Lutheran Church of the Resurrection

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If you knew what was going to happen to you tomorrow, what would you do today? If you knew that tomorrow, you were going to be given a promotion and a nice raise at your job, what would you do today? If you knew that tomorrow, you were going to get laid off from your job, what would you do today? If you knew that tomorrow, you were going to receive a substantial check in the mail as your share of the inheritance of a long, lost relative, what would you do today? If you knew that tomorrow, you were going to have a heart attack and die, what would you do today?

Chapter 14 of St. John's gospel takes place in the Upper Room where Jesus has gathered His disciples for what will be the Last Supper. Tomorrow, Peter will deny Him, the temple guards will arrest Him, the Sanhedrin will accuse Him, the governor will sentence Him, and the Roman soldiers will flog Him and He will be crucified, die and buried. Jesus knows what is going to happen to Him tomorrow.

So what does He do today? He prepares His disciples for tomorrow. He knows that tomorrow, they will be terribly troubled with grief and despair and guilt and doubt. He knows that tomorrow, these men and women will believe that the very foundation of their life has crumbled beneath them and they will think that their lives are without meaning and hope. Tomorrow, they will wonder why they left their fathers and fishing boats, their tax collection booth and homes to follow Him.

Because He knows what will happen to Him tomorrow, He knows what will happen to them tomorrow. And so today He prepares them for tomorrow saying, "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me."

Knowing that their hearts will be troubled, He directs them to put their faith and trust in Him. "I know what you will see, I know what you will hear, and I know what you will think. Despite all of that, trust me." "I know what fear you will experience, I know what guilt you will feel, and I know the doubts you will have. Despite all of that, trust me."

What Jesus is saying here to His disciples goes deeper than we may at first understand. When our hearts are troubled over the loss of health, or possessions or job or a marriage or a loved one, we need to put our trust in God, believing that He will take care of us and provide for all our needs of body and soul.

But Jesus' concern for His disciples here is that tomorrow, they are going to experience the loss of God. God will be taken away from them and they will be without God. Before their very eyes, God will breath His last and die. Tomorrow, men will rejoice and celebrate because they have killed God.

This is the terror that Jesus knows will strike His disciples tomorrow. For anyone who has ever put their hope and trust in God, there can be no greater horror than for God to die. It is to this worst of all possible disasters that Jesus knows is coming, in fact that the course of human history has been unstoppably moving ever since death entered the world by one man, that Jesus is moved to say to them, "Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me."

What else could Jesus be calling these men to believe in but His resurrection from the dead? If God is dead, as some say that He is, then we have no hope. Then we should be troubled. Then there is no reason to believe and nowhere to turn and no place to go, no one who can save us. But if He is raised from the dead and lives, then their sorrow and fear will have been premature. And their worry and troubled hearts will have been for nothing.

Jesus had seen tomorrow coming a long time before tomorrow came. How many times as they had walked and talked did He explicitly tell them He would be handed over to sinful men, be crucified and die and just as explicitly tell them that He would be raised to life again on the 3rd day? He had seen tomorrow coming, centuries before it came.

Through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, He already began preparing His people for tomorrow, saying, "For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. Arise shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you." (Is.60:1-2).

So Jesus as much as says to His disciples, "when you see God die on the cross, do not let your heart be troubled." "Do not grieve like those who have no hope." "Sursum corde." Lift up your heart. Your hopes are not being broken but fulfilled. Your future is not being destroyed but perfected. Your life is not in danger but it is being secured for all eternity.

By His death "He has redeemed you from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for you." (Gal. 3:13). By His death "He has reconciled you in his body of flesh in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him." (Col.1:22). By His death He has overcome every evil, all wickedness. "He has overcome the world." (John 16:33).

By His resurrection, "He has caused us to be born again to a living hope." (1 Peter 1:3). For, "He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Rom.4:25). "For as by a man came death, by a man came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ, shall all be made alive." (1Cor.15:21-22).

So, knowing all that was going to happen tomorrow, Jesus says to His disciples, "do not let your hearts be troubled." All of this is for you.

