Untroubled Hearts

The message given in the Sunday night worship service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on April 16, 2023.  The Bible verses used are John 14:1-7.

            When we think of Jesus’ commandments, we think of things like “love your neighbor as yourself.”  “Pray for those who persecute you.”  “Turn the other cheek.”  “Love your enemies.”  

            We talk about those commandments a lot in church.  We talk about how hard they are for us to do.  We talk about how we should do them, anyway.  We talk about how God will help us keep those commandments.

            But when we think of Jesus’ commandments, the one we read tonight rarely comes to mind.  In fact, I suspect most of us don’t even realize that there was a commandment in there.  But there was.  Here it is:  “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

            Have you ever thought of that as a commandment?   Well, until I started thinking about the message for tonight, neither had I.  But it is.  After all, what is a commandment?  It’s something the Lord has told us to do.  And Jesus told the disciples, and us, “do not let your hearts be troubled.”

            And just like those other commandments I mentioned, this one is not easy for us to keep.  It seems like there are an awful lot of things that trouble our hearts these days.  Some of them just have to do with the everyday things of life.  We have health concerns, we have financial concerns, we have concerns about our families and our friends.  Some of them have to do with events happening in our country, or in the world.  We see wars and threats of wars, we see economic problems, we see rampant crime.  Some of them have to do with our faith.  We are called to be faithful to God in a country, and in a world, that seems to be turning away from God.

            But you know, when Jesus said those words to the disciples, they had a lot of things troubling their hearts, too.  Jesus said these words on the night of the Last Supper.  The night on which He was to be arrested.  The day before He was to be killed.  The disciples did not know all that was going to happen, but they knew they were in trouble.  They knew the Pharisees and the other religious leaders were plotting against them.  They knew that things were coming to a head, and that something big was going to happen soon.  But they did not know what it was or how it would come out.

            And to top it all off, Jesus has just told them He will be leaving them soon.  They probably did not understand that He meant He would be killed, but they knew He would no longer be there for them.  They were wondering how they would go on without Him.  They were wondering what they were going to do.  

            To say the disciples were worried would be an understatement.  And then Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”  Do you think that helped?  I mean, to me, it’s like when your wife is mad at you and you say, “Calm down.”  You’re probably going to get the exact opposite response from what you wanted.

            But Jesus tells them why their hearts should not be troubled.  First he says this, “You believe in God; believe also in Me.”

            Jesus understands why the disciples are worried.  He’s not mad at them for being worried.  But He’s saying to them, look, you really don’t need to be.  It’ll be all right.  Just trust Me.  Just believe in Me.  I’ll take care of you.

            But Jesus does not just leave it at that.  Jesus goes on to say, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me, that you also may be where I am.”

            He’s telling the disciples, yes, I’m going away.  But it won’t be forever.  Hang in there.  Whatever happens to you here, it’ll only be temporary.  Because eventually, I’m going to come back.  And when I do, I’ll take you out of here.  I’ll take you to where I am, and we’ll all be together again.  

            And then, Jesus says this, “You know the way to the place where I am going.”

            Well, if the disciples' hearts were starting to get untroubled, this got them troubled again.  You can imagine them, staring at each other, with confused looks on their faces.  Finally, Thomas, of course, is the one to put into words what they’re all feeling.  “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

            And of course, Jesus answers, “I am the way.”  If we want to go to where Jesus is, we have to follow Him.  There’s no other way to do it.  There’s no one else we can follow who will get us to Jesus.  

And when we get to where Jesus is, there’s no reason for our hearts to be troubled.  Because, as Jesus says, “If you really know Me, you will know My father as well.”

When we follow Jesus, we eventually get to where Jesus is.  And when we are where Jesus is, we are in the presence of God the Father.  And at that point, there is no reason for our hearts to be troubled.  We are in the presence of God, and God will have everything handled.

We don’t know whether the disciples’ hearts became untroubled after this.  I somehow doubt it.  I imagine them thinking, well, yeah, that’s great that someday we’ll get to go to be with you in heaven.  And we look forward to that and everything.  But in the meantime, we’re here on earth.  We’ll be here, and You’ll be gone.  And we’ll have the Pharisees coming after us.  And maybe the Roman soldiers, too.  You’re going away, but we’re stuck here, having to deal with all this stuff without You.  How can you tell us to not let our hearts be troubled?

I suspect a lot of us feel that way sometimes, too.  We have faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  We believe in Him.  We look forward to the day when we’ll be in heaven with Him and with all those who have gone before us.  It’ll be a great day.  It’ll be a grand reunion.

But in the meantime, we’re stuck here on earth.  And we have all those problems we talked about at the start of this message.  And we see the country and the world turning away from God.  How can our hearts not be troubled?

Well, the way we can do it is the way the disciples could do it.  Jesus goes on for the next few chapters telling them how to do it.  But what it amounts to is this.  Trust Me.  Believe in Me.  Be faithful to Me.  Do the things I’ve told you to do.  Love God.  Love each other.  Stay faithful no matter what may happen to you.  Yes, there will be times when things are bad for you here on earth.  But the Holy Spirit will be with you, and the Holy Spirit will help you through it.  And if you stay faithful to the end, you will go to be with Me in heaven.  As Jesus Himself puts it, “In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.”

Jesus has overcome the world.  He did not just do that for Himself.  He did that for us, too.   And knowing that, and believing it, and trusting it, is how we can keep our hearts from being troubled.  

            This world we live in now seems so real to us.  And it is real, of course.  And the thing is, it’s the only world we’ve ever known.  And so, too often, we act as if we believe it’s the only world that is.  I mean, yes, we say we believe in heaven.  But we’ve never been there.  We’ve never seen it.  We don’t know what it’s like.  

Because of that, there’s a sense in which it does not seem real to us, at least not in the way this world is.  And so, our focus is on the problems of this world.  Our focus is on the things we see and hear and experience here on earth.  And a lot of those things are troubling to us.  When we have problems, when the people we love have problems, when we see things going wrong in this country that we love, our hearts are troubled.  

But they don’t have to be.  Jesus knows we’re going to have trouble in this world.  That’s the way it’s set up, ever since sin entered the world through Adam and Eve.

But Jesus gave us a promise.  He promised that He has overcome the world.  He promised that He will come back to take us to be with Him.  And then, we will be where our hearts will never need to be troubled again.  We will have nothing but peace and joy and love, in the presence of the Lord.

When we look at the world, it’s hard for us to not let our hearts be troubled.  It was hard for the disciples, too.  But take heart!  Jesus has overcome the world.  If we stay faithful to Him, and trust Him, and believe in Him, then through Jesus’ power, we can overcome the world, too.  And we will never need to have our hearts be troubled again.