Why Jesus can be trusted (3/24/19 John #50)

ATTN: What words or thoughts help you in your anxious moments? When I was in college and was anxious over the exams, it was this: “What is the worst thing that can happen? That I die and go to see Jesus!”

But sometimes I needed help immediately and not wait until I die to get help! Romans 8:28 comes close to it: “God works all things for the good of those who love Him” It doesn’t say, “God WILL work all things.. But He is working all things right now for my own good. That means even the things that are unpleasant, troubling, and anxiety producing are working for my good.

Last Thursday, I took Serrie to Urgent Care because of her coughs. He had the flu. Well, that night I was supposed to get two lesson plans ready for my teaching cert coach who would come and observe me the next day. But since I spent that time in Urgent Care, I didn’t have the time to prepare it. While waiting for the doctor, I checked my email on my phone. My coach sent me an email. He said he’s caught a bad cold and cannot make it the next day. I quickly emailed back, “I’m sorry to hear. Please take care and I’ll see you next week.” But I was so relieved. And I praised God for giving me a break…

 

CONTEXT: Jesus is spending the last night with the disciples and he knew that he would be arrested and be crucified in just a few hours. His disciples would watch this happen. Now, he should be the most anxious one – he is about to be executed, but like a man wrongly convicted and about to be executed is comforting his wife and children, Jesus is comforting the disciples who have followed him for the last 3 years.

He knew they would be troubled. Put yourself in the disciples’ shoes for a minute. They had given up everything to follow Jesus for the last 3 years. They left their family, their job to follow this itinerant preacher, going wheever he went. And it’s been an adventure. He was something special, the likes of which had never been seen. And they had high hopes that he will bring about true changes in their lives, in their country and possibly in their world. With the kind of power and talent this man had, he could be king of Israel, and possibly even overthrow Rome’s grip on their beloved nation. And if everything goes well, Israel would have its glorious past that they once had during king David’s reign. So, these young men were filled with causes greater than themselves and all their hopes and dreams were riding on Jesus. Imagine how their hearts must’ve swelled up when their hero and friend Jesus rode a donkey into the capital city and the people greeted him with “hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord.” finally, the moment that had been waiting for was there. He is going to the palace and replace the wicked and immoral king, and become king himself. And he’s going to clean up the corrupt religious system too. They themseves will occupy important seats in the new kingdom.

But it’s been 5 days and Jesus isn’t really moving forward. Rather, He keeps on telling them he’s going to leave them because of something like he’s going to die. Why? That didn’t make any sense to them. And then to add insult to injury, he tells Peter, his closest disciple, that he’s going to deny him 3 times before the night is over. Jesus is saying really nonsensical and depressing things. Wouldn’t you be troubled?

What if the company you worked for for 30 years is going belly up and all your retirement funds with it? Teens: what if your parents told you that you are moving out of the state away from all your friends and church? That would be devastating and anxiety filled. What would Jesus say? How would He comfort you? How did He comfort the disciples?  

 

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In other words, trust me, I will take care of you. And then he give them 5 reasons why they can trust Him and how he’s going to work it out.

 

1. Your future is secure
2. 2, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

In other words, you future is secure. My Father has a big house and in His house are many rooms. And you are going to have your own room and your own place forever. And this place is so beautiful and comforting that you will finally be satisfied and be at home.

Jesus is saying this His disciples at the most anxious moment of their lives when their immediate future looked bleak. They would lose their shepherd in a few hours! But Jesus reminds them of their permanent future, how the story is going to end, and it’s a happy ending.

ILL: C.S. Lewis, in his Book, the Last Battle, the 7th and the last book on the Chronicles of Narnia series, which I just finished reading to Serrie a couple months ago, one of the characters, finally arriving in heaven says, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now”

Have you felt it? This dissatisfaction that sets in whenever you are anywhere long enough? Wherever you are, do you get the sense that you are not quite home? You buy your house and you live there for 10 years, and yet you are not quite satisfied and you want to move? It’s the same with job, our spouse, and even our own body? I can’t wait to get a new body! All of us play this infinite game of “only if..” hoping that the next stage in life will finally bring us satisfaction, but it doesn’t? Well, it’s because we are longing for our true home. Our father’s house. Our true resting place.

APP: If we get anxious because our immediate future is uncertain, don’t we? Teenagers get nervous about SATs and applying to colleges because you are not sure how it will work out. You are facing an uncertain future. We get anxious when our job is terminated, singles get anxious about whether they will ever get married and have their own family. And those of us who are older worry about whether we will be taken care of in our old age – whether retirement funds will be sufficient and if our health will hold up… Our immediate future is not secure and we get anxious.

My Father and your Father’s house is big and it has many rooms. We will dwell with Him securely forever. That is our certain future. Rest in it.

