If you would, go ahead and turn to John chapter 14. It's going to be on page 901 in your pew Bibles. As you're turning there, I just want to review some of what we've gone over the last couple weeks. So we're in the Reformation series. So the first week in this series we heard that it's Scripture alone. So God's Word is found in Scripture alone, which encourages us to view the world and all authority through the lens of Scripture. And in the second week we heard that the instrument of our salvation is in faith alone, which was given to us by God's grace alone, which reminded us that we don't contribute anything to our own salvation. And so this week we turn our attention to the recipient of our faith and the embodiment of God's grace to us, and that we're saved by Christ alone. So now that you've kind of been refreshed on some of that, I want to look where we're reading. So we're in John 14, but so we have kind of a broader context of where we are. So John 13 through 17 is known as the Upper Room Discourse. So it's kind of the last time that Jesus has with his disciples. So it starts in John 13, and then soon after this, we see Jesus' death, betrayal, or betrayal, death, and resurrection. So in chapter 13, it opens with Jesus washing his disciples' feet in a great act of humility. It's followed then by Jesus telling everybody that Judas would betray him. And then after that, we have Jesus foretelling Peter's denial, right? So it's right on the heels of this upcoming denial. that we turn to John 14, chapter 1. It says, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many rooms, but were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that wherever I am, you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you're going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen me. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the father. How can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. or else believe on account of the works themselves. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for today. God, we thank you for your Sabbath, a time to start our weeks in worship, in unity with each other. Lord, we believe in the Holy Spirit, so we believe that your word can be applied to us. Your word is powerful, even if the messenger is weak. So, Lord, I pray that you would use these attempts, God, you would use your word to prick the hearts of those who aren't found in you and encourage those that are found in you. Lord, we pray this expectantly because we pray it in the name of your Son. Amen. Sociologists have recently dubbed the United States as the most anxious nation in the entire world. So the numbers of anxiety in the United States are nearly five times higher than they are in developing countries. So that's despite, in the US, having adequate food, water, and shelter, let alone access to entertainment like the internet, or TV, or music, or sports. It's way more likely that you're anxious if you live in the United States than anywhere else in the world. So the sociologists, they chalk this up to two reasons. The first one is the overwhelming choice that we have in America. They say it debilitates us, having so many options, rather than empowers us. And second, the American dream, the American work ethic of pull yourselves up by the bootstraps has fostered an incredible work ethic, oftentimes with very little reward. And so while you might not be diagnosed with anxiety here, I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone here is familiar with your heart being troubled. And since you're all good Presbyterians, you've probably picked up on the three different characters, Peter, Thomas, and Philip, and realized that those would be somehow tied into the three points today. So our first point is that our hearts are troubled because we have a high view of our own abilities, but Jesus is the way. The second point is that our hearts are troubled because we have too low a view of God's sufficiency, but Jesus fills us with truth. And third, our hearts are troubled because we rely too much on our head knowledge, but Jesus offers us life. So in our first point, our hearts are troubled because we have a high view of our own abilities, but Jesus is the way. So we start, like I said, at the end of 13, Peter is told that he will deny Christ. And if we look at Peter, he has a really interesting story, doesn't he? So if you start in Matthew 16, where he confesses Jesus is Lord, and Jesus tells him that this confession, this proclamation of his divinity is what the church is built on. So this claim, all of church history has been built on. And we see that and we're like, yeah, Peter, this guy, this is the guy I want to be. But Peter gets a big head. He gets overconfident. He flies too close to the sun. And just a few verses later, he tries to rebuke Jesus. And Jesus, our Lord, responds by saying, get behind me, Satan. And at that point, we're like, maybe not. Maybe I don't want to be Peter. Now in John 13, it seems like Peter's trying to prove himself again. And so he tells Jesus, I will lay down my life for you. And that's not a bad place to start, right? How could this possibly backfire? But Jesus tells him, no, you're not going to die for me. As a matter of fact, you'll deny me. And you won't just deny me once, right? You'll deny me three times before tomorrow morning. That's brutal, right? That is absolutely devastating. There's no earthly way to get by that, to get back from that. And so at the end of the story, we might feel bad for Peter, kind of like we might feel bad for a formerly great athlete who's on the bench, kind of in the twilight of his illustrious career. But then in chapter 14, the very first thing that Jesus says to Peter and to the rest of the disciples, but I think specifically to Peter, is, let not your heart be troubled, which is fascinating. Now, if anyone in the history of the world had justification for their hearts to be troubled, Peter, who is told he would deny the very God of very gods, is very high on that list. And so there's two ways to read this. The first way would be Jesus being maybe a little bit sarcastic and kind of telling him, you will not have a troubled heart or a troubled heart. Kind of like, I don't know if you've ever been on vacation and kids or your kids were arguing with each