SERIES: The Gospel of John
The Cure for Heart Trouble
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: The Devil, according to legend, once advertised his tools for sale at public auction. When the prospective buyers assembled, there was one oddly shaped tool which was labeled “Not for sale.” Asked to explain why this was, the Devil answered, “I can spare all my other tools, but I cannot spare this one. It is the most useful implement I have. It is called, ‘Discouragement,’ and with it I can work my way into hearts otherwise inaccessible.”
The legend embodies sober truth. Discouragement is a dangerous state of mind because it leaves one open to the assault of the enemies of the soul. And that is undoubtedly why, in John 14, Jesus is so concerned about the discouragement His disciples are facing in the Upper Room. Jesus says to them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” But these disciples have plenty of reason, humanly speaking, to be discouraged.
Just a short time before, one of their most trusted colleagues left their company to go out and treacherously betray their Lord. Then a few moments later Jesus told their chief spokesman and leader that before the sun would come up the next morning, he would deny Jesus three times. And, perhaps most discouraging of all, Jesus has told them in no uncertain terms that He would be leaving them very soon and they could not accompany Him.
Wouldn’t you be discouraged too? Yet Jesus commands them to stop being troubled. I’m not sure I would have wanted to hear that. When you’re depressed, the last thing you want to hear is someone telling you, “Don’t be depressed.” You want sympathy, attention, and patience when you’re discouraged.
Jesus gives them something better than sympathy; He gives them good theology. A Peanuts cartoon I saw many years ago finds Lucy and Linus standing at the window, when she says, “Boy, look at it rain! What if it floods the whole world?” Linus answers, “It will never do that. In the 9th chapter of Genesis God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise is the rainbow.” Lucy responds with a smile on her face, “You’ve taken a great load off my mind,” to which Linus adds, “Sound theology has a way of doing that!”
If your heart is troubled today because you have lost a friend or are about to lose one, or because you have lost your job or are about to lose it, or because someone in whom you trusted has let you down, or because your world seems to be caving in on you, Jesus has more to offer you than sympathy. He also has some sound theology for you, and its focus is not on the present but on the future.
Last week I took my wife to the Botanical Garden to see the azaleas, dogwood and redbud (I should be really honest and say my wife dragged me there, but I did enjoy it). However, what I remember most was not the flowers but a T-Shirt an older woman was wearing. It said, “The next time the Devil reminds you of your past, just remind him of his future.” I like that. Sometimes we get so bogged down by the trials of the present that the only solution is to look beyond it to what God promises lies ahead.
Now the prescription Jesus offers for heart trouble focuses on the excellent news that …
Believers have a choice destination. (2-3)
It is my distinct impression that Heaven used to be a much more common topic of conversation among Christians than it is today. Many of the hymns we sang when I was a boy focused on Heaven, like …
When We All Get to Heaven
When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder
Face to Face
In the Sweet Bye and Bye
Mansion Over the Hilltop
Shall We Gather at the River
O That Will Be Glory for Me
Beyond the Sunset
He the Pearly Gates Will Open
Soon and Very Soon
In contrast, our present hymnal doesn’t even have an index entry for “Heaven,” though it does for “Life Everlasting.” And a few of those songs are listed. But why this change in our hymnology and, more importantly, in our perspective? Could it be because in a subconscious way we are trying to build our heaven on earth today? Advances in health help us live longer; economic gains enable us to live better; technical advances help us live smarter; religious liberty lets us live safer. Who needs Heaven?
The fact is, the good life as we know it will someday come to an end—for some of us sooner than we realize. Then Heaven will become a bit more relevant. Eric Clapton is a popular singer whose spiritual condition is unknown to me, but when his four-year-old son Conner was killed in a fall from the window of a high-rise building, Eric started thinking about Heaven. I want to do something unusual this morning—I want to play his song, called “Tears in Heaven,” and I want you to listen for two things: the powerful emotional impact and the theology.
Would you know my name?
If I saw you in heaven
Would it be the same?
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong
And carry on
‘Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven
Would you hold my hand?
If I saw you in heaven
Would you help me stand?
If I saw you in heaven
I’ll find my way
Through night and day
‘Cause I know I just can’t stay
Here in heaven
Time can bring you down
Time can bend your knees
Time can break your heart
Have you begging please
Begging please
Beyond the door
There’s peace, I’m sure
And I know there’ll be no more
Tears in heaven
Would you know my name?
