The Last Sermon of Christ

An Expository and Analytical Commentary on John 14–16

Cannon

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781498271097
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Let not your hearts be troubled... The opening words from John 14 frame the balance of this sermon to the disciples. Immediately following the Passover supper and the washing of their feet, our Lord preaches one last sermon to his faithful friends and disciples--a sermon full of longing, full of promise, full of hope, and full of disclosures about their future, the work of the Holy Spirit, and key verses supporting the doctrine of the Trinity.John 14-16 presents a fascinating farewell address from Jesus to his disciples. These chapters show us the heart of our Savior and his love for his disciples in a time of anxiety--not only their anxiety but his own, as he knows that the shadow of the cross has now grown dark across him and there is no place else for him to go. No ministry remains for him now except to these disciples, and then ultimately to the cross itself. Even as he, in his own humanity, was troubled in the prospect of his suffering, he turned to minister to the disciples in their time of trouble.

1

Troubled Hearts

John 14:1

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.”

John Chapter 14 is a fascinating part of the farewell address of Jesus because it shows us clearly the heart of our Savior and his love for his disciples in a time of not only their anxiety, but his own anxiety, knowing that the shadow of the cross has now grown dark across him, and there is no place else for him to go. There is no ministry that remains except now to these disciples, and then ultimately to the cross itself. Even in his own humanity as he was troubled by the prospect of his suffering, he now turns to minister to the disciples in their time of trouble and anxiety.

Christians have taken great comfort in the teaching of Romans 8:28 and have quoted that verse as a testimony of their confidence in God’s love demonstrated in his grace for those that belong to Christ. It reads very simply, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good.”

Sometimes that verse is regarded by unbelieving ears as escapism or avoidance, as if when we have no other real answer, all we can do is say, “Well, God will take care of it because God loves me.” Now to the Christian, it’s a comfort, and it’s words of truth that are based on not only our own experience, but on the history of God’s working with his people as God time after time has liberated and saved and brought his people to peace and rest, and we know that he does the same for us as well.

We feel anxiety when we face a bleak political, moral landscape, such as the one that appears to be before us now, and we are reminded of the intent of those engaged in terror to kill us, and we wonder what it is that we should do; or perhaps it’s even closer to home, we have a sick parent or a sick spouse, or perhaps when one of our young people begins to wander in the way of the world, or maybe our marriage is, as they would say, on the rocks or in trouble. In those times of genuine anxiety and concern, in those times when we feel that our life is on edge, and we wonder if we will fall or collapse or if everything will come down upon our own heads, is there really anything beyond a slogan, anything beyond a saying that our Christian faith offers to us to bring us genuine comfort? Not simply a hope for some future comfort, but a genuine comfort in the present day based upon the realities which we know exist in Christ.

Faced with the immanence of the cross, perhaps we can take some comfort in knowing that our Savior wasn’t indifferent to suffering. We’ve read that as he sat with the disciples he was troubled, and they knew and they could sense this anxiety. In fact, the whole time in the upper room has been a time of tension from the time that he washed their feet till Judas left, and now Peter, the rock of the disciples, the cornerstone of the disciples, the one that was always speaking and always the aggressive one has been told, “Before the morning you will betray me and deny me three times.”

They were shaken and troubled. We don’t know, it may have been a very somber setting, but it might also be that the disciples at this point were wailing and crying because their Lord had said, “I’m going to leave you, and I will die, and you will wander, all of you will scatter, and Peter, you will betray me.” What would their response be? Even if they were quiet, they would be trembling in their hearts for they had committed their whole lives to Christ. They followed Christ. This was their whole purpose in being, and he was now saying, “I will die, Peter will betray me, Judas is gone, and all of you will scatter.”

And so now comes a word of comfort in these troubled times. Jesus, though he himself is troubled, now turns to minister to those who are anxious. In John 14:1, we find first a word of consolation. “Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God.” But then Jesus also gives a word of revelation. “Believe in God; believe also in me.” Those promises are bound up in the covenant which he has given to them in the Lord’s Supper just celebrated, “This blood is a new covenant.” As he has instructed them in the new covenant, he now is giving them the promises of the covenant. “Believe in God because he is the one who has given you covenant promises, and believe also in me,” because it is in Christ as mediator that those covenant promises are made accessible to you and to me.

But first these words of comfort. Often in times of trouble, particularly at funerals, we turn to the Psalms. I’m afraid that often it’s simply a tradition that you read Psalms at funeral, but to the believer, to the one who has a hope that their loved one has passed on to glory, what they hear in the Psalms is the faithfulness of God in times of trouble.

Such as in Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He takes me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.” Here we have the promises of God given to one who is in trouble.

Or Psalm 46 is also often read at funerals. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” What words of comfort to one who’s in trouble, one who feels their world is collapsing in chaos or is coming apart, and here we’re reminded God is your refuge and strength. When enemies are persecuting you, when the terrorists want to destroy you, when it seems that your job is about to be lost, when the creditors are pressing down upon you, your refuge is in God, and that is where you will draw your strength from in the day of trouble. He’s a very present help in trouble, that is, a help that is present now.

