Our Lord continues speaking to
His disciples. And I would just say this, I'm
certainly thankful for the division of chapters and verses in the
Bible. It's a little unfortunate that
there is a chapter division here because our Lord continues to
speak to His disciples and the things that He's addressing They
don't change. A lot of times when we see a
new chapter we think, oh, he's got something different to say.
He's speaking to a different audience. He's going to make
a different point or stress something that is different from what he's
been dealing with. That is not the case here. He
is still speaking to his disciples. And he says to these men whose
hearts were troubled, He says, let not your heart be troubled. He says, you believe in God,
believe also in me. I began the service by reading
that verse out of Philippians chapter 4, be careful for nothing. And the word careful, if you
looked it up in a concordance like you got one the other night
out of the office. If you would look that up you'll
find that the word careful and the word troubled here come from
the exact same original word. And he's saying let not your
heart be anxious. Don't be overly concerned about
the things that's happening to you or the things around you. Let not your hearts be troubled.
Or heart be troubled, it's singular. Because he's addressing this
body of men, these 11 men, so he uses just the singular word
for heart, speaking of them as a group. But know this, when
he says, let not your heart be troubled, He is not saying there's
never a time your heart should be troubled. There are times
when your heart needs to be troubled. Was it wrong for our Lord to
have His soul and heart troubled? Trick question. Look over in
chapter 12 and verse 27. And you can look this up, same
word. He said, now is my soul troubled. I'm anxious in my soul. He says, and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto
this hour. Our Lord was troubled. Look in
chapter 13 and verse 21. When Jesus had thus said He was
troubled in spirit, and testified and said, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, that one of you shall betray Me. So it is not always
wrong to be troubled or to be anxious. What he's speaking about
is, don't be anxious, don't be troubled about your own difficulties
and the things going on around you. I'll tell you what you should
be anxious about is your spiritual condition before God. That's
something to be anxious about. I'll tell you what you should
be careful about. is that you're found in the Lord
Jesus Christ, that you know Him, whom to know is life everlasting. Now that's something to be anxious
about. This is something to give your full devotion to, the full
attention of your heart. Do I know Him? Does He know me? Do I know anything about His
saving grace? Has the Lord revealed His mercy
to me through the Son of God? Does the Lord Jesus, crucified,
buried and risen again, is He all of my hope for glory? Is
He all of my confidence? Do I know Him? So there are times and there
are situations where you need to be anxious. But these disciples, and our
Lord knew their hearts, they were anxious about daily things. Now, when you get to worrying
or being anxious about the things about you, then that, you need
to stop that. There are a multitude of physical
things or daily things that cause anxiety. I remember when my dad had passed
away. It was in August of 1975. My brother was pastoring in Ohio,
Cincinnati, in fact. And he and I conducted the funeral
of our dad together. And my brother took care of the
eulogy, reading the scripture and the obituary and saying some
personal things about dad. And then we had decided that
I would bring the message. And sometime before the service,
I was approached And you say, were you nervous? Of course I
was nervous. That's the first funeral I ever
had. I was 24 years old. And someone approached me and
said, here's a nerve pill for you. And I said, I don't want a nerve
pill. At least take a half one to kind of take the edge off.
I said, let me tell you something. Whatever it is I need to feel,
I'm going to feel it. And how can I, going into the
ministry, pastoring the church that my dad started and pastored
in 1963, how can I approach people who are sorrowing and they need
encouragement, they need comforting, how can I approach them and say,
during this time of stress, take a nerve pill? I'm gonna tell
them to cast your care upon the Lord, for he cares for you. There are a lot of times in our
lives that we feel stress, unusual stress, I mean, life is stressful
all the time, pretty much, right? But there are times when we especially
feel it and the burdens of life grow heavy. And in those times when the burdens,
the troubles, the stresses of life grow heavy, our hearts are not to be troubled.
The word troubled means agitated, stirred up. In fact, you could
use the illustration that this word troubled being the same
as agitation is like the agitator in a washing machine. And that agitator is, I did a
load of clothes today. I'm getting dishpan hands, I'm
learning how to do laundry and all of those sort of things.
