Christ’s Cure for a Troubled Heart (John 14:1-14) Myles Holmes | December 14, 2025

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

So good to worship together this morning.

Before we get into God's Word, I have a very important announcement that really affects the life of the church, and that is that I shaved this morning.

And I need you to know that because we're about to experience that the authority of the preacher comes not from a beard, but from God's word.

And with that in mind, I'd ask you to take your copy of God's word and open to John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

We're going to be in verses 1 to 14 this morning, and you're going to need a copy of God's word.

So if you don't have one, the ushers are making their way to the front, and you can flag one of them down.

They'd love to get a copy into your hands.

This is our gift to you.

You can keep it, trusting that as you read it, you will be blessed finding the author of life.

You'll know this reality that I tried to teach one of my children this week, and that is that what we want is not always what we actually need.

And one of my children this week was expressing her frustration in a conversation with me as she addressed the problem that she doesn't get to watch unlimited TV.

And that there are some kids in the world who get to watch as much TV as they want.

And so as she made her case, she pulled out some evidence of other kids who watch as much TV as they want.

And I told her this reality, what you want isn't always what you need.

Now that lesson starts small as a child, and it seems obvious, but the older we get, really the more painful and personal that question and answer becomes.

Because as adults, we have all the evidence.

We've lived long enough to know that many of the things that we once looked to for satisfaction never actually delivered what we thought they would.

That vacation that we thought would provide finally provide the rest that we wanted.

Actually, we ended up coming home more tired than we left, needing a vacation from the vacation.

The version of life that we dreamed of, where work wasn't so busy, where the family wasn't so dependent on us, so that we had more time.

Well, if it maybe ever was realized, usually it's not.

It wasn't what we thought it was.

That one habit we had in our life, we thought if we just get rid of this one thing, life will be completely different.

And yet all of these things in many ways never deliver what they promise.

And being on the other side of those things, sometimes we can realize that what we thought we wanted wasn't always what we actually needed.

Now in John 14, the disciples are in that exact same place.

You can imagine what it's like to be the disciples who have left G have left everything for Jesus.

They have left their jobs, they have left their homes, some of them even left their wives, and they have done this all to follow Jesus for three years.

And for three years they have had nothing but each other and Jesus.

Jesus has been the anchor of their life.

Jesus has been their rabbi, their teacher.

He's been everything.

And now in the end of John 13, Jesus drops this bomb on their life.

I am leaving.

I'm going away.

And if you can sympathize with the disciples, you can feel the anxiety rise as they ask this question: what happens to us now?

I mean, what does this mean for the kingdom?

We thought that Jesus was going to be the king.

What about everything that we gave up?

I mean, we gave up our lives.

We had established lives.

We gave them up for you, Jesus.

What do we do?

As if that weren't enough.

At the end of John 13, Jesus looks at the strongest disciple.

I mean, Peter was the one that everyone said, if anyone's got it, Peter's got it.

And Jesus looks at Peter and he says, Listen, as strong as you are, as confident at times, even overconfident as you are, Peter, you will fail me.

And the thought is like Peter is the teacher's pet.

If Peter can't do it, can any of us do it?

And you can understand that their fears then are not imaginary, their anxieties are not unfounded.

There is real cause here for troubled hearts.

As Jesus says, I am going away.

And in that moment, as these disciples' hearts are genuinely shaken, Jesus says something startling in verse 1 of chapter 14.

Look what he says.

We're going to read it in a moment, but look what he says.

Let not your hearts be troubled.

Amen.

Amen.

Sounds dismissive at first, doesn't it?

You ever walk up to someone drowning and say, hey, just stop drowning for a little bit.

I mean, I've never done that, but I don't think it would work very well.

Now, but I want you to see this morning is that Jesus is not minimizing our fears.

He's not pretending like the trouble we face isn't there.

He's not saying, hey, listen, this isn't, it's not trouble at all.

Don't be troubled.

He's about to show the disciples, and he's about to show us that what we think we need is not always what we actually need.

That where you and I often think that we need maybe a better plan or changed circumstance or maybe just certainty about the future.

Jesus knows what we truly need.

