Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled - Leland Zehr

Good morning. It's good to be with you this morning.

Appreciate it. Things that have been said, songs that have

been sung. Some of the words this morning were very

fitting or appropriate for an introduction to some of the

thoughts that I have this morning. Both devotionals. A while back,

a friend of mine sent me something to listen to,

and a friend that's going through difficulties right now, health problems,

and it captured my attention and got me thinking, got me,

I guess, inspired to study and to preach on this

message that I have this morning. And the subject that

I want to talk about, it's not the title of

my message, but the practical subject is the subject on

anxiety and worry and fear. And I realize that this

is a big subject. It's bigger than I can cover.

And it probably deserves two or three messages. Maybe it'll

get a couple. I'm not sure yet. But I want to...

to do my best with my limited abilities to talk

about this and hopefully reflect the heart of God and

what the Bible says about some of these things. The

title of the message I've given, decided to use, is

out of John 14, which our brother Norman wrote, He

didn't read the one verse, he read the other one,

but the title is Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled.

That's in verse 1 of John 14. Let not your

heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me.

And I don't plan to spend a lot of time

in John 14. I'll be in and out of it some.

But I want to gather some thoughts from there and

then other places as well. But A little bit of

context to this, what Jesus said here in John 14,

is after that Jesus had his last supper with his

disciples and he was getting towards the end of his life,

he had washed their feet, he had told Peter that

you're going to deny me three times. And now Jesus was,

in the last few days after that, facing the cross,

facing death, His disciples would be left behind him without

a master. Everything was about to change. All the security

that they had experienced the last three years just following

and living in the umbrella of Jesus was about to

be gone or to change. He was leaving. It was

a confusing and a troubling time for them all. And

Jesus said, let not your heart be troubled. You believe

in God, believe also in me. And he repeats this

phrase with a little bit more words in verse 27

of the same chapter that was read this morning. Peace

I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.

Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let

not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Troubled.

I don't know. I don't know the condition of most

of your hearts this morning. If you're troubled or if

you're not troubled. Troubled means here the idea of to agitate,

to stir up. It's like the Greek word is like

roiling water. So if you think of a turbulence or

a churning. And a heart is the thoughts and the

inner man. So a troubled heart is just a heart.

And a person's heart and mind that is in turmoil.

It's at unrest. It's trouble. Jesus said later, a few

chapters later in John 16, 33, he said, In this

world ye shall have tribulation. But be of good cheer,

I have overcome the world. So we live in a world,

and I don't have to tell you this if you

lived very long, that we live in a world full

of trouble and tribulation, full of disappointments, full of opportunities

every day to worry and to be anxious. Depending how

we manage these things in life makes a tremendous difference,

not only in this life, but it can have spiritual impact. long-term,

determining the destination of our next life as well. This

struggle is, we talk sometimes to the youth about things

that we think that maybe they especially struggle with. This

particular struggle of worry and anxiety is, as I see it,

is not... age-specific. It affects every age, young and old,

rich and poor, the weak and vulnerable, the widows, to

the strongest and most powerful men and man on earth

can be plagued with this thing of worry and anxiety

in the heart and in the mind. And if we

would just consider, I'd like to consider a little bit

the different stages of life in As an average person

goes through life, from a little baby as a toddler,

as they become aware of the world, you think of

a four-year-old child. They are often afraid of the dark,

afraid of sleeping alone or being alone or nightmares, things

like that. They grapple with that. We as parents try

to comfort them in that. As they move into childhood,

older childhood and teenage years, That shifts a little bit.

But then there's worries of acceptance and worries of fitting

in and worries of my looks and how I appear

and how people perceive me. And as you grow a

little older, into older youth, youth start thinking about and

possibly worrying about their purpose in life, their destiny, what

they're going to be, what their calling would be. Will

they get married? Will they not get married? And if

you don't get married, there's plenty of, there's worries that

go along with that that continue the unknowns of life

as a single person. If you do get married, then

there's all the opportunities that come with the adjustments of

married life. Working out differences, having children, or not having children.

And if you are blessed with children, Those things continue

on in life. The challenges of raising children, you have

their physical health, you have their emotional development, you have

their schooling and their purity and their choices and as

they grow up, the whole challenge of all of that

that can be distressing depending on how life goes with that.

Along the way, there's financial pressures, both for young and old.

We get setbacks at times, or just ends aren't being met.

The bills are coming in, the money doesn't stretch, and

it brings worry and anxiety and stress. Health issues come up.