other. And so you angry told them, you will be happy today. All right. My family's here. You'll see them. You can ask. That was told to us quite a few times. So that's not what Jesus is taking. That's not the tone he's taking. I think the more appropriate way to read this is Jesus telling Peter, look, you're going to mess up, and you're going to mess up really bad. You're going to try really hard, but it's just not going to work out. But that's OK, because I've got you. See, he comforts Peter, and by extension, he comforts all of us that struggle with trying to earn a good standing with God. So he does this in two ways. The first way is that he reiterates his divinity. So he claimed this back in chapter 13, but he says it again. And he says, believe in God, believe also in me, because he is God. So he claims to be divine. So on the one hand, denying God, right? Very bad. But on the other hand, the slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love that's in the Old Testament that we say that the disciples will know applies to God the Father. That stuff is equally said about God the Son. And so that applies to Jesus too, which brings comfort to Peter. And the second way Jesus comforts Peter is by promising something. In verses two to four, it says, in my father's house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself. That where I'm, I may, I'm sorry, that where I am, you may be also. And you know the way to where I'm going. He doesn't say, let me go clean my room and then you get your mom to come drop you off at my place. He doesn't say, let me clean the house first and then you just come over, bring some dessert, we'll hang out. He says, I'm going to heaven and later I'm going to come get you and take you there myself. And you might have or have had a friend that you were so close with, they could come through the back door without knocking, right? They were the special friends. They could just come in, eat your food whenever they wanted. They could let themselves in. And a lot of times we think we're close with God like that. We think, you know, me and God, we're close, we're buddies. I can go to heaven whenever I want. I'm good. But that's not how things work. See, our sin has made us strangers to God. And so just like an Edson has to let a stranger into the Edson house, right? Jesus, the fully divine Lord and Savior, has to let us in the Lord and divine house. Peter's heart was troubled because he wasn't able to earn his salvation. He had built himself up so high because of his abilities that he was absolutely devastated to find out that his abilities weren't good enough. Our hearts are troubled because we try really, really hard to be a good person and do the right things, but it never seems like we're good with God. But for Peter, and for you, and for me, We can't add to our salvation, because if we could, then we could also take away from our salvation. But God in his grace provides a way to heaven that we can't mess up. That way to heaven, the way to heaven, is Jesus Christ alone. One of my favorite things to do is to hike. So the other day, off the clock, I was looking up, I was looking up the best trails to hike with in the area, which quickly turned into me looking at some of the best hiking trails in the US and in the world, and I suddenly realized that a trail of compacted dirt about four feet wide is all that separates hiking from being lost. So one of the trails I ran across is in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. There's pictures of bears and mountain lions, dense forests, sprawling plains, deep cliffs and mountains so high that they literally affect the weather. But because there are paths, because there are trails, people are confident enough to take selfies out there. A selfie, you turn your phone around and you take it. The closest town to the National Park is called Moose, which tells you all you need to know about how many people live near the park. So if you get off the trail in this National Park, there's a good chance that you will never be found again. And if that's true in the wilderness of Wyoming, how much more true is it of the vast wilderness of our own finitude? You see, if we can't cowboy up or pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and get to heaven, we can't, yeah, if we can't do that, we have to rely on a path. We have to rely on someone else to get us there. And that way is only Jesus. You see, our hearts are troubled because we have too high a view of our own abilities, but Jesus is the way. So our second point then is our hearts are troubled because we have too low a view of God's sufficiency. So kind of the opposite of what the first point was. If our hearts are troubled because we have too high a view of our own sufficiency, we have to make sure that the opposite isn't true also. See, some of us are struggling because we don't think we could ever be good enough for God to want us or to like us. But some of us don't think that God could ever be big enough to come down and to reach us because we're so bad. So our second point is that our hearts are troubled because we have too low a view of God's sufficiency. But Jesus fills us with truth. So if Peter had some baggage because of his denial, Thomas is probably worse, right? So Peter's not known as Peter the denier, but Thomas is known as Thomas or doubting Thomas, Thomas the doubter. And so in Thomas here in chapter 14, we see that he never really gets out of that cloud in our minds of doubt that surrounds him. And so we read this kind of arrogant or doubting figure back on to Thomas. But I think it's actually more about Thomas's fear here than it is about his stubbornness or his arrogance. See, he had just learned that a man that he had left home to follow, the man that had pretty much ruined his reputation, the man that he thought was going to rule an earthly victory, was actually about to go away for a little bit. All right, so his cry here, is akin to a child turning to his mother or his father on the first day of school and saying, I'm not ready for this. I'm not smart enough. I'm not big enough. I'm not strong enough. Please don't go. If we look at Thomas doubting Jesus' resurrection in John chapter 20, and also at this instance here, it seems like Thomas really likes to have all the facts. He really