And in these verses, he tells us that what we need is access to the Father.

And John 14 comes to us to show us that the cure for troubled hearts does not come just from changed circumstances.

It can only come from being brought home.

It can only come from gaining access to the Father.

I want you to see this in the text.

We're going to read it together.

Would you stand with me as we honor that?

This is God's word given to us in John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

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.

You know the way to where I am going.

Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are 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 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.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can grab a seat.

As we walk through this passage, I want you to notice something, and that is that the kind of answer that Christianity offers to troubled and anxious hearts differs greatly from the kind of answer that the world gives to anxious and troubled hearts.

The world tells us that anxiety is something that you can manage, that it's something that you can maybe distract yourself from or medicate or explain away with enough therapy.

Jesus comes and he doesn't say, here's how to calm yourself down.

Here's five steps to curing a troubled heart.

On the flip side, Jesus doesn't also say, well, just figure it out.

As though real faith would never have any sort of anxiety.

Instead, Jesus comes and he says, When your heart is troubled, let me give you what you actually need.

Let me give you what the world cannot.

And the first thing that Jesus gives to us when our hearts are troubled is not a plan or an explanation of why our hearts are troubled.

It's actually a person.

Do you see that in verse 1?

Look what he says in verse 1.

Let not your hearts be troubled.

Believe in God.

Believe also in me.

This is where Jesus begins.

And I want you to see this first in this text.

When my heart is troubled, Jesus gives me a person to trust.

When my heart is troubled, Jesus gives me a person to trust.

Now I want you at the very beginning of this passage to see, and maybe what's happening right now is the Holy Spirit is causing this sense of worship to rise in our hearts because of who Jesus is.

Look at the glory and the goodness of Jesus in this passage, because three times in the past three chapters of the Gospel of John, we have been told that someone is troubled, and it's not the disciples.

The person who has been troubled three times in the past three chapters is Jesus himself.

In John chapter 11, Jesus was troubled, we are told, when he was at Lazarus' tomb.

John 11 · chapter mention

In John chapter 12, we are told that Jesus was troubled in his spirit as he looked ahead to the cross.

John 12 · chapter mention

And then in John chapter 13, we are told that Jesus was troubled as he considered the betrayal of Judas.

John 13 · chapter mention

And now what we come to in John 14 is that the disciples are troubled themselves.

And what you and I find in Jesus Christ is someone who knows what it's like to have a troubled soul.

In fact, at this very moment, as Jesus becomes a physician who deals with the anxiety and trouble of our lives, Jesus is a day before his crucifixion.

And Jesus can look forward to a few short hours where he will be alone in the garden and we are told that he is so troubled that he is sweating blood.

Now, if anyone at this in this world gets a pass to not care about other people's troubles and to look inward for a moment, would we not agree that it's Jesus right now?

I mean, if the disciples really understood what Jesus was about to endure on the cross, wouldn't they say, okay, you know what, Jesus, my problem's not so big.

You got a big problem coming up.

And yet what we find here is that Jesus does not turn inward.

Jesus is not looking for a pity party.

Instead, he descends from his troubles into our troubles.

He moves towards his disciples.

And loved ones, when you find that your heart is troubled, when you find that your life is filled with anxiety, I want you to see that Jesus moves toward anxious people, not away from anxious people.

We're completely different than that.

Don't you agree?

You ever sit beside an anxious person on the plane?

You want to be as far away from them as possible.

Loved one, Jesus draws near to you in your anxiety.

And in doing so, he shows you something that is vital for your heart to hold on to this morning, and that is that in the midst of everything that troubles us, Jesus is a person that we can trust.

Jesus is a refuge.

Jesus is a stronghold.

He is the one who says, Cast your anxieties on me because I care for you.

You know, Jesus is the parent who we are the children.

And when when we cry out with our problems, which if you know, if we had perspective, maybe they wouldn't really be problems at all.

And yet Jesus is the parent who draws near to us.

He doesn't stand at a distance and explain to you why your fear is irrational.

He descends into what's troubling you and he cares for you.

Now I want you to notice that what Jesus does here is provide an anchor for us to place our feet on, a foundation for us to place our feet on in times of trouble.

