John 13:36-14:6 "What Does Jesus Want Me To Do When I Fail?"

Alright, if you have a Bible with you, we are continuing our series in the Gospel of John, in John chapter 13, beginning at verse 36, going through 14.6, we are in the upper room discourse.

John 13 · chapter mention

This is Jesus' goodbye dinner with his disciples.

Hear the word of God from John chapter 13, verse 36 through 14.6.

Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going?

Jesus answered him, Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.

Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now?

I will lay down my life for you.

Jesus answered, Will you lay down your life for me?

Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.

Let not your hearts be troubled.

Believe in God, believe also in me.

In my father's house 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 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.

Please pray with me.

Jesus, the meaning of these words, I pray you would not only make clear to us so that we understand them, but that we take them to heart.

That you would speak peace to troubled hearts today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

During the Second World War, that's how everyone's favorite sermon starts.

During the Second World War, on the Eastern Front, which is the worst part of the war, that is Russia versus Germany.

So Russia was the victim of the largest surprise attack in history.

It was like a thousand kilometer, three million man invasion that they didn't see coming.

It's pretty amazing.

But Russia had they had huge problems with morale.

Their troops were just running away.

They were unprepared.

They were undersupplied.

They were surprised.

Here's how bad their supply was.

There were certain soldiers who didn't have a rifle.

And so they would follow around a soldier with a rifle.

When that guy got killed, he was supposed to pick up his rifle and carry on the fight.

They're like, you shared.

You shared a rifle.

Okay, so that's rough.

Okay.

So they came up, Joseph Stalin came up with some pretty ingenious, here, mean ways to uh to get them to stand and fight.

Um and so one of the things they came up with was something called the punishment battalion.

The punishment battalion.

Being in a regular battalion wasn't tough enough if you failed in some way, if you didn't carry out the orders of your commander just right, if you ever fell back, which is a legitimate military thing to do, if you ever took a step back, you would go to the punishment battalion.

If you, you know, stole rations or something like that, any failure, you could go to the punishment battalion.

And when you were in the punishment battalion, here's how they made it terrible.

You got worse food than everybody else and less of it.

You got even less gear, and if they were sharing rifles, you could imagine what that would be like.

And a lot of the time you didn't even get quarters, you got to sleep just in a ditch or something like that.

And most of all was the shame.

Right?

Because a lot of the time, if you performed badly, if your unit performed badly, an entire unit could be sent to the punishment battalion.

To be in the punishment battalion, to wear that failure on your chest, people were desperate to get out.

There were two ways out of the punishment battalion.

Right?

Because the punishment battalion, if here's what they did with them.

Let's say there was a minefield that needed to be cleared, they would just have the punishment battalion run through the minefield to clear it.

Or if there was a machine gun that needed to be taken out, they would just charge it en masse.

Right?

And so the two ways out was one, if you had a spectacular success.

If you did something so amazing that it makes up for your failure, you could be released from the punishment battalion.

Or if you were if you were wounded badly enough, and they they literally would write in the little ledger, atoned in blood.

Okay?

So if you shed your blood, you could get out of the punishment battalion.

So two ways back.

When you fail, extraordinary merit or sufficient suffering.

Makes intuitive sense, doesn't it?

And you can see how they came up with that idea because when we fail, when we have a serious failure, not a little oopsie, not a mistake, but you know, failure, failure, like like moral failure, like the thing where you said never again and then you did it again, that failure.

Or when you betrayed trust, or when you seriously dropped the ball with your responsibilities, or something like that, and people ended up, you know, having to pay the price for it, that kind of failure.

You know, the failure that's bothering you a lot right now that I'm bringing it up, and you're not appreciating me a whole lot.

The the two intuitive things that come to us is I need to do something so good, it makes up for this.

That's my way out.

Or I need to hate myself long enough, or I need to isolate myself long enough.

I've got to inflict some sort of suffering on myself.

Right?

Because unless you're a psychopath, a real failure will trouble your heart.

You do not have peace anytime you think of it.

You can be troubled, and you know, I mean, especially for those of us who are committed to Christ, when you have a real moral failure, you know, when you have a relapse, when you have those those sorts of things, or or or what have you, whatever it is you are considering failure.

You're like, man, do I not mean it when I say I believe in Jesus?

I thought I was making such good progress, and then I I go and do this and I ruin it all, I throw it all away.

Maybe I'm not saved.