likes to know all there is to know about something. He thinks, if I know everything, then I'm worthy. If I can put all the pieces together, Jesus is going to love me. God is going to love me. But if he doesn't, by implication, why would Jesus love somebody that doesn't know everything? This is Thomas's view of himself. So he feels unworthy to enter the Father's house. And that's the attitude that we have at times, that we're not smart enough or moral enough or good enough for God to ever want to be with us, to ever want us or to ever like us. So a couple words on that. The Bible never teaches that you have to be put together before Jesus comes to meet you. He actually says the opposite when he says that he's a doctor and only sick people need a doctor. And the Bible is very open with how messed up people are. Look at David, the great hero of the Old Testament. The Bible records this, that he got to know a married woman, he lied about it, had her husband killed, and he was still known as a man after God's own heart. In the New Testament, we have Saul, later Paul, who killed loads of Christians just for the fact that they were Christians. He ended up writing a huge portion of the New Testament. So if these kind of people, if murderers and adulterers and these people can be loved by God and used by God, I dare say that we can be loved by God. We can be changed by God. Second, having recently gone through the interview process here, I can tell you that having it all together isn't a prerequisite of coming to this church. So the Bible, it broadly speaks about unworthy people knowing God, but what does Jesus say here in this instance in 14? His response in verse 6 is incredible, right? We could spend the next three weeks just digging into this and we still wouldn't come close to understanding the grandeur of this statement. See, in verse 6, Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. One aspect that I want to draw out of this is that Jesus is essentially saying that he is everything. Think of it as the track you run a race on, the trophy you get at the end, and the glory that comes with it. So Jesus is the way, the track, the truth, the trophy at the end, and the life, the glory that comes with victories. Jesus is all of it. And no one can come to the Father except through Him. We've already seen that He's going to take us there, right? And there's no other way to get there unless you're taken. So for all that we lack, all of our shortcomings, all of our excuses, they're covered by Jesus. You might be thinking, I'll never be as smart as John Calvin or John Piper or Pastor Ben. I'll never be as winsome as Kennedy or as wise as Pastor John, as personable as Dee or as athletic as Brian. How could God ever want me? How could God ever want me? But the truth is, you don't have to be anything because Jesus is everything. Now, I understand this illustration may only apply to a select few of you in here, and I'm sure I'll hear about how I messed this up later. But I'm watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my wife when we have a free night. So if you're unfamiliar with the plot, a hobbit, which is essentially a fourth grader with NBA-sized feet, is tasked with destroying an evil ring and saving the world. And it has to be one of these hairy-footed halflings that destroys the ring because the ring has the ability to corrupt the power within people. So if it's a really strong person, a really powerful person, they could be more fully corrupt by this ring. And since the hobbit is about as ferocious as a guinea pig that ate too much, he's perfect to carry the ring because there's not much in there for the ring to corrupt. So what I'm trying to get across is that the more that people seemingly have to offer God, the less that God can fill them back up. So if you're empty, you feel like you don't have anything to offer God, the fact is that you will be filled up when you get to heaven. And so the less of you that there is, the more Jesus it requires to fill you to the brim. So don't let your hearts be troubled because you have too low a view of God's sufficiency, but be comforted because Jesus fills you with his truth. So we've seen that our hearts are troubled because, like Peter, we have too high a view of our own abilities. And then, like Thomas, we have too low a view of God's sufficiency. Now we get to the third character in the story of Philip, who relies too much on his head knowledge. So we have two main passages that tell us about Philip, I think, that should be taken into consideration here. alongside this one. So he's introduced in John chapter 1, and then he interacts with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8. So in John 1, Jesus is assembling his team, he's calling the disciples together, and it says that Jesus went to Galilee, and that's where he found Philip. All Jesus said to Philip was, follow me. Philip came, followed him. But as he did, he went and tried to recruit his friend, his buddy, Nathaniel, by telling him in John 1, verse 45, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also in the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. So it seems like Jesus really knew his Old Testament very well. He was able to recall significant claims from Moses and from the prophets, and he could discern them on the fly well enough to know that Jesus did in fact meet these requirements. So he knew these facts about Jesus, but he didn't know the person of Jesus. So moving back to chapter 14, when he says to Jesus, show us the Father and it's enough for us. This statement just absolutely reeks of him knowing this in his head, but he's still riding the fence in his heart. See, Jesus sees right through him though. Right? So he says, yeah, writing this fence in his heart, he's thinking, if I can just fit this final piece in the puzzle, if I can just get this one last piece of information, I'll have the puzzle completed, I'll know it all, and I'll be good to go. But Jesus, like I said, sees right through him. He sees past the knowledgeable facade on the outside and into the very heart of Philip, which was still a little bit dim. And so his answer really gets straight to the point. I mean, just look, now it says, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. I am in the Father and the Father is in