I put the stuff in there and then turn it on and it goes,
skoosh, skoosh, skoosh. It's an agitator. There are a
lot of things in life that agitate us, right? Of course there are. The things that ought to agitate
us And this is unfortunate. The things that are worth agitating
us, disturbing us, and causing us to be anxious are not the
things that we're anxious about. We're anxious about daily things,
and yet we know that our God governs all things. There's nothing
that happens, there's nothing that exists, there's nothing
that comes to pass in your life, but what your sovereign Savior
who redeemed you didn't bring it to pass and He'll give the
grace to bear it. Certainly be anxious for eternal
life, be careful about knowing God, but we're not to worry Our Lord talked to His disciples
and said, the Lord feeds the birds of the air. Do you think
He'll take care of you? He gives beauty to the lilies.
He grows the grass. Do you think He is unaware of
your physical necessities? Don't be anxious over those things. There are four things that really
agitated, that disturbed, that greatly troubled the disciples. And the first one was this, they
fully anticipated that the Lord Jesus was going to establish
an earthly kingdom. They really thought that. And
the rest of the Jewish nation thought that also to begin with. In fact, you go all the way back
to John chapter 6 when our Lord fed the 5,000 men plus the women
and children. Oh, they start saying among themselves,
this is the prophet. And when our Lord knew that they
were ready to take Him and make Him a king, This was their thinking,
He's going to set up His kingdom right here in Jerusalem, and
He's going to resurrect Israel to the glory days of Solomon
and David. But our Lord said, My kingdom
is not of this world. He even said to them, The kingdom
of God is in you. He didn't come to establish an
earthly kingdom. He came to fulfill the purpose
of God in salvation and establish a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom
within you, Christ in you. That's the hope of glory. But the disciples got sucked
into this along with practically all the rest of Israel, anticipating
a kingdom that our Lord would establish in Jerusalem, but that
was not to happen. And it's becoming very apparent
to them now that that's not going to happen. That's not going to
be the case. Because the enmity and the hostility
against our Lord Jesus Christ is beginning to reach a fever
pitch. There are enemies all around
Him. Their hope of an earthly kingdom has sunk. And he had told them that he
must go to Jerusalem and be beaten and suffer and he must be killed. That dashed their hopes so much
for the kingdom that we wanted. And another thing that caused them
anxiety was that one of their group had just walked away, left
the table, departed from the fellowship, having been exposed by the master
as being a traitor, a deceiver, and a betrayer. This was a man they studied beside. They went out and preached with
Judas. They sat at the master's feet
with Judas. They prayed alongside of him. They wept with him. He wept with
them. They spent time with him. He
was a trusted, very trusted friend. And none of them suspected Him
of being the traitor at all. And when our Lord exposed Him, it broke their hearts. I'll tell you this, it hurts when people you've spent a lot
of time with in the gospel just up and walk away. That's a painful
thing. It's a painful thing to preachers. It's a painful thing to others
in the congregation. One of the things that preachers
learn, and learn it pretty quick, is that people will disappoint
you. But they disappoint you too,
don't they? But remember, there is one who
will never walk away from us, who is always faithful, who is
always there, who is always dependable. Our Lord is that friend who sticks
closer than a brother. And we may, for a while, forsake
Him, like Simon Peter did. But our Lord will never forsake
us. And speaking of Simon Peter, the hearts of these men were
troubled also because of the words of our Lord concerning
Simon Peter, and these are mentioned at the end of chapter 13. Here's
a man who back in Matthew 16 made a tremendous confession
of faith. Who do men say that I, the Son
of Man, am? Well, some say you're Jeremiah,
some say you're John the Baptist come back from the dead, some
say you're Jeremiah the weeping prophet. But who do you say that
I am? And Simon Peter said, Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God. What a tremendous confession
of faith And about five minutes later,
our Lord told them that he had to go to Jerusalem. He said,
I'm going to Jerusalem. I'm going to be betrayed. I'm
going to be killed. And I'm going to be raised again.