And you know, like maybe when I die and I stand before God, maybe I've been kidding myself about actually knowing Jesus.

That's a troubled heart.

What do you do?

How do you respond to that?

Well, our instincts are well, I'll just do something so good.

I'll put together an even longer streak of sobriety from whatever.

I will do something so much better.

I'm gonna develop new habits that are gonna outweigh my failure so that I can move on.

Or I am going to isolate myself, I am gonna hate myself, I am gonna give myself a mental tongue lashing that Ice Cube would be envious of.

If you ever heard Ice Cube's just rhymes.

Don't say I told you to listen to them.

I didn't.

You know, I've got to pay my penance.

Both of those ways, saying I've got to earn my way out with merit or suffering, that is to focus on your failure.

That is to hold up your failure and look right at it and say, I need to overcome this, I need to do something about this, either merit or suffering.

Is that what Jesus wants us to do?

Now, I want to point us back to the text here, starting at 1336.

Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going?

Because Jesus says, I'm leaving.

Jesus answered him, Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.

What's he talking about?

He's talking about going to the cross.

Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now?

I will lay down my life for you.

Peter means rock.

I'm the rock, I rock.

I'm not going anywhere, I'm solid, bro.

Petros.

Jesus answered, Will you lay down your life for me?

Truly, truly.

Guys, what is that what in John, when Jesus says truly, truly, what's coming next?

Something hard to hear.

Peter gets a truly, truly, truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.

Okay, if you don't know the story, Jesus is right.

Before the sun comes up, Peter will have denied Jesus three times.

So would we consider what Peter does?

Failure?

Saying, I'm gonna go to death with you, and he doesn't last a few hours before he not only doesn't die with Jesus, but he renounces Jesus three times.

Failure?

Big.

It doesn't get worse than that failure, does it?

To renounce Jesus?

Right?

It's not like, oh, I had too much wine.

Failure.

That's I renounced my Savior.

I renounced the Messiah.

I bailed on him.

And the rest of the disciples aren't even gonna make it that long.

They bail on Jesus before Peter does.

Peter's the one with the most heart.

It's catastrophic failure.

It's hard to point to a bigger failure in the entire Bible than Peter and the disciples on this evening.

That happens.

We'll just wait a second.

What does Jesus say?

Guys, you're all about to blow it.

Peter, you're gonna deny me.

You better figure out how to get back in my good graces.

What's the next thing he says?

Look at 14.1.

Ignore the chapter division.

It's artificial.

He says, let not your hearts be troubled.

Yes, you're all gonna fail.

You're all gonna bail on me.

You're all going down in flames.

Don't worry too much about it.

Let not your heart be troubled.

What do you do instead?

He says, he says, believe you believe in God, believe also in me.

Let's just let that sink in for a first century Jew.

Believe in God.

Alright?

He's like, hey, you know how you guys believe that there is one true God, Yahweh, the maker of heaven and earth, you know, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, the Exodus, David, all that.

You know how you believe in him?

Me too.

Okay?

What Jesus wants us to do is not focus on failure, but focus on him.

When we fail, focus on your savior, not your failure.

We focus on our savior, not our failure.

Now, what does Jesus say?

Why is it important that we focus on him when we fail?

Okay, so for those of you who like writing down outlines, here's your outline.

The kingdom, Jesus says, the kingdom is for believing failures.

His kingdom is our ultimate hope, and his kingdom has an entrance.

Those are the three things.

Okay.

So here's the thing: failure, it makes us feel like we don't belong.

When I was uh in high school, I had become a Christian in kind of my second year of high school.

And um, my last year of high school, I got involved with a ministry called Young Life.

Any Young Life fans out there?

Love Young Life.

Um, and so me and a couple of my Christian friends, we would bring a lot of our non-Christian friends with us, and and Young Life is great for that, right?

And one night uh I was sitting with one of my friends, his name was Alex, and Alex had some sort of diagnosable letter disorder.

He was a squirrely dude.

Uh back then we just called people squirrely.

Now we'd say they have, I don't know, some alphabet soup thing.

Okay, and so the leader, it like the fun time was over, and the leader was giving the talk.

And I was sitting with my friend Alex, and we kind of were goofing with each other and having fun.

And after the talk was over, the leader took me aside and he said, I am gonna rip your head off.

And then he added, in love.

