Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1741
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 23, 1883
“Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe also in Me. 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. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” John 14:1-4.
WE may well feel glad that God’s people, whose lives are recorded in the Old and New Testaments, were men of like passions with ourselves. I have known many a poor sinner pluck up hope as he has observed the sins and struggles of those who were saved by Grace. And I have known many of the heirs of Heaven find consolation as they have observed how imperfect beings like themselves have prevailed with God in prayer and have been delivered in their time of distress. I am very glad that the Apostles were not perfect men—they would then have understood all that Jesus said at once—and we would have lost our Lord’s instructive explanations. They would also have lived above all trouble of mind—and then the Master would not have said to them these golden words, “Let not your heart be troubled.”
It is, however, most evident from our text that it is not according to our Lord’s mind that any of His servants should be troubled in heart. He takes no delight in the doubt and disquietude of His people. When He saw that because of what He had said to them, sorrow had filled the hearts of His Apostles, He pleaded with them in great love and besought them to be comforted. As when a mother comforts her child, He cried, “Let not your heart be troubled.” Jesus says the same to you, my Friend, if you are one of His downcast ones. He would not have you sad. “Comfort you, comfort you My people; speak you comfortably to Jerusalem,” is a command even of the old dispensation, and I am quite sure that under this clearer revelation, the Lord would have His people free from heartbreak.
Has not the Holy Spirit especially undertaken the work of comfort in order that it may be effectually done? Trials depress the hearts of God’s children, for which the most tender ministry fails to afford consolation—and then it is most sweet for the failing comforter to remember the unfailing Comforter—and to commit the case of the sorrowful spirit into Divine hands. Seeing that one Person of the blessed Trinity has undertaken to be the Comforter, we see how important it is that our hearts should be filled with consolation. Happy religion in which it is our duty to be glad! Blessed Gospel by which we are forbidden to be troubled in heart! Is it not a thing greatly to be admired that the Lord Jesus should think so carefully of His friends at such a time?
Great personal sorrows may well be an excuse if the griefs of others are somewhat overlooked. Jesus was going to His last bitter agony and to death, itself, and yet He overflowed with sympathy for His followers. Had it been you or I, we would have asked for sympathy for ourselves. Our cry would have been, “Have pity upon me, O my Friends, for the hand of God has touched me!” But, instead of that, our Lord cast His own crushing sorrows into the background and bent His mind to the work of sustaining His chosen under their far inferior griefs. He knew that He was about to be “exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.” He knew that He would soon be in an agony through bearing “the chastisement of our peace.” But before He plunged into the deep, He must dry the tears of those He loved so well and, therefore, He said most touchingly, “Let not your heart be troubled.”
While I admire this condescending tenderness of love, at the same time I cannot help adoring the marvelous confidence of our blessed Lord, who, though He knows that He is to be put to a shameful death, yet feels no fear, but bids His disciples to trust Him implicitly. The black darkness of the awful midnight was beginning to surround Him, yet how brave His Words—“Believe also in Me.” He knew, in that threatening hour, that He had come forth from the Father and that He was in the Father and the Father in Him—and so He says, “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” The calm bearing of their Master must have greatly tended to confirm His servants in their faith. While we see here His confi-
dence as Man, we also feel that this is not a speech which a mere man would have uttered, even had he been a good man— for no mere creature would thus match Himself with God.
That Jesus is a good Man, few question. That He must be God is, therefore, proven by these words. Would Jesus bid us trust in an arm of flesh? Is it not written—“Cursed is the man that trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm”? Yet the Holy Jesus says, “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” This association of Himself with God, as the object of human confidence in the time of trouble, betokens a consciousness of His own Divine power and Godhead—and it is a mystery in whose difficulties faith takes pleasure—to see in our Lord Jesus, the faith of a Man for Himself—and the faithfulness of God for others.