rev. 21:3)

How is Jesus preparing heaven for the church’s arrival?

Did Jesus once again take up His carpentry tools and has been for the last 2000 plus years building homes for believers?

I appreciated what D. A Carson had to say about the preparing: I am going there to prepare a place for you: the words presuppose that the ‘place’ exists before Jesus gets there. It is not that he arrives on the scene and then begins to prepare the place; rather, in the context of Johannine theology, it is the going itself, via the cross and resurrection, that prepares the place for Jesus’ disciples.

When Jesus said He was going to “prepare a place” for the disciples, He was speaking of His death (John 14:3). We should not imagine that Jesus has been “building heaven” for the last 2,000 years and that it is still “under construction.” Rather, His words mean that His death was the preparation for us to receive a place in the Father’s house. It is ready now.

A Quick Note on Heaven

It is impressive

Filled with precious stones as building materials

High walls and gates

Tree of life

Heaven is a place without

Sorrow

Pain

Tears

The true glory of heaven is not in its materials nor in its complete lack of pain, but rather in the unhindered presence of God and our perfected ability to glorify Him.

Person (v.3)

His Return (v. 3a) - Probably the rapture

Absence of judgment language

Absence of Kingdom language

At the second coming angels are said to gather the elect (Matt. 24) but here Jesus says that He personally will gather them.

At the second coming church age saints will return with Christ.

Two key points to this part of the promise

Reception - “I will receive you unto myself”

Proximity - “that where I am you may be also”

J.C. Ryle - “How much they miss who live in a dying world and yet know nothing of God as their Father and Christ as their Savior! How much they possess who live the life of faith in the Son of God, and believe in Jesus! With all their weaknesses and crosses they have that which the world can neither give nor take away. They have a true Friend while they live and a true home when they die.”

Path (v. 4-6)

Questions (v. 4, 5)

The question of Thomas in verse five is prompted by Jesus’ statement in verse 4. “And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

Jesus had already told the disciples He would be returning to the Father and that He would do so by dying.

John 7:33 Therefore Jesus said, “For a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me.

Matthew 16:21 From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.

Jesus is right they do know but they do not understand.

They know the way because they know Him.

However, as Thomas points out they don’t know that they know.

Thomas’ Question (v. 5)

How could they not know where he was going? Jesus had told them that He was going to His Father.

Yes, but what does that mean? Joseph was dead and they knew that Jesus often spoke of God as His Father.

We often forget that the theology of heaven is born out largely in the N.T. Their understanding of heaven would have been very limited.

Thomas : “If I don’t know where you are going how can I know the way?”

Be thankful for Thomas’ willingness to reveal his ignorance for without him we wouldn’t have v. 6

Answers (v.6) - 3 Parts and a Qualifier

The Way

Jesus is the way

This is the sixth “I AM” statement in John’s Gospel.

A clear answer to Thomas’ question “How can we know the way?” I AM the Way

The exclusivity of Christ is one of the most offensive doctrines to the world. If we were just willing to say “Jesus and....” or “Jesus or...” the world would be much more comfortable with Christianity.

How can a person be “the way” to the Father?

The Truth

Jesus is truth

Jesus is the way to the God because He is the truth of God.

He embodies the revelation of God because He is God.

He does what the Father tells Him to do and says what the Father tells Him to say.

He is God in flesh and there could be no greater revelation of truth.

If we want to follow in the way to the Father we must seek the truth.

The Life

Jesus is life

Jesus’ life is self sustaining (John 5:26) “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself;

Jesus has power over life (John 11:25) Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,

Jesus is the true God and eternal life (1 John 5:20) And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

The Gospel according to John 3. Jesus as the Way to the Father (14:5–14)

Only because he is the truth and the life can Jesus be the way for others to come to God, the way for his disciples to attain the many dwelling-places in the Father’s house (vv. 2–3), and therefore the answer to Thomas’ question (v. 5). In this context Jesus does not simply blaze a trail, commanding others to take the way that he himself takes; rather, he is the way. Nor is it adequate to say that Jesus ‘is the Way in the sense that he is the whole background against which action must be performed, the atmosphere in which life must be lived’ (Sidebottom, p. 146): that assigns Jesus far too passive a role. He is himself the Saviour (4:42), the Lamb of God (1:29, 34), the one who so speaks that those who are in the graves hear his voice and come forth (5:28–29). He so mediates God’s truth and God’s life that he is the very way to God (cf. de la Potterie, p. 938), the one who alone can say, No-one comes to the Father except through me.

Application: If your heart is troubled, remember that you believe in a Savior is the way to God by being the truth and life of God and who has prepared a home for you in heaven so that when He comes again He will receive you unto Himself and you will dwell eternally with Him in His Father’s house for all eternity.