me. See, Jesus is boldly proclaiming his deity or his godness. And see, this is just another definitive break from being a simple moral teacher, as some would have you believe. See, moral teachers might give you six steps to a better life or offer you your best life now, but once they start claiming to be God, moral teachers are either, as C.S. Lewis puts it, a lunatic on the level who claims to be a poached egg, or they're right. So to confine Jesus to a position of mere moral authority is absolutely an incoherent argument. See, it cannot be possible. And we have 2,000 years of witness and the Holy Spirit pounding this truth into our hearts, but it seems like Philip is not quite there yet. I'm speaking way out of my expertise here, but I think if I had to, I could sit down at the piano. Richard could teach me. Susan could teach me. In a few months, I could push the keys at the right time, and it would sort of sound like music, right? I could technically know piano. But it would take years of practice and knowledge of the intricacies of how melody and harmony work. and how sounds blend together to foster emotion, for me to be able to play the piano with soul or with heart. And so what I'm putting forward here is that Philip and some of us are hitting the keys at the right time. On the surface, we're doing the right things. We know our Bible. We know our catechism. We read Kevin DeYoung. We eat at Chick-fil-A. We do everything right. But we haven't had the information that we've accumulated in our head seep down into our hearts so that it can change our lives. So it might have been at this moment that Philip changed. It might have been at the resurrection. We're not told when exactly he got it. We're not told when the wonderful truth of Jesus, when we truly came to know Jesus, escaped the prison of his mind and made his way to his heart. But we see evidence that it has happened in Acts chapter 8 when he interacts with the Ethiopian eunuch. So remember when he told Nathanael about Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament? It kind of seemed like an intellectual pursuit, right? Like he was writing a paper, or he just wanted to prove how smart he was to his friend. But see, the tone changes dramatically in Acts chapter 8. So to give you some context, you don't have to turn there. The Ethiopian is reading from Isaiah, and so I'll read the passage from Isaiah and then follow in from there. So it says, like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth. And the eunuch said to Philip, about whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this? About himself, about Isaiah, or about someone else? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with the scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus. See, there's no longer an intellectual pursuit for Philip, but it was good news. And the application for us then is simple, know about Jesus, that's great, that's important, but more so, just know Jesus. Because if you know about Him, that stays in your head. But if you know Him personally as your Savior, that infiltrates every single part of your life. It takes you from the dry desert of head knowledge to the living water of Christ that bears much fruit in all areas of your life. I get my wife flowers every couple of weeks because I mess up a lot. I always wondered how they get these flowers to kind of look like a fake blue or a fake purple. They don't look real. They almost look like they were painted to be a certain color. So one day, I was in there and I saw these. And so being a good millennial, I walked past the florist, got my phone out and Googled it. And so what they do is they put food coloring in water, right? And so they have like this blue or purple water, and then they water the flower. The flower soaks it up, this colored water, and it changes the petals to be kind of purple or bluish, so not their natural color. And so what I'm saying is that we can't have Jesus' facts painted on our outside, right? We need to soak up this water, this life-changing water that changes us from the heart outward. So we have three points here, and then I wanna get to some applications. So just to rehash, first point, our hearts are troubled because we have too high a view of our own abilities, right? But Jesus is the way. The second one, our hearts are troubled because we have too low a view of God's sufficiency. We think, how could God ever reach down to us? But Jesus calms our hearts because he fills us with truth. And third, our hearts are troubled because we rely too much on head knowledge, but Jesus offers us life. And so as we close, I want to draw out two implications going forward. First, only Jesus can calm our troubled hearts. When in verse 6 Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life, this necessarily implies that everything else is not a way, a truth, or a life unless it derives these qualities from the person and work of Jesus. So if you're trusting in Jesus and works, or Jesus and certain affiliations, or Jesus and your own goodness, your trust is entirely misplaced. See, there is no Jesus and, there is only Jesus. And second, to the Christians, this statement of Jesus should be exceedingly comforting. Our hope is in the eternal love and person of Jesus Christ. But if you're outside of Christ, your hope is fading away. Your hope is perishing because everything in this world is perishing. Everything in this world is passing away. So if you're here today and life just isn't working out for you, if you're at your wits end because you just can't seem to make it work, if you're standing at the edge of the abyss of meaninglessness and you're searching for answers and you just don't know where to go, this offer is for you. This offer is come and let your hearts be calmed. Come and let your troubles be taken away. Come and trust in Jesus Christ as your only comfort in life and in death. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for today. God, we thank you for your word, which rings eternal. Lord, we thank you for sending your son. to die on a cross for us, to bring us into your presence. Lord, we pray that we would have this message, me and everybody that hears it, soak into their hearts, that they would bring true in their lives this week. Lord, we pray this all in your son's name. Amen.