And Simon Peter, who had just made this tremendous confession
of faith, pulled the master aside and said, it's not going to happen
under my watch. And our Lord said, get thee behind
me, Satan. You don't savor the things of
God. And it says here, though all
men forsake thee, you can always count on me. Beware of self-confidence. Not only will Peter leave the men and he will betray Christ three times. He said to the master over another
passage, though all are offended. Not me. But mainly, these men, their
hearts were broken, troubled, anxious because he told them
he was going away. That he was going to die. And that's the last thing that
they wanted to hear. Isn't it interesting? that our
Lord's disciples who were knowledgeable of the Old Testament scriptures,
they were knowledgeable of the gospel according to Isaiah, they
knew about Isaiah 53. But isn't it interesting when
it came down to our Savior actually fulfilling those prophetic words
concerning his death and his resurrection They just couldn't
grasp that. And I wouldn't be too hard on
them because, you see, they didn't have the Word of God in print
like we do. They had the first five books, the Pentateuch,
and they had the prophecies, but these were in scrolls. I read the other day that the
scroll of Isaiah, if rolled out, is 30 feet long. 30 feet. I mean, you just didn't walk
around with a bunch of scrolls under your arm. Well, I know
my Bible. We have no excuse. when it comes
to the information concerning the necessity of the substitutionary
work of our Lord Jesus Christ. There's an abundance of scriptures.
Our Savior said he's going to die. that he must go to Jerusalem,
he must be mistreated, he must be beaten, he must be killed,
and he must rise from the dead. So anyway, these men have heavy,
agitated, troubled hearts. Well, what is the cure for a
troubled heart? Is there a cure? The cure for heart trouble is
really simple. It's faith. That's the cure. It's faith. Notice what he says. Let not your heart be troubled
or agitated. Ye believe in God, believe also
in me. One translation I read today,
I liked it. You do believe in God, and you
also believe in me. Therefore, don't let your heart
be troubled. Do you believe God? I do. As best I can, right? Don't you? Sure. As best we can. And I realize that our faith
is weak, And lots of times the Lord arranges various trials
and situations which expose the true weakness of our faith lest
we'd get too cocky and confident. But I do believe God. Do you
believe that all things are purposed of God? Do you? I do. I'll be a bobblehead here. I
believe all things are purposed by God. I don't have any doubt
about that. That's the good things and the
bad things. That's when I'm well and even
when I was sick, I knew I'm in the condition I'm in because
my God has appointed this for me. I knew that very well. And that which God has purposed
His providence always brings His purpose to pass exactly the
way it was decreed. And I believe that. Well, therefore, don't let your
heart be troubled. We believe God, we believe God
reigns over all things. We believe that He reigns in
the armies of heaven. How big are the armies of heaven?
I don't know. I'd say they're tens and tens
of thousands of angels, but He reigns over all of them. And
I believe that He rules over all the inhabitants of the earth,
all of them. All of them. I don't care who
it is. The unknowns, people that we
don't know, people that we see in the headlines or on the news
every day, they're all under the sovereign control of our
God. I do believe that. And they cannot
do anything that is opposed to the sovereign will of God. So why do we get upset then? Why are we agitated over what's
going on in Washington? I just laugh. I do, I just laugh. I see God making people get a
squirm. They're upset. And not only now,
but it has been in the past and it will be in the future. Because
the more things change, the more things just Just to like. Let's keep on happening. And
I love the fact that God frustrates the wills of men. And we can
just sit back really and behold the power and the purpose and
the providence of God. And when we tend to get upset, That's when we've taken our eyes
off of our sovereign God. I'm telling you, the cure for
heart trouble is faith. You believe in God? You also
believe in me? Well, don't let your heart be
troubled. Pretty simple, isn't it, Terry? It's very simple. You see things going on, you
say, oh no, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? Wait
a minute, you believe in God, don't you? You believe in His
eternal purpose, don't you? You believe that all things are
fulfilling His will, don't you? I sure do. Why are you biting
your fingernails then? Why are you sitting up at night
worrying? The cure for heart trouble is faith in our God, faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll tell you, in spite of the
way things may often appear to these eyes, you and I, who are
the people of God, we have every reason to be optimistic, encouraged,
Hopeful and confident. Every reason to be that way. Don't be negative. The glass is not half empty.
It's full. It's full. Our Savior who redeemed us sits
upon His throne of sovereignty. Let me rejoice, let me be glad
in the Lord. That passage that I began by
reading out of Philippians chapter 4, before that it says rejoice
in the Lord always. And again I say rejoice. Sometimes we may be tempted to
think that nothing is really going on even in our church. And sometimes I get down. Lord,
I pray that you'll save folks. But I know this. God is doing his work and fulfilling
his purpose. and something is going on. Did
you know that? Something is going on here. We're
glorifying God. That's what's going on here.