Heard about health in devotions here, about healing. And that tends,

not always, but that often comes up. and increases as

we get older in life. And again, we could talk

about basic aches and pains and sicknesses and broken bones

and worn out joints to terminal illnesses that we, our

loved ones, face. Cancer was mentioned. And we could talk

about dementia and all kinds of other things that can arise.

Terminal illnesses. Those things become a real weight on our

minds when we enter into them, whether it's a friend

or whether it's ourselves. We could talk about the stages

of life of relationship challenges that arise, and that comes

in every aspect of life as well, at home, in school,

in church, at work. There's relationship problems. Pressures at times.

There's betrayals and hurts that happen among friends. And some

of the strongest, seemingly strongest men and women at times

crack under those relationship strains and pressures from the anxiety

that they live with. We could talk about and think

about loss. Losses in life. Grief. A loved one is taken.

left and we're left behind brokenhearted to process that loss

that does not change as we get older you start

looking back more of life becomes behind you than ahead

of you and and in those times it seems like

and i suppose i've have most likely entered into that

as well at this point, where there's more life behind

us than in front of us. And the closer that gets,

it seems like the more the tendency, and it's okay

to look back and reflect and to think about the

life that I have lived. And then there's regrets and

mistakes that come with that. Things that you wish you

could have done differently, but it's too late. It's the

way that it is. Maybe there's a wayward child or

other things that bother us. We can worry about our

spiritual life. We can worry about our standing with God.

And if our sins have been forgiven, and if I

have faith, if I'm ready to die, if I'm in

the right church, and the list goes on. As I've watched,

as I've experienced in my own life, and as I've

watched others older than myself, I have concluded that Worry

and anxiety is not something that we will outgrow, that

we will get past, that the circumstances will change enough

that we will not face that anymore. But if anything,

it tends to increase with time, the struggle with age.

It seems to be maybe more of an older people

problem than a young people problem. And that might just

be because the young are more innocent. They haven't bumped

into as many realities and hurts and disappointments in life.

But regardless, this problem is not solved. It's not conquered

with more money. It's not conquered with fame or success

or with waiting for circumstances to change. The opportunities and

the temptations to be anxious and worry will continue to

come to us as we go through life. I think

that is something we must reckon with. And Jesus said here,

let not your heart be troubled. The thing that doesn't

maybe quite make sense or humanly speaking is if you

look beyond these words in chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17,

Jesus goes on and he has quite a bit to

say about the hatred that's going to come, the persecutions

and the hard things and the tribulations that they're going

to face. And yet in light of all of that,

Jesus had these words. And so I have a few

questions for us to consider, to think about in light

of the context of that. Was this something realistic, reasonable

or realistic for Jesus to say? Both for them and

we might say for us today. Another question, is this statement,

let not your heart be troubled, is it a command?

And then we could add to that a little, maybe

the next notch, is it a sin or wrong when

we have a troubled heart? When we worry and are anxious,

is that sin? Well, I don't know if I can

answer these questions or all of these questions in a

satisfactory way, but I want to look at a few observations,

give a few observations, and look at a few things

here this morning that I feel have been helpful to me.

It doesn't take away the struggle. But I would like

to think of it or look at it in two

different sections, this sermon this morning. And the first part

is about What I feel is the heart of God

and the heart of Jesus about this subject of worry

and anxiety. And then the second part would be a

little bit more, hopefully with the first part established, at

least in my mind, it helps me maybe process or

be prepared for the second part, which is more the

practical things of dealing with this struggle. So the heart

of God. What did he mean? What did Jesus mean

about let not your heart be troubled? In light of

some of these other realities outside of a nice, tidy

setting in church where we can say nice things, when

we know that when we go out on Monday through Friday,

there's many struggles and things that I mentioned that are

just real and that cause us emotional upheaval at times.

So I'd like to just say a few things here that,

first of all, to try to make a point. God

created us as humans. We know that. Physical body, mental capacity, thinking,

making decisions, and our emotional part that affect our feelings.

And we might think about that part when we think

about worry and anxiety. But all three of these are

very much intertwined. I want us to... consciously be aware

of that gerald said that it stood out to me

if it didn't stand out to you that he talked

about physical healing and he said did you notice how

quickly that physical morphs into the spiritual at times and

i think it works both ways sometimes sometimes our physical

it does affects our spiritual health and some and sometimes

our spiritual mental emotional health impacts our physical health. It's

very much a package that God has made us as individuals.