If I saw you in heaven
Would you be the same?
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong
And carry on
‘Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven
Eric Clapton has asked some excellent questions and our text this morning has some excellent answers. Jesus begins His discussion about Heaven by talking about …
A prepared place (2). “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.” Heaven is described here as a house with many rooms or dwelling places. The King James Version reads “mansions,” which translation apparently was influenced by the book of Revelation and the references there to gold streets, pearly gates and other symbols of beauty and value which are used to describe our heavenly abode. But for Jesus all of that is beside the point for His present purpose. What He wants to communicate to His disciples is that the space in the Father’s house is abundant—there is plenty of room.
Furthermore, Heaven is being custom-built—”prepared for you.” That’s a great thought, isn’t it? Our eternal destiny is not being left to chance. Nor will our disembodied spirits float around in space. Nor will there be endless cycles of reincarnation awaiting us at death. Instead, Jesus is preparing a place for us in His Father’s house. You can count on it.
Christians have too often thought of Heaven exclusively in terms of its geography, its landscaping, its physical features. While not denying that there is a real place called Heaven, and while affirming that it is a place whose beauty is beyond compare, I believe we have neglected the crucial fact that our destination involves …
Jesus’ personal presence (3). Verse 3: “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.” When you really love someone, it doesn’t matter where you are so long as you are with that person. Likewise, what difference does it make where Heaven is or what it looks like or whether the streets are 18 or 22 carat gold, so long as Jesus is there? The great hope of the believer is to spend eternity with Him. And He’s going to come again to receive us to be with Himself. No matter how bleak things seem, if we trust in God and in Jesus, a great destination will eventually be ours.
The second great truth we learn in this passage is that …
There is only one way to reach that destination. (4-6)
You know, it doesn’t do any good to have a beautiful destination in mind if you don’t know how to get there. So, Jesus says in verse 4, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” After all, He’s been trying to show them the Way since He first met them. But this statement leads Thomas to speak up and express his own perplexity in verse 5: “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
This man’s fundamental honesty is admirable. Yes, he is at fault in that he has not perceived the essence of Jesus’ instructions, but the rest of the disciples are in the same boat. And while they are content to swallow their questions, doubting Thomas feels he must get some answers. No one need be ashamed of doubts. The only shame is in not seeking answers to them. The interesting thing is that it is the question of a doubting man which provokes one of the most profound sayings Jesus ever delivered: John 14:6: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No man comes to the Father except through Me.” It is obvious here that …
Jesus Himself is the Way. What does it mean when Jesus tells us that He is the Way? Suppose you are in a strange town, and you stop and ask for directions. Suppose, further, that the person you ask responds, “Take the third light to the left, bear right for a while, turn south for ten minutes and then take a left two miles before you get to the second bridge?” Chances are you will be lost before you get out of town. But suppose instead the person says, “Come on, I’ll take you there!” In that case the person is the way, and we cannot get lost. That is what Jesus does for us. He not only gives us advice and directions. He takes us by the hand and leads us. When we place our trust in Him, He actually takes up residence in our lives and, to the extent we allow Him, He directs our every step. He is the Way.
We should not overlook the other two claims He makes here as well. “I am the Truth” and “I am the Life.” It is one thing to claim to be truthful and quite another to claim to be the Truth. A man’s character will not significantly affect his teaching of math or Latin grammar or agriculture. But if a man proposes to teach moral truth, as Jesus did, his character makes all the difference in the world. Moral truth cannot be conveyed solely in words; it must be conveyed by example. And that is precisely where every human teacher fails. None has ever perfectly embodied the truth He taught—except Jesus. Many men can say, “I have taught truth.” Only Jesus can say, “I am the truth.”
Jesus also claims to be life. The whole Bible bears solemn witness to the fact that man without God is spiritually dead. He is alive to his self-interests and alive to the pleasures and priorities of this world, but dead to eternal things. When the prodigal son returned from the far country his father said, “This, my son, was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Jesus can make dead people alive. Indeed, He promises to give life to all who will come to Him.