He doesn't just simply change our circumstances.

He doesn't say to the disciples, hey, don't worry, you know, it's not gonna be a big problem at all.

This will the clouds will pass over your head.

Instead, he gives them an anchor, trust in me.

He redirects their trust.

So when he certainly has the power to change their circumstance, and he certainly has the power to change our circumstances.

You know, the things that cause you anxiety, the things that are hard in your life, the things that that trouble you.

Do you not believe that Jesus, in a moment like that, has the miraculous power to change your circumstance, and yet, loved one, he doesn't.

Instead, he redirects your trust.

And Jesus is teaching us something here about anxiety.

He's teaching us something about trouble, he's teaching us something about hardship, and that is that according to Jesus, anxiety is not just what's happening around us.

More importantly, it's about something that is happening within us.

More importantly, it's about where our confidence is resting.

This is why he says in verse one that the cure to a troubled heart, you see it here, is this believe in God.

Believe also in me.

When you find yourself filled with trouble, when you find yourself filled with anxiety, the cure is to believe in God.

Now, now, love, I want you to see a couple things here.

I want you to know that if you are an anxious person or you find your life filled with trouble, you are not alone.

You could likely right now break out into a conversation with the person beside you who could explain some hardships that they are walking through.

But as you go through the scriptures, what you find is that the people that God used most are often the people that are most filled with anxiety and trepidation.

You think about Moses, you know, a man a commander of a million-person army.

And what does he say to God when God says, I'm sending you Moses?

Moses says, Hey, listen, God, I'm a little afraid to speak.

You think about Elijah.

You remember Elijah on Mount Carmel, where like Elijah's alone and there's all the prophets of Baal, and Elijah humiliates all the prophets of Baal in this humiliating gesture as they worship this false God, and Elijah proves them all wrong.

And then everyone comes in and slays all the prophets.

And then the next day, Jezebel says something to Elijah that deeply concerns him, and he threaten, then threatens Elijah, and Elijah runs.

Elijah runs.

And one chapter after that moment on Mount Carmel, you find Elijah under a broom tree, praying, Lord, I've had enough.

Praying, Lord, take my life.

And what does God do for Elijah?

He he comes, not in the fire, not in the earthquake, not in the wind.

But in a gentle whisper, God comes and he reminds Elijah that he is a God.

That he does not need the fire, that he does not need the earthquake, that he does not need the wind, that he is a God, and that he is not alone.

And loved one, what Jesus does here is the same.

It is not a new strategy.

What Jesus says is this believe in me.

What you need is a renewed trust.

And so can we apply this to our lives right now and ask ourselves this question?

When when anxiety hits our lives, when when trouble comes into our lives, where do we go?

Where do you run to when things get hard?

I mean, I can tell you in a moment of vulnerability, I can tell you what is on my tool belt that helps me escape hard life.

I can tell you that at times I will just dream about a future version of myself.

Oh, you know, when this changes, maybe it maybe it'll get it better.

I can tell you that at times when life gets hard, I can try to find escape in something like food.

I can tell you right now that for me on my tool belt of escape, when life gets hard, I can try to entertain myself as though that will push away the pain of life.

And loved one, I wonder what is on your tool belt when life gets hard, when your life is filled with anxiety.

What do you look to?

And what do you what do you rely on that you falsely believe will deliver you from what's hard?

Maybe it's shopping.

Maybe it's Netflix.

Maybe it's avoiding conflict.

Maybe it's getting your head down and doing hard work.

What is it that you rely on that is not Jesus, that you feel will be a temporary solution to the hardship, to the anxiety of life.

Jesus comes into our life and he says, so simply that our troubled hearts will not be cured by escape, that they they must be cured by a person.

Believe in me, Jesus says.

Trust the one who is with you.

And so, very practically, what we are putting off here is this reliance on these devices of escape we have, and this trust in Jesus Christ.

This understanding of trust that says trust is choosing to look to Jesus when what is happening in your life makes no sense at all.

That believing that when nothing makes sense in your life, the one who guides you, Jesus Christ Himself, does.