We live in a fallen world, and we understand, I

don't need to tell you, but you understand about the

physical body. We have a body that gets sick at times.

It gets diseases. It gets viruses and cancers and things

like that. There's handicaps. We don't always know why, but

children sometimes are born blind. They're born deaf. They're born lame.

They can't walk. And we don't claim to understand that,

but we understand that as a reality in our world.

That there are people that are healthy physically and others

that simply aren't. For whatever reason. We don't know why.

And I would like to say that emotionally and mentally,

I think it is the same to some degree. As

much as we long to be strong, as much as

we long to be positive and strong emotionally and mentally,

there are times that we have troubled hearts and that

we're worried and we have fears and it is part

of humanity. And just like the physical bodies vary in health,

the emotional bodies vary in strength as well. And There

are some people that just do struggle with fear and

anxiety more than other people. And are prone to that.

And there can be a lot of reasons for that.

And I don't even claim to know them all, but

I'll mention maybe a few. I think that our upbringing,

our home life, our childhood, our parents, the level of

security that we have experienced or not experienced. Maybe experiences

of abuse or neglect. Even our genetics. Our personality. Our

level of conscientiousness. All those things play into our tendencies

in being anxious or worrisome. And I'm not saying that

people that... tend towards this need to live in defeat

and live a cripple necessarily in this area of anxiety

and worry and live in that state long term but

it may mean and it does mean I believe that

some will battle this problem in a different way than

some of the rest of us battle the problem We

still have a responsibility. Some will have to face this

on a daily basis in a way that others don't.

And we know that's true in other areas of our life.

There's some of us that tend naturally with the problems

of anger or immorality or other things in our life

that might not necessarily bother the next person too much.

Not that we're necessarily bulletproof from them. But we have

our areas that we're more vulnerable. And so we need

to remember that, I guess. Maybe that's just a consideration

that I want to bring out here. And regardless of

our weaknesses, we have our part to do to be

faithful in our weaknesses. Just because someone's prone to anger

does not mean that they can be angry but they

may have to face that and deal with that problem

in a way that the next person doesn't did you

know that that Jesus was troubled at times he said

let not your heart be troubled and yet He was

troubled at times. And I want to read you some

of those verses. I'm not going to, I have them

printed here, most of them. But if you just back

up a couple of chapters, and I'm going to read

a few in John 11, 33 through 35. And this

is the scene of where Jesus is at the tomb

of Lazarus. And Jesus, therefore... When Jesus therefore saw her

weeping and the Jews also weeping which came with her,

he groaned in his spirit and was troubled. And said,

Where have you laid him? And they said unto him, Lord,

come and see. Jesus wept. And John 12, 27 says,

Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father,

save me from this hour. But for this cause came

I unto this hour. And jump ahead to John 13, 21.

When Jesus had thus said he was troubled in his spirit,

and he testified and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you,

that one of you shall betray me. Luke 22, 42.

I'll just read this one yet. 42 to 44. Jesus

in the garden and saying, Father, if thou be willing,

remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but

thine be done. And there appeared an angel unto him

from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed

more earnestly. And his sweat was as it were great

drops of blood falling to the ground. Jesus knows what

it's like to be troubled in soul and troubled in spirit.

He wrestled with these negative emotions. And there's other references

we could look at. You could read Luke 12. You

could read some verses in Mark 14 that are examples

of this as well. We could also look at many

faithful men. And remember, I'm trying to make the point

here right now about how is God actually looking at

this battle, this part of humanity that we face. We

could look at of faithful men and women that face

distressing times that we have just in the Bible a few.

David cried out to God often in the Psalms. We

see his distress over and over again. We could look

at Elijah the great prophet that did miraculous things and

yet was discouraged and distressed as well. Job had many hardships.

He said, man that is born of a woman is

a few days and full of trouble. Esther, as you

think about her life and those moments, those days, those

weeks leading up to the story of her people almost

being killed and then God saving them, no doubt she

laid awake at night worrying about how this problem could

be solved. Martha was a good friend of Jesus and

she had a worrying problem and Jesus pointed that out

to her in Luke 10, 41. He said, Martha, Martha,

thou art careful, that means anxious, careful and troubled about

many things. Paul was a man that faced many trials

and tribulations and yet was a main godly example in

the Bible. So these men and women faced an awful

lot of stress and an awful lot of trouble in

just like maybe some of us do today. So I'll

bring us back to the question a little bit here.