Now what God is pleased to do and who He's pleased to do it
with, that's up to Him. But our business, my business,
is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ and preach Him up and
preach us down. I don't know what God's will
is for our church. I don't know what God's will
is for me. I don't know what God's will is
for you. But I am certain of this. As a church body, our responsibility
is to take our stand for the gospel of God's free and sovereign
grace, and having stood, continue to stand. I do know that. I don't know what God's purpose
is for this generation. But I know that in the end, two
things will be accomplished. I guarantee you, I will guarantee
you this, from the Word of God, All of God's elect will be saved. You with me? I know that's true. All of God's elect will be saved. So we just keep preaching the
gospel. And number two, I know this,
Christ our Lord is going to be glorified. And I'll tell you what, that's
all I want. That's all I want. See, God will make all things
work together in our lives for good and for His glory. Faith is the cure. He says in
the second verse, in my Father's house are many mansions, many
dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have
told you, I go to prepare a place for you." Now some smart aleck
preachers, and I've heard them say this, you know, Jesus has
been building heaven for 2,000 years. It only took Him six days
to make the heaven and the earth and all things in it. If He's
been building heaven for 2,000 years, my, what a wonderful place
that must be. Well, that's really a stupid
thing to say. It truly is. It'll catch the
ears of the unsuspecting. But that's foolishness. Our Lord went, first of all,
He went to prepare us a place in heaven. And then He went to
heaven and prepared that for us. There's a prepared people
He went to prepare His people for heaven. He went to prepare
His people for the presence of God. We are a prepared people. How
are we prepared? Redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb. That's how. Made righteous in
the Lord Jesus Christ. He did that. I go to prepare
a place for you. You see, we have no right to
heaven. We have no reason to think that
heaven will open its doors. And of course, the foolishness
of the world is that, you know, we'll meet Simon Peter at the
gates and he'll decide who gets in and who doesn't get in. That's
all hogwash. Peter got in the same way I'm
going to get in by the sovereign grace of God. And if you get
in, that's how you'll get in too. And Peter's not going to
be at the gates to let you in. The Master, the Master will let
you in. He who redeemed you. The Father's house is heaven. And we don't have any rights
to heaven. What claim do you have? What claim do I have on
heaven? I don't have any claim. We're
sinners, sons and daughters of Adam. We ruined the world by
our sin. And if God let us in apart from
the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, it wouldn't
take us long to ruin heaven. Right? What's the problem with the world
today? Sinfulness of man. That's the
problem. And if the Lord let us into heaven
unwashed and filthy, we'd turn heaven into hell real
quick. We don't deserve to go to the
Father's house. We're fallen creatures. If you and I are to be received
into heaven, The Lord Jesus had to go to the
cross and prepare us for heaven. We're a prepared people. It says
in Colossians chapter 1, we're made meat. We're made meat for
the presence of God. We're made fit. What is my fitness? What is my reason to anticipate
Heaven opening up for me instead of hell opening up for me. Well, I'll tell you, my hope
is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. He's all my hope. The Savior said, if I go to prepare
a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself,
that where I am, there you may be also. He's my confidence. And if God would be gracious
and increase our faith, and there's not a one of us in here and not
a one of you who are watching by way of the internet or listening
to this message later on, there's not a one of us who loves the
Lord and believes the gospel. There's not one of us who doesn't
constantly say, Lord, increase my faith. It's a reason we get
miserable. It's a reason we worry. It's
a reason we get anxious. We can get anxious over nothing,
right? It doesn't take much to upset
our apple cart. You know, maybe you go out with
your wife and you have a nice meal and you come out and got
a flat tire. Oh, man. Just ruins our day, doesn't it?
It don't take much to ruin ours. Don't let your heart be troubled.
You believe God and you believe Christ, no need for heart trouble. Christ said, whither I go you
know, and the way you know. And Thomas said, Lord, we don't
know where you're going. We don't know the way. Well,
Thomas, I just told you. And so then he says clearly,
I am the way. I am the truth. I'm the life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by me. There is a cure for
heart trouble. Believe God. There's a reason
that the Bible tells us that faith is a gift. Huh? It's a gift. So I ask him, Lord, increase
my faith. Well, let's sing a closing song.