We need Jesus to be our guide.

You know, very practically I do this all the time.

If if you've heard a few sermons before, you've heard me in a very passive, aggressive way complain about the fact that I cannot fix anything in my house.

I have no idea how to do it.

And so what I have to do is pull up a YouTube video.

And you find this YouTube video of this, you know, really old guy.

Only 1,700 people have ever watched this video, and he only posted like three videos on some super obscure thing that you are doing in your house.

Is anyone with me?

You know, you've seen these videos.

And you rely on this guy.

I mean, I don't have it in and of myself.

I cannot fix this problem myself.

I'm gonna rely on this guy.

And loved one, Jesus is saying, I am that person.

Believe in me.

When your heart is troubled, what you need most is a person.

Well, once we know we can trust him, the next question becomes clear.

Well, where is he taking me?

If I'm trusting to follow Jesus, if that's what is called of me when life is hard, when anxiety comes, where is he taking me?

The second thing I want you to see here is that Jesus gives us a cure to our troubled hearts in giving us a place to belong.

Giving us a place to belong.

Would you look at verse 2 with me?

Notice what Jesus says in verse 2 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?

What Jesus does is he redirects our attention off the trouble that fills our hearts to a place that he is preparing for us.

Now I want you to know that this place that Jesus talks about is a place that already exists.

The Father's house isn't new.

What needs to be prepared in Jesus' mind is the way for sinners to get there.

It's not that Jesus needs to go and sort of construct some mansion for us to live in, that he's in heaven right now with a hammer and a saw, creating a place with many rooms, paving the streets of gold.

Heaven, the very presence.

Of God is a place that has always existed.

What Jesus is doing is preparing the way for a sinful people to get into heaven.

And the way that Jesus prepares that is through his death and resurrection.

That is why this conversation is happening on the night before the cross.

The cross, Jesus is saying, will become the doorway into this place that I am preparing for you.

And that is exactly what the cross of Christ does.

By his death, Jesus removes the barrier of sin.

By his resurrection, Jesus secures for us a place in the Father's house.

In other words, what Jesus is saying here is this: I am going to prepare a place for you.

Where am I going?

It is the cross.

It is everything that the Gospel of John has been pointing to since the death of Lazarus, the cross of Jesus Christ.

What Jesus is telling us here is this that we can be certain of this.

If he's preparing a place by his death and resurrection, do you notice what he says in verse 3?

I will come again.

And I will take you to myself.

Jesus says, I'm doing the work.

I'm dying on the cross.

I'm dying for your sins.

I'm being resurrected to secure you an eternal place in heaven.

And if I am doing that work, you can be certain that even though I am leaving for a time, I will come again to bring you.

And it's fascinating then that what we're gonna see next week is that Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit.

He talks about the one who comes after the cross and resurrection, the Spirit of Christ Himself.

I want you to see here that what Jesus is addressing and talking about the place that He is preparing for us in heaven is solving our deepest problem as humans.

You know what the deepest problem for us as humans has been since the beginning of time?

It's been a problem of homelessness.

You remember in Genesis 1 and 2, when Adam and Eve were created, they were walking in the garden.

And what was the garden?

It was their home, the garden of Eden, this place of delight.

But when sin entered the world, the consequence was that they were cast from the Garden of Eden into the wilderness.

And from that moment on, the story of Scripture, every page points to the reality of God's desire to bring his children home.

All throughout the pages of Scripture, we see this relentless work the Father is doing to bring his children back home from the tabernacle to the temple to the wilderness to the exile to Jesus coming, all for this very purpose that God might solve our homelessness, that God might dwell with his people again.

And you know, as we consider our own lives, this becomes very practical.

There is a reason why everything in this world, even the best things, are sort of tinted with this darkness, with this gloom.

I mean, we see this even in the Christmas season, don't we?

We sing the songs, we talk about joy, we we celebrate together with these festive, amazing dinners, but but maybe in the background there's just this reminder that someone's not here this Christmas who was who was here previous Christmases.

We live this life and and we are reminded constantly that even in the best homes, even in the best homes, something feels off.