Is having a troubled heart a sin? Is it wrong

to feel anxious, to feel the pressures, to live in

a state of disappointment when bad things happen? I would

say it this way. I don't think I don't believe

that having moments of worry and anxiety is a sin.

Maybe there's even seasons in our life of grief and

heartache where there's a sense of troubledness. But I'd also

go on to say that living in a state of mind,

in this state of mind, is not what God would

have us to do and will likely lead us into sin.

If we cannot find victory in this. Worry and anxiety

is exhausting. It wears us down. It's negative. It leads

to sin if it isn't sin. And yet, Jesus understood it.

He struggled with it. He had moments of it. He

felt it. He watched it in the eyes of his

disciples on the storms of Galilee and other places. As

he hung on the cross, he watched the women and

his mother weeping and in distress. And he instructed John,

he said, take care of my mother. And here I

have a main point under this main point that I

want to try to impress upon you. And that is

the simple fact that I don't know what your view

of God is on this subject. But one of the

traits of a good father and a good mother is

that they care about the condition of the heart of

their child. That might sound basic, but they are not

only concerned about the performance, the behavior, the obedience, the

physical care, but they care about the Child's heart. And

what's going on inside the heart of that child. A

good parent does not demand and command. That a child

has inner peace. But rather they lead them. They strive

to lead them. In a way of comfort. Into a

place of rest. Jesus was a comforter. And he said,

I'm going to leave and I'm going to send you

another comforter to replace him. And I would add to this,

to good parents, this is true about any good authority,

godly authority. A teacher, a preacher, a boss at work.

Is a wise, caring authority cares enough? about the hearts

and the emotions of a loved one, of a child.

And I guess maybe this is a basic point in

a way, but I think it reflects or our view

of God in this very much maybe feeds the problem

and makes it worse or can lead us into a

place of peace, maybe depending on how our view of

God and authority is. And I feel like this area

has been an area in my life that has been

kind of a slow dawning in the last, I don't know,

months or years, where through life, through circumstances, through relationships,

through friendships, through hard times of others, the reality of

the inner emotional needs, how impactful they are. in this

interwoven makeup that we are. And what I see here

is that Jesus was not only concerned, you know, if

you think about it as a God, as a dictator,

as a king, he could have gave the commandments and said,

be good and do these things and I'm going to

heaven and I'll be back to get you. You'll be fine.

But Jesus went way out of his way to address

the condition of the hearts of his disciples before he

left and about how they would be doing when they left.

And it bothered him that they would possibly be in turmoil,

that they would not be at rest. It was way

beyond just the doing and the performance. And to me,

that's a comfort and a blessing. And I see that

much more as Jesus' invitation and his care and his

heart for his people than a command that you be

not troubled. Or you might not make it. Because Jesus

was troubled at times. He had moments of troubledness. So

maybe the one point we can get from this is

that God understands our struggles and weaknesses and we should

also understand one another and the differences that we have

with one another. another now a little shift here i

would i would say as much as there needs to

be the the understanding and the heart of god and

all of that there is still this this this part

of it this personal responsibility that we have to not

live in a long-term state of worry and anxiety. It

is not God's will. It is not God's desire any

more than it is for us with our children. And

so we have a responsibility to take the instructions and

the tools that God has given us to combat these

negative and destructive emotions. And we understand that, as I

just gave a bunch of examples, that Hard things come

in life and we are troubled. But then there's also

the whole other side of this where we do bring

on at times unnecessary and damaging anxiety that God did

not mean us to have. And that brings us a

little bit into the second part here where it says

that I had mentioned a little more practical things. on

our part we could say a little bit of a

shift here but I want to keep this first part

as a foundation and I have a note written down

right at this point it says check the clock and

it was going to be at this point that I

was going to determine if I was going to have

one message on this or two messages and it looks

like we'll have two messages so we're going to have

two shorter messages and one less i mean one instead

of one long one but i'm not quite done yet

i'll try to just the thing i don't like about

this the negative thing about two messages is that it

can be kind of hard for me to to carry

that thought and burden on different people will be here

next time but I think I have too much material,

and I don't want to rush through it, and I

don't want to hold you here until quarter after 12.

So I'm going to try to wrap this up in

about five or ten minutes, and this will be part

one of Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled. Turn to

Matthew 6. Some more words of Jesus. 24 through 34.

