Scripture Reading: John 14:1-14
The fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel is the most familiar chapter of the New Testament. Its words are sweet music. As spoken first, it was the little company of the disciples sitting at the Last Supper who heard them. They were in great sorrow. They were about to lose their Master, their best friend. They had hoped that He was the Messiah and were expecting some special manifestation of His power. Now all their hopes seemed to be swept away. Jesus speaks to them as they sit around the table. He seeks to comfort them. He says to them, “Let not your heart be troubled.” This seems a strange word to say to them at this particular hour. How was it possible that they should not be troubled when He, their Master, was about to leave them? We may be sure, however, that the words He spoke were not empty or formal. Many things that earthly comforters say to their friends in their times of trouble mean but little. They say, “Weep not. Dry your tears. All will come right,” but they have no real comfort to offer. They can give no reason why their friends should not weep, or why all will come right. Their optimism is without foundation. But when Christ said, “Let not your heart be troubled,” He knew what He was saying, and there were in His mind clear reasons why He spoke in this strong, confident way. The same is true of the comfort Christ speaks now to us. No matter what the sorrow, how great the loss, how deep the darkness, if we are Christians, the same voice always speaks to us in the same words.
Christ tells the disciples what they should do, how they might cease to be troubled. “Ye believe in God.” This was the way their trouble could be comforted. There was no need to ask questions, for their questions could not be answered, or at least they could not understand the answers. But they were to keep their faith in God and in Jesus Christ unshaken, undisturbed, in the midst of all the sorrow. They thought everything was gone, that they did not have God anymore that all their hopes about Jesus Christ had failed, were only dreams. He tells them that nothing they had believed about God or about Jesus was gone. Their faith in God was to abide. What they had hoped about Jesus Christ was true. They had lost nothing.
This is the foundation of all true comfort. We cannot understand the mystery of sorrow, but if we believe in God and in Jesus Christ, we need not lose our confidence or our peace, whatever the distress may be. A word of an old prophet (Is. 26:4) says, “Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the LORD JEHOVAH is the everlasting strength.” If we are hidden in the cleft of the Rock of Ages* we need not fear any seeming disaster. Another word says, “thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee” (Is.26:3). We may always be sure of God’s eternal faithfulness and of Christ’s unchanging love, and believing these great truths, we may be quiet and confident in the worst calamities.
*The words “The everlasting strength” in Isaiah 26:4 are more accurately rendered in the NIV and the NASB texts “the Rock of Ages.” Ed
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