And even in the moments of deepest joy, there's still this minor chord playing behind it.

And loved one, if if you have a sense of the incompleteness of life, I want you to know that that is an echo in your life of Eden, of the reality that you were created to live in the presence of God.

That Eden was the home that you were made for, but lost through sin.

And Jesus comes here to, I mean, tell us this word, this merciful word.

I am going to bring you back home.

I'm going to bring you back home.

I mean, very practically, we know there is a big difference between staying somewhere and being home.

Between being a guest somewhere and really belonging somewhere, we know that there's a difference.

In fact, I this was illustrated for me just last year.

One of our elders, Dave and I, got to go to Romania, and in Romania, we got to see one of the most striking buildings I think I will ever see in my life.

It's called the Palace of Parliament.

It's in Bucharest.

To this day, it's one of the largest buildings in the world, second only to the Pentagon.

It is the heaviest building in the world, which I'm sure Romanians will hold over Americans to be first in at least something.

When it was built, there was no expense spared.

And so as we walked through this palace, you you see, and the guide explains to you that there are thousands of tons of marble in this palace.

You look at chandeliers in these giant rooms.

There's thousands of rooms in this place, and these chandeliers, you are told, are made of diamonds, some of them, or sorry, crystals and diamonds, some of them weighing several tons.

Giant carpets that are hand woven.

You look at the walls, the floors, the art, the chandeliers, and the sheer cost of everything is staggering.

But as you get into the history of these rooms, you realize that it's not just the financial burden, it was the burden that building this palace placed on a communist country, where entire neighborhoods were demolished to make room for this palace where thousands of people were displaced, where resources in an already restricted communist country were funneled away from the people into this massive castle.

And yet, as beautiful as that place is, as lavish as it is, as massive as it is, it is immensely cold.

It is unmistakably not a home.

And standing there, this reality struck me that you can build something enormous, you can surround yourself with beauty and comfort, and you can still be deeply homeless.

Much of our trouble in life comes from trying to make homes out of places that will never become a home to us.

We take careers and we try to make them homes by making them bigger, by accomplishing more.

We take our family, our ministry, our successes, our accomplishments, and we try to make them permanent in our lives.

We take comfort, we take vacations, we we try to make them a home, thinking maybe if the next one's more lavish or more exquisite or longer, maybe then it will satisfy.

Brick by brick, we build our own palaces, and then we are surprised when living in these palaces that our hearts are restless.

Something still feels off.

What Jesus is telling us is that we're never made to settle down in the wilderness, that this world is not our home, that Jesus goes to prepare a place for us, a place where we can belong.

Jesus comes and you see what he says here.

Read it again.

I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Jesus isn't saying, listen, you better go scatter off and make your own home.

Jesus is saying, I am going to create a place, I'm going to make a place for you, I'm going to create a way for you to enter into the place that your heart has always been longing for.

Thomas speaks for us all when considering the reality of this place that Jesus is talking about, he says, How do we get there?

I mean, very practically, Jesus, this place sounds awesome.

How do we get there?

That's what I want you to see thirdly, that Jesus cures our troubled heart by giving us a path to life.

Now, Jesus loses everybody here.

Thomas completely misinterprets Jesus because he is thinking purely in physical terms.

He misses the connection.

Listen to his question in verse 5.

He says, Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going.

How can we know the way?

The question makes perfect sense.

You know, if you tell me after the service, hey, we're gonna go get blizzards at Dairy Queen, I am all in.

Let's do it.

Let's start a ministry, blizzard ministry, okay?

That'll probably be the one we have like ten captains for.

I'm all in for blizzards.

If you tell me we're going to Dairy Queen for it, I'm in.

But if you don't tell me which one, how am I gonna know how to get there?

How am I gonna know where to go?

What Thomas is asking Jesus for is clarity.

Jesus, give me some steps.

Where do I turn left?

Where do I turn right?

How do I get to this place?

What do I do to enter this place?

He wants something that he can follow.

And loved one, do you notice that even to this day, people come to Jesus asking the same thing?

I want to get to heaven, just tell me what to do.

Give me the list, show me the path.