And he said, Hey, you know, you're one of the, you're like the only guy among these guys who has any leadership potential right now, right?

I expect you to be a steadying presence for a squirrely guy like Alex, you know, and and and he was influencing you, you're not influencing him.

Right now, he was giving someone he saw, you know, leadership potential in some a little redirection.

That was that was fine, but what I heard was you failed and you're not welcome here anymore.

He didn't say that, that's what I heard.

And I never went back.

When we fail, we feel like we're not welcome anymore.

That's how a lot of us respond when we fail.

When we fail to follow Jesus, when we fail, oh, I haven't prayed in a week, or or I messed up with this again, right?

We say, well, then I shouldn't take sacrament and I shouldn't go to prayer and I can't show my face in a church.

I'm a failure.

And we think that our failure is gonna exclude us from God's kingdom, perhaps.

I gotta earn my way back.

But Jesus wants us to focus not on our failure, but on our Savior.

Why?

Because his kingdom is for believing failures.

So the next thing he says, after he says, You're all gonna fail.

Focus on me.

Don't let your heart be troubled.

What's the next thing he says?

He gives them the hope of the kingdom.

He says, In my father's house are many rooms.

It's a metaphor for the kingdom.

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

So, yeah, you failures, he says, What?

Believe in God, believe in me.

So the kingdom is for believing failures, not people who secure a spot with their own success.

Here's the deal.

There is not one person on planet earth except Jesus when he was here who qualifies with his success for the kingdom.

There is only one category of person from God's eyes, failures.

The difference between who is in the kingdom and who isn't is not who succeeds and fails, but failures who believe in the Savior.

I've said many times, and I didn't make this up, I forget where I got it.

The Christian faith is not a do, it's a done.

It is believing what Christ has done for us on the cross and in his resurrection.

It is not about what we do for God.

We need to focus on our Savior, not your failure.

And, you know, the thing is, Jesus is comforting them with a vision of the kingdom.

There are many things that trouble our hearts, aren't there?

Just open up the news.

Or, you know, whatever.

However, you're getting your news.

There's a lot of voices that trouble our hearts.

There's very few that speak peace to it.

I went on the Babylon B this week and they are on fire.

I found this one.

It says, annoying.

Man's faith in God's plan is getting in the way of his political doomerism.

Kaysville, Utah.

Local Christian man Greg Moffat expressed annoyance this week over the fact that his faith in God's goodness continues to get in the way of sinking into despair over the state of American politics.

I want to descend into total hopelessness, but I can't, sighed Moffat.

I see online how everything is imploding and we're all descending into a hellscape.

And I want to wrap myself in a cocoon of absolute gloom, I really do.

Then I remember that I had faith in God, who loves me and all of humanity in spite of the mess we've made.

Ugh, so annoying.

Moffat spent an hour Monday afternoon scrolling social media, trying his best to crush any vestiges of remaining hope, but ultimately came up empty.

It's frustrating, said Moffat.

I keep staring into the abyss of darkness that is politics on social media, trying to crush my spirit completely, but I can't do it.

I did everything.

I listen to so many people screaming about how our country is on the brink of destruction, but I can't stop trusting in Christ.

It's exasperating.

When we focus on failure, we lose sight of hope.

Right?

And Jesus wants us to focus on the Savior because his kingdom is our realized hope.

He first of all tells us that the kingdom is real.

In verse 2, he says, In my father's house, a metaphor for the kingdom, are many rooms.

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

He's saying, It is real.

He is not making things up.

It is also the culmination of the entire story of the gospel.

In verse 3, he says, If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.

So Jesus refers to his return.

Okay?

When we if we look at what the Bible is from cover to cover, it is the story of God redeeming his creation.

It begins in the garden, right?

That's the whole thing.

And Jesus is the high point of it.

And there is a day still to come when Christ returns and he completes that redemption.

Jesus is talking about this global cosmic event of his return from just their relationship.

He says, I'm coming back for you.

I'm going to take you there myself.

It's the culmination of the gospel story.

It's our hope.

And the whole point of the kingdom is that it's with Jesus.

He says, Where I am, you may be also.

The truth is, the Bible doesn't do a whole lot of describing of the kingdom of God.

The main thing that we're to take away about what the nature of the kingdom is, is it's with Jesus.

Okay?

You know that's going to be fine.

These are reasons that our hearts should not be troubled, right?

Reasons to focus on our Savior, not our failure.