 

2. Jesus is fully in control although it won’t look like it at times

Another reason we can trust Jesus is that He’s fully in control not only in heaven, but also on earth. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. Jesus is telling them ahead of time what’s going to happen to Him and to the disciples. This way, they know that when it happens, they will not think this was out of His control and He was caught off guard. What is about to happen will seem like a nightmare and a disaster, but Jesus has told them so and why He must go away.  

Jesus is not a victim of His circumstances. There are those who do not know the Bible who would say that Jesus was a noble man with a noble cause who got caught in the political turmoil between the Jews and the Rome and became the sacrificial lamb – a great man caught in the wrong times. But He most certainly was not. Because from the beginning, He knew His purpose was to die for the world. He was directing, guiding, controlling for this “hour” to arrive and has been telling His disciples all along that this would happen. In john 12, right after Jesus is welcomed into Jerusalem by the crowd, in other words, when things seem to be going so well for Jesus and His disciples, Jesus says, “27“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. (John 12:27)

We have a tendency to think that God is with us only when things are going well. Many of you believe if it is God’s will, then everything will go smoothly and we will succeed no matter what. To be fair, there are Old Testament stories that lead us to believe that. The Bible says that whatever Joseph touched became successful and blessed. Abraham was blessed in all that he did because God was with Him. But a distinct shift seemed to have happened from the Old Testament to the New Testament. My guess is that in the Old testament, it was a “come and see” type of religion. Whereas in the New, it became “Go and tell.” So, in the OT, the world was supposed to come to Israel and to its impress temple to worship God. But with the coming of Jesus, God has come to dwell with men, and we, in whom God dwells, as temples of God are to go out into the world and tell them of beauty and grace of God. Go and tell.

Jesus was the first model for this. He left heaven and came to earth to tell us of great salvation. And we are to do the same. And when we do, just like it happened to Jesus, disastrous  things might happen to us. 11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5:22 Christians are beheaded, stabbed, wrongly accused, imprisoned, starved to death, separated from their family, but in all this, Jesus promises to with us. “I will never leave you nor forsake.” “And I am with you always to the end of the age.”

Hey, children of God, when the rug is pulled out from under you, when a sudden disaster strikes, when tragedy strikes, don’t be surprised, nor be alarmed. Trust in God. Trust in Jesus. He hasn’t abandoned you. He told you these things will happen.

 

3. We can trust Him because He told the truth and lived it.  (which means he will make good on his promises to us)

What kind of people do we trust? When their words consistently match their deeds. Jesus’ deeds matched His words perfectly. He was the very embodiment of His words. Jesus says to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This is a stunning statement on so many different levels. It is the narrowest possible statement and therefore risky and easily dispelled if untrue. Politicians and lawyers know this well. You make general statements in the broadest terms possible so that no one can pin you down later on what you say. Politicians and lawyers are good at this since they make their living manipulating words. Jesus squashed these lawyers and politicians with His words to render them speechless. He was quite literally the master at this. But then why would He make such narrow, controversial, and divisive statement that leaves most people in the world excluded? “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me!” That means 1.5 billion muslims are lost and are going to hell. All those millions of nice and kind buddhists in Asia are lost and are going to hell. All the atheists in America who donate millions to charity and work for the better world are lost and going to hell. Why would Jesus make such a narrow statement? Unless it was…. True?

And yet if you think about it it has a ring of truth to it precisely because it’s so narrow and exclusive. Have you realized that truth by definition is exclusive and narrow? 2+2 is 4 and only 4. Not 3. Not 5. Not 4.1 but 4. Jesus made this narrow, exclusive, statement because it was true.

And then He lived it. The reason why He is the only way to God is because He is the only one qualified to make that way. God is holy and He must punish sinners. But God also love and He wants us with Him forever in heaven. But He is also just and He cannot simply act like we didn’t sin. What does He do? He sends a substitute to die in our place. But that substitute cannot be just a man because then he would be sinful and dying for his own sins. That substitute cannot be just God, for God cannot die. So, it had to be a god-man. There was only one qualified to do the job. Jesus. Perfectly God and perfectly man. Love, holiness, and justice all resided in Him perfectly. His life and death and resurrection embodied perfectly the saying, “I am the way, the truth and life…”

What keeps me being a believer is not some spiritual experiences I’ve had, some of which I have shared with you in the past, but the consistency and the beauty I see in the word of God as it bore out in the life of Christ. The more I study it, the more i experience life and people, the more I am convinced that it is the truth. It is the life of Jesus. All of the Old Testament, predicting, anticipating, groaning for the Messiah’s arrival, and Jesus fulfilling every one of those so beautifully and fittingly. And the world history bearing out beautifully the things that are written in the New. There is only one more thing to be fulfilled. And that is the second coming.

CONC: As One, in your time of anxiety, would you remember that you have a loving Savior who built you a home in heaven and is waiting for you? And today, He is orchestrating all the events around you to make you fit for it. He is the way, the truth and the life! Would you rest in Him? Would you be content in Him? Would you say to your soul, “He is enough!”