Healing for Hurting Hearts (2)

1“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4“And where I go you know, and the way you know.” 5 Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, 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; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” 8 Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10“Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority;but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. 11“Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.

It is important that we place these words of Jesus in the proper context and moment in time. The time was near the very end of our Lord’s earthly ministry. He knew that His time on earth was drawing to a close and that very shortly He would be leaving those disciples He had come to love.

The place was somewhere from the Upper Room in Jerusalem where our Lord had just instituted the memorial of the Lord’s Supper, an ordinance of the church that remembers our Lord’s death for our sins, his broken body and His shed blood, as well as His promise to return again one day.

Between the time our Lord left the Upper Room following the Lord’s Supper, and covering the distance between there and the Garden of Gethsemane where He would be betrayed and arrested, He spoke these words, the very words we just read together.

I want us to look at them one more time, and in doing so, let us discover our Lord’s promise of Healing for Hurting Hearts.

I. BY PLACING YOUR FAITH IN A PERSON, vs. 1, 6-8

1“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.

Jesus makes an audacious statement in this first verse. He says, “Since you believe in God, believe in Me also.” Placing your faith in Christ the supreme Person is the first step in healing hurting hearts.

To believe in God means you are not an atheist, but to be a Christian, you must have personal faith and trust in Christ.

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, 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; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”

Perhaps we need to know the disciple who asked the question that lead to Jesus’ response. His name was Thomas. You may have heard of him. He has become know as doubting Thomas. It seems that everywhere we read about Thomas he is expressing doubt about Jesus. You know there are a lot of doubting Thomas’ around.

Let’s look at it again in this light. 4“And where I go you know, and the way you know.” 5 Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

When we place our faith in the person of Jesus, we come to the Father.

Yet another disciple named Philip makes a request of our Lord.

8 Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father;

Billy Graham has said, “If you want to know what God looks like, look at Jesus.” I’m simply telling you, the place we need to go, when our hearts are hurting at times like this is to the Father through Jesus.

“Let not your hearts be troubled.” How is that possible? By placing your faith in a person, and that person is Jesus Christ.

FAITH by Clara L. Childers

Sometimes the way seems rough and steep,

And we find no where to place our feet;

But with our hand in His, and a faith sublime,

We’re always able the hill to climb.

If there are Gethsemanes we must pass through,

We ask ourselves, “What did Jesus do?”

He knelt and prayed, “Not my will but thine.”

Now help us Lord to place our hand in thine.

II. BY SECURING YOUR HOPE IN A PLACE, vs. 2

2“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Heaven is the eternal home of the saved. All those who place their faith in the person of Jesus Christ have a place called Heaven that is our eternal dwelling place.

That’s what the word “mansions” means in this verse. “I have a mansion just over the hilltop, in that fair land beyond the blue.”

It is a perfect place. The Bible says, 4“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4) A place where there is no more sin, sorrow, suffering, separating, sickness and death.

It is a prepared place. A place Jesus has been working on until it’s ready and He comes back to get us to move in. “Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the mind of man the things God has prepared for those who love Him.”

It is a permanent place. A home not made by hands, eternal in the heavens. Revelation 22:1-6, 1 And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. 2 In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. 4 They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. 5 There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.

That Beautiful Land, hymn by Helen H. Gates

I will sing you a song of the beautiful land,

The far away home of the soul,

Where no storms ever beat on the glittering strand,

Where the years of eternity roll.

Oh how sweet it will be in that beautiful land,

So free from all sorrow and pain,

With songs on our lips and with hope in our hands,

To meet one another again.

III. BY FINDING COMFORT IN A PROMISE, vs. 3-4

3“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4“And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

A. WE CAN GO TO HIM, v. 4 “where I go you know, and the way you know.”

“To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”

“For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: 24 Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.

B. HE WILL COME FOR US, v. 3 “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

13 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. 15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

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