When we talk about the kingdom being real, okay, we can all agree that Christ came in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

We've already seen that happen.

That hope was fulfilled.

We can also see from the scriptures and all sorts of historical evidence that Christ rose again as also foretold by Christ.

And then that the Old Testament said, way back when, that the worship of the one true God is gonna and the Messiah is gonna spread across the globe.

Back when there were a few thousand people, you know, who believed.

That, right?

That's happened.

It's here we are, on the other side of the globe, people all over the planet worshiping the one true God.

We all, okay, great.

Yeah.

It's real.

Christ has yet to be wrong.

The scripture has yet to be wrong.

Everything that has been foretold as part of God's plan of redemption, we've seen come to fulfillment.

And now we're like, but I don't know about the kingdom, right?

It's coming, guys.

As sure as Jesus came, as sure as Jesus rose, as sure as the worship of the one true God has spread across the globe, Christ will return and complete redemption.

And, you know, the that really is our hope.

That the culmination of God's plan of redemption, the end of the gospel story, the the fulfillment of the gospel story, that is our hope.

In my lifetime, there have been a lot of things I've seen people hope in that went.

Back, uh now I'm old enough for this, but you know, in the in the late 80s, early 90s, as um as kind of like global communism was falling apart, there were people, and you could look back on this, there was in fact a very influential essay called The End of History by uh a theorist named Francis Fukuyama.

And he was saying, you know, this time of ideological struggle, it's over.

It's over, and liberal democracy has won.

He called it the end of history, right?

It's fulfilled.

All good, there'll be little problems, just little ones.

But it's over.

History's done, the big struggle's done.

Uh didn't age well.

Right?

Or, you know, there was a time when big tech, it was like, oh, they're just making cars better and TVs better.

And then we've all kind of reached a point in the last few years with big tech where it's like, oh wait, you mean it could also take away way more than it gives?

That's not what we thought was gonna happen with big tech.

Or, I mean, all respect to Dr.

King, but he he said, you know, the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

Kind of this idea that human beings are on a steady march of moral progress.

I agree with Dr.

King on most things, but I mean, you gotta say, it's a lot more complicated than that, right?

In some ways, maybe we're better, in some ways, perhaps we're worse.

Those aren't our hope.

The culmination of redemption, Christ's kingdom is our hope.

That's what, that's the reason our hearts are not to be troubled.

And, you know, this is really key that the kingdom, it's with Jesus.

Okay?

Now, I don't know for the younger folks, you may not be thinking like this, but when you get to my age, you're like, oh, I'm gonna die.

This is gonna happen.

I've got more years behind than ahead, perhaps.

And it really there really is gonna come a day when I face what's on the other side.

And you don't ask to think about those things.

It just happened, Jason.

It just starts happening.

It just starts happening.

Yeah, you're kind of freaking everybody out right now.

But here's the thing: there's a lot of reason for your heart to be troubled there.

Speak peace to your heart that you're gonna be with Jesus.

Don't focus on your failure, focus on your Savior, because his kingdom is our realized hope.

And it's also so important that we focus on the Savior because we have to ask, what is the way in to the kingdom?

How does one get there?

Um, if you ever want to read a really frustrating book, go pick up The Castle by Franz Kafka.

I uh I'm anyone Kafka fans that I'm gonna offend right now.

All right, here we go.

So it's a famous book that everyone says you need to read, you know, like hundred greatest books.

I'm like, alright, it's one of the greatest, I'll read it.

Here's what happens.

I'm spoiling the whole thing.

It's been out a hundred years.

There's a land surveyor, his name is Kay, right?

Isn't that his name?

And he goes to a town called K.

And he's been hired to do a job there.

And someone says, Well, you need to go to the castle to, you know, get hooked up with the job you're supposed to do.

And so he spends the whole book trying to get to the castle, but he can't get in contact with anyone in there, he can't go in the castle, can't call anyone there.

That's the end.

That's the whole book.

That's that's essentially it.

And it's it's clearly a metaphor for right, like if there is purpose in life, if there is truth in life, there may be, it may exist, but there's no way to get to it.

Right?

How does one find it?

What's the way in?

What's the access point?

Well, Jesus tells us simple and plain what the access point is.

Look at verses four and five in chapter 14.

He says, You know the way to where I am going.

Thomas, who's my favorite disciple, because he always says what everyone else is thinking, Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you're going.