I want you to read these verses in the New

King James Version. Very similar to the King James, but

it uses just a few more modern words that are

on this point of worry. So think about Jesus here saying,

on the Sermon on the Mount, on this subject. I'll

just read them 24 to 34. No one can serve

two masters, for either he will hate the one, And

love the other or else he will be loyal to

the one and despise the other. He cannot serve God

and mammon. Therefore I say to you, do not worry

about your life, what you will eat or what you

will drink. Nor about your body, what you will put on.

It is not life more than food and the body

more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air.

For they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns.

Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more

valuable than they? Which of you, by worrying, can add

one cubit to his stature? And cubit here can mean height,

which I always thought about, but it also means a

span of time. So which of you, by worrying, can

add a height or a day to your life? So

why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of

the field, how they grow, how they grow. They neither

toil or spin. And yet I say unto you that

even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like

one of these. Now if God so clothed the grass

of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown

into the oven, will he not much more clothe you,

O ye of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying,

What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or

what shall we wear? For all these things do the

Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you have

need of all these things. But seek first the kingdom

of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall

be added unto you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,

For tomorrow will worry about its own things sufficient for

the day is its own trouble. And again, I don't

know how many of you worry about or how many

of you worry and have anxiety. I suppose all of

us do at least once in a while. And maybe

some of us do a lot of the time. But

did you know that we live in one of the wealthiest,

freest countries in the world with an abundance of comfort,

abundance of things, clothes and trinkets, and yet 20% of Americans,

one in five, get some kind of mental treatment or

are on anxiety medication. One in five. That's, I don't know, 38.

in this group. That's the extreme version of anxiety that

needs treatment. And one thing to remember of these verses

that we just read, that when God or Jesus asks

us to do something or not to do something, it's

not really for, I don't think, his primary benefit, but

it's for our very best. It is for the best

life that we could live. When God says, Jesus says,

don't worry, please don't worry, don't worry. It's for our

best life. It's not just so we can arrive in

heaven sometime. It's that we can have a fullness of

life here on this earth. And so remember that, that

these things are not burdens. These are solutions to set

us free from this bondage. It is for our protection.

It is for our best quality of living. And Jesus

and the Bible speak quite a bit about this subject.

It's interesting. And I believe it was on his heart.

Just like a parent, a good parent, that is far

away from their children and cares about how they are doing.

In their hearts, when they punish them and send them

to bed, do they care if their heart is at

rest when they crawl into bed? And when a child

is not at rest, we know good and well we

snapped at them. And there was a tension between them.

A good parent, that'll bother. I need to make that right.

I want that child or my spouse or my friend

to be at peace. It's not life-threatening. It's just, it's

damaging to them. Worry is an emotion and a feeling.

Excuse me. Worry is a noun and a verb. It's

both an emotion and something that we do. And often

the feelings follow our choices in life. And we'll get

to that more in the next message. Worry and anxiety,

just a definition on this. Worry and anxiety is a

negative feeling of distress, torment, and fear or of danger.

It's the fear or the anticipation of the negative. I'd

like you to think about this thought. Maybe I'll end

here soon. A fear or an anticipation of the negative.

It's to expect and brace for the worst, whether it's

real or imagined. And Jesus says, don't do that. You

can go through life and there's endless amounts of things

to speculate and believe. And kind of have a hunch.

That it's going to be bad. It's not going to work.

It's not going to work out. And we can ruin today.

A lot of times by worrying about tomorrow. Worry works against.

Faith and trust. And left unchecked. It becomes a form

of unbelief. Which then is sin. And which was a

very serious thing. With the children of Israel. You could

think of. Worry as faith blockers. I don't know if

that's a proper term. Or fruit of the spirit blockers.

When our life is full of worry and full of anxiety,

you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't

really believe that you can have a deep faith and

a deep trust. And the fruit of the spirit is

not coming out of a person's life of love and

joy and peace when a person is full of anxiety

and worry. Faith, on the other hand, is kind of

the reverse to some degree. It is the trust and

the confidence, not necessarily that everything will be problem-free in life,

but that there is a God, a Heavenly Father, one

that desires good, that even though we're in the midst

of difficulties, like maybe Jesus was or his disciples, that

we have the confidence that there is someone in control

that has our good in mind. And we hang on

to that faith of the good master in heaven. that

is there and he is in control. Feels a little

bit abrupt, but I think I'm going to just close there.

And I'm sorry if this is all you hear. I'm

not sure what to tell you. It's kind of unfinished,

but I have too much to finish. And there's a

lot of practical things that I would hope that are

from the Bible that I hope can be helpful the

next time we talk on this subject. So I will

ask for a closing song and then turn the time

over to Gerald.