In this triple expression in John 14:6 Jesus is asserting in the strongest possible terms the uniqueness and sufficiency of His work for mankind. But the passage says more than that He is the Way. It also claims that …
There is no other way. (6) There are millions of non-Christians who believe that Jesus is a way to the Father, a way to Heaven. But they also believe that Buddha is a way or Joseph Smith is a way or Rev. Moon is a way. In fact, there are religions like Bahai that teach that all religious roads lead to Heaven. Jesus flatly denies this. The Bible says it isn’t so.
Would you look at the last phrase of verse 6? “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” There has never been a more exclusive claim made by any religious leader. These are the words of a totally insane man, or the words of an absolute charlatan, or they are the words of the Son of God.
Now I want to back up to Jesus’ claim that He is the Way and focus upon the 3 lines of evidence which He offers in verses 7-10. Let’s read these verses:
“’If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’ Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.’”
The reasoning is this: if Jesus is the only way to God, then He must have a unique relationship with the Father. And indeed, He does:
1. To know Him is to know the Father.
2. To see Him is to see the Father.
3. To hear Him is to hear the Father.
1. To know Jesus is to know the Father. One of the greatest books I have read is Knowing God by J. I. Packer. I have referred to it before, but please allow me to quote a few excerpts this morning from the chapter entitled, “The People Who Know Their God.”
“I walked in the sunshine with a scholar who had effectively forfeited his prospects of academic advancement by clashing with church dignitaries over the gospel of grace. ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ he said at length, ‘for I’ve known God and they haven’t.’ The remark was a mere parenthesis, a passing comment on something I had said, but it has stuck with me, and set me thinking.
Now many of us, I think, would ever naturally say that we have known God. The words imply a definiteness and matter-of-factness of experience to which most of us, if we are honest, have to admit that we are still strangers…. We need frankly to face ourselves at this point. We are, perhaps, orthodox evangelicals. We can state the gospel clearly, and can smell unsound doctrine a mile away. If anyone asks us how men may know God, we can at once produce the right formulae … yet the gaiety, goodness, and unfetteredness of spirit which are the marks of those who have known God are rare among us….
The question is not whether we are good at theology, or balanced in our approach to problems of Christian living; the question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is plain matter of fact, that we have known God, and that because we have known God, the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, this is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about Him.” [i]
Here in John 14, verse 7, Jesus says, “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.” The disciples had known Jesus, in a sense, all along. They knew Him well enough to leave their homes and friends and livelihood to follow Him wherever He went. They knew Him well enough to know that He was like no other man. But they did not really know who He was—they did not know Him as God in the flesh—until now.
Do you know God? Do you want to know Him better? Then get to know Jesus; study the life of Christ in the NT; saturate yourself with the character and the discourses and the miracles of Jesus.
2. To see Him is to see the Father. This assertion comes in response to Philip’s rather inane comment in verse 8: “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” It seems to him that if he could see the Father visually, that would be the end of many a difficulty. I suspect a great many people have thought the same thing. “God, just show yourself, just appear to me in a vision, and I’ll believe.” Of course, God is spirit and to show Himself physically demands an accommodation to our three-dimensional world. God did that on very rare occasion in the OT, but such accommodation became totally unnecessary with the coming of Jesus.
Jesus responds to Philip, “Why look for a vision or any other manifestation of God when standing before you is God in the flesh? How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” Do you recall John 1:18? “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only (that’s Jesus), who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” Earlier John had written, “In the beginning was the Word…. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
A recent scholar writes that Jesus “domesticated God.” By that he means that in Jesus, God entered an ordinary home and an ordinary family, took upon Himself ordinary human work, and endured ordinary human temptations. All this He did so that we, as limited, time-bound, space-bound creatures, might come to know the infinite, eternal God of the universe. To see Jesus is to see the Father.
3. To hear Him is to hear the Father. In the middle of verse 10 we read, “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.” The point is that when Jesus speaks, listening is not optional, for whatever He says comes directly from God.
The reason why Jesus can claim to be the only Way to God and substantiate His claim with these 3 lines of evidence is stated in summary form at the beginning of verse 10: “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” That’s the crux of the whole matter. The Father and the Son are one—they are equal in essence. Over and over in the Gospel of John we have been confronted with this truth—the Deity of Christ. Twenty-one times in this chapter alone Jesus mentions the Father, and every time He relates the Father to Himself. No wonder He claims something no other person can claim—that He is the Way to God.