How can we know the way?

He's like, uh, my the only one not getting this, so I'm gonna go ahead and say what I'm thinking.

Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

The kingdom has an entrance.

It has an entrance.

Jesus is the entrance.

Jesus is the one who reveals the truth about it.

He's the way, he's the truth, and he is the key to eternal life.

Those three things in this context, they overlap, right?

That's why he's saying he is the key to getting into the kingdom.

He is the entrance to the kingdom.

Your goodness, your success, or your penance that you're gonna impose on yourself for your failure is not the entrance.

Your good works are not the entrance.

Your faith is not the entrance.

Jesus is the entrance to the kingdom.

Now, for some of us, you may be saying, well, are you saying there's no other way into Christ's kingdom?

Right, except Jesus?

Isn't that exclusionary?

Right?

Like what if people want to enter by another entrance?

Now, you hear this a lot, right?

Saying that that there is only one way to the kingdom is exclusionary.

Let me ask you this.

All right, this this building is called Clayton Early Learning Center.

Are we excluded from Clayton Early Learning Center?

No, we're in it, right?

That's that's very obvious.

It was not a trick question.

You're all included in Clayton Early Learning Center, okay?

How many entrances do we get?

Just one.

Just the front entrance.

It is a sufficient entrance.

No one is kept out.

You're like, I want to go in by the side entrance.

They're building an elevator there.

I want to go.

This one's locked.

That one, I don't even know.

I don't think that door goes anywhere.

Okay?

Right?

So to say there's only one entrance is exclusionary is not true.

There's one entrance and it includes everybody.

Okay?

So again, Jesus is the only entrance, but it's not for those who prove themselves worthy.

It's for anyone who wants to walk through the door.

And there is someone back there wanting to walk through the door.

Corey, could you uh let them in?

Thank you.

See?

See how see that?

Right there.

I set that up.

I think that's, I don't know who that is, actually.

It's Jesus himself.

I don't know, the sunglasses don't look like Jesus stuff.

But focusing on failure is not how we enter the kingdom.

Right?

Thinking that I've got to suffer sufficiently or I've got to merit uh inclusion in the kingdom, that's not the way into the kingdom.

We need to focus on our Savior, not our failure.

Like many things in the Christian faith, we have to learn something that is counterintuitive.

Okay?

Now, I myself, I've lived out here in Colorado for 15 years now.

And the one thing I've really gotten into is cross-country skiing.

A lot of it comes very naturally to me.

It's quiet, it's cheap, it's cold, and it's arduous.

You know, and everyone everyone will say, Well, isn't it hard to go uphill?

And I say, I like the hard part.

I like going uphill.

That comes very naturally to me because it's just a matter of kind of gritton and be and endurance, right?

Grit and endurance.

In fact, I used to do it with a ski trailer on, two kids in it, and one hanging on the back, right?

And just go uphill.

That comes naturally to me.

Very, very easy.

The hard part for me still is going downhill.

Because cross-country skis are only about this wide, and there's no edge to them, and you're on these like trails where you have to turn with no edge, and you can't see what's coming around the corner.

And so when I was first doing it, I had never, I don't really have much skiing experience.

Uh my instinct, I would lean back.

What happens when you lean back on skis, everybody?

You fall, right?

I would say, I'd be like, shh, oh, I'm gonna fall.

And then I'd lean back because I was afraid I was gonna fall, and I would fall.

Right?

Focusing on the failure led to failure.

Someone finally told me, well, you gotta go against your instinct, and you gotta do what?

When you're going downhill, right?

Don't think about falling.

Focus on a point about 10, 15 feet ahead of you, and you lean forward into it, right?

And then you stay up.

You don't focus on falling, you focus on that point ahead.

Now I'm not gonna stretch it to say that's my savior, okay?

But you get the idea.

Our instinct says, focus on failure, right?

I failed, I need to focus on that failure.

But what Jesus says is don't focus on your failure, focus on your savior.

You don't need to make up for your failure through incredible merit or through sufficient suffering, because that is to focus on your failure.

Instead, when we fail, focus on our savior, not our failure.

Please pray with me.

Lord, that our when we fail, it would drive us more closely to your cross.

That we would look and focus on our Savior.

For every one look we take at our failure, we would take ten at our Savior.

That we would be driven forward and comforted by the fact that you have told us there is a place for us believing failures in your kingdom.

Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.