So, why do we worry? Why do we fear? Why are we stressed out? Why are our hearts troubled? Just as there is only one remedy for troubled hearts there can only be one reason for it. We do not believe in God. We do not believe in Jesus Christ. We may believe that God exists and that Jesus died on the cross, but we don't believe that by His death "He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and innocent suffering and death, that I may be his own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity." (Luther's Small Catechism.)

I know that we say we believe, but if we really believed what we say we believed, why are our hearts still so troubled? Isn't it because we have assigned so much of the responsibility for the contentment and satisfaction in our life to the performance of the economy or the political process or a successful career, a happy marriage, good health, or the price of oil? We look for the solutions for the trouble that is in our heart to come from better technology or the goodness of man or some cosmic force that will change our fate and bring us good luck. Isn't the reason for our troubled hearts because we have relegated the event of Christ's death on the cross and resurrection from the dead to the category of theological doctrine which is only of any real application at funerals and for arguments with Jehovah's Witnesses?

And so, we should worry. And so we should be very afraid and our hearts should be troubled. And we should repent. Repent and believe. "Believe in God believe also in Me," says Jesus.

Let tomorrow come with whatever tomorrow may bring. "Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword." Come what may, "If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, who will he not also with him, graciously give us all things?� (Rom.8:31-35)

We must be very careful however, to hear what God's Word is saying and not what we want to hear or want it to say. We want to hear His Word say that He will settle our troubled hearts by giving us things. But what He really says is that the solution to our troubled hearts lies not in the things that God graciously gives us but in His Son whom He handed over to the cross for us all. In Him we have all things, even God the Father. Even an eternal dwelling place in heaven in the Father's house where He has gone to prepare a place for you to, with the sure and steadfast promise that He will come to take you to Himself, that you may be where He is. And here we thought He wanted to give us more things.

What we want to hear His Word say to us is that if we believe in God, He will spare us all tribulation, distress, persecution, and any other unpleasant situation this world may throw at us. But what He really says is that we may have rest and peace for our troubled hearts even in the midst of all of this when we put our trust in Him. How does Luther famously put it? "And take they our life, goods, fame, child, and wife, though these all be gone. Our victory has been won, the Kingdom ours remaineth." (LSB #656).

"I am the way and the truth and the life," He says to them. "No one comes to the Father except through me." We tend to recall this verse particularly to define those who will not come to the Father. But Jesus doesn't speak this to His disciples for that purpose at all. With these words, He is assuring them that they need not doubt or fear. They have not been misled or deceived. They shouldn't think that they need to find another way, or a different truth or an alternative life to put their hope and trust in. "The only name given under heaven by which men must be saved," has been given to them, just as it has been given to you through your baptism.

To "come to the Father" means nothing else but coming out of death and into life, out of sins and guilt and hell into holiness and righteousness and goodness; out of disappointment and despair and troubled hearts and into eternal joy and bliss and salvation. Jesus has come down from the Father's side to raise them up to His Father's side. They should not trouble their hearts that all of this depends somehow upon their good works or their good intentions. "I am the way and the truth and the life." "I have done it all and by My doing and my good work, everything is finished. There is nothing left for you to add. Nothing that is still lacking that you must contribute. "No one comes to the Father except by Me." "Believe in God, believe also in me."

Just like His disciples, we don't know what is going to happen to us tomorrow. But He does. And because He sees your tomorrow, He comes to you today, to prepare you. "Let not your hearts be troubled." "I forgive you all of your sins." "Let not your hearts be troubled." "This is my body, given for you." "Let not your hearts be troubled." "This is my blood, shed for you." "Let not your hearts be troubled." "Believe in God, believe also in me."

Tags: John, Troubled Hearts

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» Worship Schedule
» Sermon – 2nd Easter – "Like Newborn Infants" – John 20:19-31
» Sermon – Easter 2 – "His Presence Is Our Peace" – John 20:12-29 – 4/15/07
» Sermon Index – Lutheran – LCMS
» Sermon – Easter 3 – "The Proof Of His Presence" – Luke 24:36-49 – 4/26/09

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