And have you noticed that the unique thing about biblical Christianity, the unique thing about the gospel is that when every other religious system says, here is how you get to God, here is how the here are the steps you must take, here is what you must do, Christianity comes and says, you can do nothing.

You cannot earn your salvation, that Jesus must do it for you.

Now there is a reason why religion is so loved in our world, why so many people flock to so many religions, because what every religion does is gives you a different kind of list, a different set of steps to get to God, that if that if you just do these things well enough, if you just follow them consistently enough, if you're just sincere enough and trying to apply this list to your life, then you will be saved.

And we love that kind of system because that system gives us control, doesn't it?

I know how to get there, I just gotta do these things.

And so I'm gonna be diligent to do it.

You know, as you commit yourself to the system of religious law, you know where you stand, you know how you're doing.

You know what the best part is, you can compare yourself to other people.

At least I'm doing better than that person.

You know, at least I went to church and I did this for God.

I was recently sitting with a young man that had come through the doors of our church, and it seemed like he was hungry to know God.

And so with joy, I sat down with him in my office one morning and I explained the gospel to him.

I explained the reality of what Christ had accomplished in his righteous life, that Jesus had lived the life that we never could, and not only that, that Jesus had died a death that we deserve to die on the cross, and that he was resurrected with new life that he now invites us to live in so that we can have victory over our greatest enemy, death.

And he heard that and he longed for it, and he said, What do I need to do?

And I said, believe.

And he looked at me and he said, That's it.

I mean, that's it, believe.

And I never saw him again.

And you know, I'm I'm convinced that he was looking for something more.

He was looking for a list, something he could do, something he could control, something that would let him feel like he earned his way in.

And where every religion provides that for people, it says, here is what you must do.

Biblical Christianity, the gospel says, here is what I have done for you.

So that those who have their faith in Jesus Christ stand before a holy God and do not say, hey, listen, here's my list of accomplishments.

They say, hey, look, here is what Jesus has done.

Here is the life that he lived, here is the death that he died, here is the resurrection to new life that he now reigns in, that he has invited me into.

This is the heart of Christianity.

So that when Thomas says, What's the way, Jesus?

Look at verse six.

Look at what Jesus says here.

I am the way.

And the truth.

And the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

It's so important to notice what Jesus says here.

He does not say, I will show you the way.

Such a massive difference there.

He does not say, I will teach you the truth.

He does not say, I will point you to life.

Every other religion is saying those things.

What Jesus says is this I am.

In other words, the way is not a method or a habit you must prescribe to your life.

The truth is not a concept that you must download into your brain.

The life is not a destination that you must get to.

It is all answered in a person.

Where Thomas wants physical directions, Jesus answers relationally, and Jesus presses that relational answer even further in verse 7.

You see it there?

If you had known me, if you had known me, this is relational language, you would have known my father also.

From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

In other words, you see what Jesus is saying.

It's not about what you do, it is about who you know.

To know Jesus is to know the Father.

To trust Jesus is to have access to the Father.

To belong to Jesus is to be brought home to God.

In other words, Jesus looks at Thomas and he looks at us and he says, You want to know the way to life?

The way to life is not in a path that you follow.

The way to life is in a relationship that you must receive.

Now, Jesus in these verses does not leave that relationship vague.

In fact, in chapter 15, verse 5, you can flip over and see this.

He says, I am the vine, you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

For apart from me you can do nothing.

And the a crucial word there is abide.

It means to remain, to stay connected to, to draw your life from him.

And Jesus is painting this picture that a branch does not produce fruit just by trying harder, just by gritting through it, just by having discipline, a branch very simply produces fruit by being connected to the vine.

Apart from him, Jesus says, Your life will not produce less fruit.

You'll not just have slower growth.

Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing.

In other words, without ongoing dependent relationship with Jesus, you don't just lose effectiveness, you lose Christianity itself.

This is the wholeness of Christianity.

This is why often in our church we say that the first mark of a maturing disciple is that they abide in Christ.

Now, this becomes then the question of mature discipleship.

As you ask yourself and evaluate your own life and ask if you're really understanding what Jesus is saying here, the question very practically you need to ask is this Are you learning to live your entire life from union with Jesus?