We live in an age of what we would call practical atheism. A practical atheist is one who makes a profession of faith that’s credible and real. They believe in God and they believe that Jesus Christ has secured their salvation from sin. They take up religious habits. They attend church. They change the way they speak. They rid themselves of vices in life, but then when trouble comes, anxieties of living, they turn not to God, but to worldly resources. They seek comfort and ease—whether it be comfort by trying to secure an answer to their problem through worldly resources, or whether it be through substance abuse or relational abuse—­rather than turning to God, living as it were as practical atheists. We often fail to believe God is our refuge, our strength, and a very present help in times of trouble.

Deuteronomy 6, verses 10 through 12: “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you, with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all the good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

When God has given his people all of the blessings he has promised, when he has sustained and carried us, having liberated us from sin and delivered us in the redemption of Christ to salvation, when we are enjoying the blessings of the peace of Christ, be careful because in that time of prosperity when our conscience is at ease with the Lord, it is easy to forget about the Lord.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” Jesus told them, reminding them to believe in God. Just as we do when we’re mourning the death of someone we love, the minister in reading the Psalms is saying, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe in God.”

If we mention getting through a tough time by thinking of heaven, we often are told that it is simply a psychological device, something that we need to get us through those times. There’s no sense of the reality of the present help of God. This Comforter that Jesus said he would send to us, does it really comfort, or do we turn to something else?

Jesus recognized that growing anxiety in his disciples. They had that same anxiety which we experience perhaps even to a greater degree because they had invested their whole lives in Christ who now said, “Gentlemen, we’re at the end of the road. I am going to die, Peter will betray me, and you will scatter.” Where were they to go? What were they to do? They had left their friends, their vocations, in some cases even their families to follow Christ, and now they would return to what? Jeers and “I told you so” and “Look what you’ve wasted.”

Jesus recognized the anxiety in their lives, and he recognized in that anxiety their vulnerability to temptation, their vulnerability to turn from God, their vulnerability to succumb to the world. Just as when he was in the boat with them and the waves began to swell around the boat, and to break over the bow of the boat, and they began to sink, they grew anxious and they turned to him. They were confident with Christ before the storm. They were excited to be with Christ before the storm, and then as the storms hit and they grew anxious. They said, “Don’t you even care? We’re going to die! Don’t you care if we die? Have you no regard for our lives?” Jesus stood up at that moment and said, “Peace, be still,” and he stilled the storms around them.

Second Corinthians, chapter 1, verses 3 and 4 bring comfort to us, reminding us of that scene in the boat. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

“Believe God,” Jesus says to us. Believe God. He believed God. What were the promises that he himself was drawing on when he said, “Believe God”? Jesus was facing death, and yet he said to his disciples, “Believe God for your comfort,” because God had promised him, “I will not abandon your soul in the pit. I will not leave you in Sheol. I will not abandon you to Sheol.”

In fact, in the verses that follow, Jesus displayed his confidence in that by telling them that even though he was about to die, he was about to go and prepare a place for them in heaven. He was about to go to the Father to prepare for their arrival to him and the Father. Jesus was ministering to them out of what ministered to him.

He said, “Believe God because I believe God. If I can face death, if I can face the cruelty of their jeers and the slaps and the flogging and the staking of my hands to the cross, if I can face that with confidence in the comforting words of my Father, then you be comforted as well because though I am facing death for sins of this world, and though I know that my Father will turn his face from me because of that sin, I still have a confidence that I will reside with the Father ultimately, and that confidence can see me through the trials which I face today.”

When trials and temptations come, they’re like the waves troubled by stormy winds, and he says, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled.” The confusion and the misdirection of all these waves that were battering the boat create a picture of the word “trouble.” It’s the same with our own hearts. When our hearts are troubled, isn’t there confusion and misdirection as our heart is pulled this way and that and moving back and forth?

Jesus was saying to them, “Don’t let this happen. Don’t become this way. Don’t surrender to the confusion. Don’t become ruffled and discomposed in your hearts because that is a state that belongs to those who lack knowledge of God.”

They’re even described in Ephesians 4:14. They are children, we’re told, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. They lack a knowledge of God, an understanding of the ways of God and the purpose of God, an understanding of the providence of God in life. “What use is doctrine?” we say sometimes. “What purpose of doctrine? It just causes people to fight.” Without doctrine there is no real knowledge of God. There’s an idea of God, but no knowledge of God, an...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Troubled Hearts
• Chapter 2: Heaven
• Chapter 3: Do You Know the Way?
• Chapter 4: Seeing God
• Chapter 5: Doing a Great Work in the Kingdom
• Chapter 6: That Name
• Chapter 7: Gospel Obedience
• Chapter 8: A Very Real Comforter
• Chapter 9: Four Promises
• Chapter 10: Class Is In Session
• Chapter 11: The Peace Dividend
• Chapter 12: The Gospel of Unity
• Chapter 13: Love that Bears Fruit to God’s Glory: Part 1
• Chapter 14: Love that Bears Fruit to God’s Glory: Part 2
• Chapter 15: Friendship
• Chapter 16: Realizing the Real Purpose of Our Appointment
• Chapter 17: Taking Their Hate Out On You
• Chapter 18: Part 1, Pass It On
• Chapter 19: Part 2, Inspiration and Illumination
• Chapter 20: Perseverance: Running on Fumes
• Chapter 21: The Spirit and the World
• Chapter 22: The Unity of the Trinity in Revelation
• Chapter 23: In a Little While
• Chapter 24: A Loving Father Wants You To Ask
• Chapter 25: Understand and Embrace the Incarnation
• Chapter 26: Peace in Despair
• Bibliography