It is very important for us to know that the believer has a destination in Heaven and to know that Jesus is the Way to reach that destination. But it is not in itself quite sufficient. The reason is that it is too easy to let truth become merely intellectual, with no relevance for our lives. Jesus isn’t giving this discourse for intellectual purposes but rather for the very practical purpose of relieving the troubled hearts and fears being experienced by His disciples.
There really are answers for the pain of an Eric Clapton, and there are answers to his questions:
Will you know my name, if I see you in Heaven?
Will it be the same, if I see you in Heaven?
Yes, we will know the names of our loved ones. But no, it will not be the same; it will be far better. We will be all we were meant to be—no pain, no sorrow, no disease, no tears. But the cure for heart trouble which Jesus offers is available only to those who believe, for …
Faith is the prerequisite to reach the destination Jesus has prepared. (1, 11-14)
Let’s go back to verse 1, where Jesus introduces the necessity for faith: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.” The message is this:
If we trust in God, we must also trust in Jesus. The Jews found it relatively easy to believe in God but very difficult to believe in Jesus. And even their faith in God was often kind of a remote trust in the God of their forefathers, rather than a vital personal faith. Obviously, this is true of a great many people today as well. If, as the polls show us, over 94% of the American people believe in God, yet only 42% attend church, even irregularly, there is a major gap between profession and practice.
The Apostle James in the second chapter of his epistle seems to challenge the watered-down faith of many religious people when he asks, “You believe in God? Big deal! The demons believe in God, and they tremble when they think about Him, which is more than you do.” Friend, if you have never cast yourself completely in dependence upon God and upon His Son, Jesus Christ, your destination will not be the one spoken of here in John 14.
In verses 11 & 12 Jesus expands upon the need for faith by informing us that …
If we believe in Jesus, He will empower us. “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Faith in miracles is not the highest kind of faith, but even this Jesus accepts. If His followers find the abstract concept of the Trinity too difficult to process, at least they can look at the life and works of Jesus and believe on that account.
But what does Jesus mean when He promises His followers that they will do what He has done; in fact, they will do even greater works because He is going to the Father. Is that possible? It’s not only possible, but it happened just as Jesus said it would. Just 53 days after Jesus spoke these words Peter stood up in the city of Jerusalem and preached the Gospel with incredible boldness and 3,000 souls were saved. A short while later 5,000 more became Christians. That’s undoubtedly more conversions than Jesus enjoyed during His entire earthly ministry.
Greater works? Sure—not the same kind, perhaps, but greater in many ways. In His earthly ministry Jesus was limited to one human body; now the Body of Christ, the Church, is made up of millions and millions of human bodies stamped with His image. What made the biggest difference, of course, was the coming of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised to send in verse 16. But we will save that until next week.
Still another arena in which faith is required is in prayer.
If we pray to Jesus, He will answer us. Verse 13 & 14: “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” On first reading, this looks as though Jesus has given us carte blanche to ask for anything we want, and He will do it for us. In verse 13 it says “whatever.” In verse 14 it says “anything.” Has Jesus given us a stack of signed checks and all we need to do is to fill in the amount?
No, I think not. There is a very important phrase that appears in both verse 13 & 14, and that is the phrase, “in My Name.” It does not mean tacking on to our prayers the phrase, “in Jesus’ name,” as Christians normally do. It means that our prayers must be in accordance with all that the name of Jesus stands for. Our prayers must be in accord with His revealed will.
Other passages add that our motives must be proper, that we must keep short accounts with God, and that our home lives must be in order before we can expect our prayers to be answered. But all of that is not said to detract from the great truth of these verses, namely that the good things we receive from God’s hand are limited not so much by His unwillingness to give more to us, as by our unwillingness to believe and pray.
Conclusion: Do you have heart trouble today? Are you discouraged or depressed? Are you fearful of the future? You needn’t be. Jesus Christ has provided a safe harbor for all who believe in Him. What about the here and now? Our next passage will discuss that in some detail, but like a young driver who is told it is safer to keep his eyes focused way down the road than to look immediately in front of the car, so we are encouraged to remember the choice destination the Father has prepared for us and the One who is the Way to that destination, rather than focusing on the discouragements around us.
DATE: May 9, 1993
Tags:
Heaven
Tears in Heaven
Deity of Christ
Faith
Prayer
[i] J. I. Packer, Knowing God, 24-5.