I mean, let's get really practical here.

When life gets hard, when you're convicted of your sin and your shortcomings, when obedience, you're called to obedience and it just feels impossible to you, in that hardship, do you move closer to Jesus and seek Him?

Or do you replace Him with just like kind of hard, gritty effort?

Let me show you what the difference looks like.

When we're trying harder, you know what that looks like in our life?

It looks like prayerlessness.

We're very ready to try to live the Christian life without prayer.

It looks like having shame over our sin, but no real repentance or brokenness of it, living in that shame.

It looks like doubling down on discipline.

While neglecting spiritual communion.

It looks like asking yourself questions like this Am I doing enough?

Am I reading enough?

Am I serving enough?

Trying harder says, I can fix this problem.

If I just work a bit harder, if I just try a bit harder, I can do this.

You know, abiding in Christ looks much different.

When you abide in Christ, you are willing to bring sin into the light instead of hiding it.

When you abide in Christ, you are willing to confess your sin honestly and embrace vulnerability instead of managing your appearance and trying to seem like you're better than you really are.

When you're abiding in Christ, you turn to his word, not just because you have a Bible reading plan and you need to check off your day, but because you're saying, God, I want to hear your voice.

I want to hear what you say to me.

You're praying, God, I can't do this apart from you.

This is what it looks like to abide in Christ.

It's to look to Jesus and say, I need you.

I can do nothing apart from you.

To recognize that what we need is a deeper, living connection to the Son who brings us home.

We don't need to know the way.

We cannot follow the steps.

We need to know the Son.

He is the way.

And so, in many ways, the answer to our deepest trouble is simple.

We must abide.

We must abide.

I mean, it's simple, but but can we just take a moment just to accept this reality that's not easy?

What is simple is not necessarily easy.

And I think the old hymn captures it our problem perfectly when it sings, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love.

Our problem is not a lack of understanding what Christ calls us to.

Our problem is the reality of a drifting heart that we fall away from Christ, that we try to live the Christian life at a distance from Jesus Christ.

And my prayer for you this morning is that at this point, your, you know, your heart is crying out to God saying, God, I want to abide in you.

God, I'm sick of trying to do it myself.

I'm sick of trying to depend on my own efforts.

God, I want to depend on you.

I want to abide in you.

And here is the comfort that Jesus gives us next.

That he does not call to us to abide from a distance, saying, Hey, listen, if you just make your way over to me, if you're strong enough to do it, then you will have life.

What Jesus does is he meets us in that.

When we call out to him and we say, I cannot do it, Jesus meets us.

He gives us his presence.

And this is the fourth and final thing I want you to see in our text this morning.

When my heart is troubled, Jesus gives me a presence to rely on.

Look at verse 8.

First, Thomas misunderstands him, then Philip misunderstands him and says to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.

Philip wants one more thing.

Philip says, Maybe Jesus could give me another sign, maybe Jesus could perform another miracle to really show me the Father.

Why does Philip think this?

Because Philip is convinced that God is still somewhere distant.

Philip is convinced that the Father is still far from him.

That if he wants to dwell in God's presence, then that is something that will be accomplished in the future.

And Jesus exposes that in Philip.

You see it here?

Look what Jesus says to him.

Have I been with you?

So long, and you still do not know me.

In other words, you are not missing anything.

You don't need more access to the Father.

You don't need a clearer picture of your life.

What you need is me.

If you've seen me, Jesus says, you've seen the Father.

Now, what Philip wants is an experience.

I mean, I talk to so many people in evangelistic conversations that just want an experience.

And I say to them, you know, what stops you?

What would make you believe in God?

And they say, well, God would have to be in the room speaking to me.

I want an experience to know that he is real.

And I want you to understand that what Jesus has given us is so much better.

Not an experience, but his presence.

How does Jesus give you assurance that he will take you to heaven?

Do you notice what it is in this text?

It is his presence.

He comes to you.

And what we need from Jesus is not an experience that opens our eyes to the reality that the Father is real.

What we need from him is a presence in the middle of our troubles.

And that is who Jesus is.

