Scripture Reading: John 14:1, 2
The words of the fourteenth chapter of John were spoken by the Master to His friends in a time of deep grief which seemed inconsolable. Yet He said, “Let not your heart be troubled.” This seemed a strange thing to say to those men that night. How could they keep their hearts from being troubled in such circumstances? To think of all that Jesus had grown to be to them! For three years they had been members of His personal family, enjoying the most intimate relations with Him. How much a friend can be to us depends on the friend. If he has a rich nature, a noble personality, power to love deeply, capacity for friendship, the spirit of pure unselfishness, if he is able to inspire us to heroism and to worth living, what he can be to us is immeasurable. Think what Jesus Christ, with His marvelous manhood, must have been as a friend to His disciples, and you can understand something of what His going from them meant to them.
Then He was more than a friend to them. They had believed in Him as the Messiah, who was to redeem their nation and lead them to honor and distinction. Great hope rested in Him. His death was, as it seemed to them, the defeat and failure of all their hopes. The announcement that He was to leaven them swept away — as they thought — all that made life worthwhile. There are human friends whose death seems to leave only desolation in the hearts and lives of those who have loved them and leaned on them. But the death of Christ was to His personal friends and followers the blotting out of ever star of hope and promise. Their sorrow was overwhelming.
Yet Jesus looked into their faces and said, “Let not your heart be troubled.” It is worth our while to think of the grounds on which Jesus could reasonably say this to His disciples when they were entering into such great and real sorrow. The first thing He bade them do was to believe. “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” Thus far they had believed in God. Jesus had taught them a new name for God. They were to call Him Father. He had not been known by this name before, but Jesus used no other name for Him. The word Father is a great treasure-house of love-thoughts. It told the disciples of personal thought, love and care, extending to all the events of their lives. The very hairs of their heads were all numbered. It told them of goodness that never failed. It was a great lesson they had been learning as they came to think of God as their Father. In the shock of the last terrible days; however, the danger was that they would lose their faith in God. But Jesus said to them: “Believe in God. Let nothing take this faith out of your heart. Let nothing take from you what you have been learning from me about God.”
“Believe also in me.” They had accepted Jesus as the Messiah. You remember the splendid confession made by Peter, “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” In this confession all the disciples had joined. They believed that He had come to be the world’s Savior. Now, in the announcement that Jesus was to die at the hands of wicked men, there was danger that they should lose their faith in Him. But to save them from their loss of faith He exhorted them to continue to believe. Not one of their hopes had perished. “Ye believe in God, believe also in me.”
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