He is the presence that is with us.

C.S.

Lewis, you know, he always describes this kind of thing so well in his books, and he talks about this reassurance we can have in Jesus in his book, The Horse and the Boy.

In this story, there is a boy named Shasta, and he's young.

He's traveling through the forest at night.

You could imagine the horror, how afraid he would be, how exhausted he would be traveling all night through the forest.

And he's convinced that in this dark, lonely forest, he is completely by himself.

But then in the darkness, he senses that someone's beside him.

And he can't see him.

He doesn't know who it is, but he knows someone is there and he is terrified by it.

Maybe you can feel that reality now.

Then the voice speaks.

And of course, you know who it is.

It's it's Aslan.

And later, Aslan reveals something to Shasta that every frightening thing that Shasta thought he had experienced in that forest, every danger, every pain, every moment of fear was actually Aslan in the forest.

Aslan says this, I was the lion who forced you to join with Erebus.

I was the lion who drove away the jackals, I was the lion who wounded you, and then and then he says this.

I was the lion with you all the while.

And loved one, what if Jesus was the lion that in all the troubles of your life, all the things that made you exhausted in life, all the things that made you filled with fear in life?

What if he was the lion with you all the while?

And you know what the answer to that question is?

It is Christmas.

Christmas is the reminder, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, that Jesus is present with us in the midst of this trouble.

That we were never meant to walk this road alone, that Jesus did not come just to call us home.

He came to bring us home.

He came to be with us, that he didn't just shout the directions from heaven, hey, turn left here, go this way, do this way.

Jesus descended the mountain down from heaven onto earth so that he could be present with us through his Holy Spirit, now present with us to bring us home.

This is what Jesus did.

He came near.

He was born into the darkness of this world, he was born into the brokenness of this world, and Christmas is this reminder that when your life is dark, when you are confused by what's happening in your life, the presence of Jesus Christ is with you.

That behind all of the things that have troubled your heart in your life is a God who has been directing things that way.

Christmas reminds us that God is not only sovereign, he is personal.

And that this Savior did not come with us just to be with us for a moment.

He came so that through his death and resurrection, his presence would continue with us in a new and deeper way.

And you know, part of what I mourn is that we don't have more time to talk about verses 12 and 4 and 13 and 14.

There's a whole sermon there.

But there, Jesus says this very radical thing.

He looks at the disciples and he says, Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do.

And loved one, listen to this greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.

Not that we are stronger than Jesus, but that before the cross, Jesus' work was limited to one place, to one person.

After the cross, after the resurrection, his finished work is proclaimed to the world.

We proclaim it in the songs that we sing.

Joy to the world, where sinners through Jesus Christ are reconciled to the Father.

That's why what Jesus goes to talk about as he talks about prayer, that prayer in Jesus' name matters because we're not asking God to help us accomplish our plans.

We're asking the Father to finish the to apply the finished work of his son to the world.

This is what prayer does.

We pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

And the Son is glorified in accomplishing all that he does through our prayers.

This is the glory of the Christmas season.

That Jesus has come to be with us.

That he is here.

And the question remains for you.

This God who has not given us what we want, but has given us what we need in Jesus Christ, who has been the same throughout all the ages, who calls us this morning to bring our troubled hearts to him.

The question for us this morning is this do we depend on him?

Can you cast your faith on this God?

And he gives us this assurance that as you cast your anxieties on him, he will care for you.

Could you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your mercy and compassion towards us.

And God, we thank you that you are a God who does not push us away in our weakness, but draws near to us in our weakness.

And God, we need to hear that time and time again.

That it is not about what we do or what we can accomplish or how well we can present ourselves to you by the time that we end up in your presence.

God, that it is entirely about the work that you have done.

God, we thank you for the finished work of Jesus Christ.

We thank you for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which we proclaim week in and week out through the songs that we sing, through your word that points to Jesus in every single page.

God, as we continue to declare that truth and God, to declare our dependence on you, we pray that you would receive all the glory.

God, we ask, Lord, that you would glorify your son in our worship this morning.

We pray that's the name of your son.

Amen.

Would you stand with me as we worship together?