Do Not Be Troubled

[Below, you'll find livestream video of both May 7 worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the message presented during the services. Have a blessed week!]

John 14:1-14

Our Gospel lesson today takes us back to the room in which Jesus and the apostles observe the Passover on the night of His arrest, just before His suffering, death, and resurrection.

The disciples are troubled for several reasons.

One reason is that they’re in Jerusalem. Not long before, Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead, and, alarmed by His power over death, the leaders of the Jews from Jerusalem had vowed to get Jesus killed by the Romans. In Jerusalem, Jesus is easier to seize.

Also troubling to the apostles is Jesus’ announcement that one of them would betray Him.

Peter is troubled because Jesus insists that Peter will deny knowing Jesus before the rooster announces the new day by crowing three times.

None of the apostles can imagine turning their backs on Jesus.

Or that they, faithful men of Israel, would be so disloyal and sinful toward the One they said was the Messiah.

You and I may be troubled by many things about our world today.

Abortion used as birth control.

Almost daily mass shootings.

The LGBTQ+ agenda being crammed down our throats.

Misogyny and violence against women.

The ideology that tells us one’s gender can be chosen.

Racial injustice.

These troubling things are all expressions of our fallen, sinful human nature that befoul the cosmos in which you and I live.

But, like the apostles, something else might trouble us.

Our sin.

Our disloyalty to God.

Our betrayal of Christ.

Our denial of Him.

This is evidenced in our thoughts, words, or deeds daily.

The apostles thought they were righteous because they were Jews who did the right thing. We tend to have the same self-righteousness.

But Jesus and all of God’s Word tell us that if we think God is going to judge us righteous because we think we’ve led pretty good lives, we are deluding ourselves.

God’s judgment of us for our sin is clear.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 tells us, for example, “Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous…”

And Paul, the apostle of grace, puts things even more pointedly: “...do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[ nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) If we’re honest, that list pretty much takes in the whole human race in one way or another, including you and me.

But to us who are troubled by the ills of the world and might be troubled by the horrors of our own sin that separate us from God and mark us as unrighteous from our births and worthy of condemnation, Jesus tells us, as He told the apostles on Maundy Thursday: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:1-3)

Now, I’ve always known that these three verses from John 14 presented a Gospel Word, a Word of promise from our Savior. But I used to think that the promise was that after He died, rose, and ascended to heaven, Jesus would get a house in heaven ready for us to occupy after we die and rise. I pictured Jesus remodeling heaven to accommodate us.

But, it isn’t heaven or the kingdom of God that need to be changed though. It isn’t God that needs changing, it’s us! We need to be made righteous, because in our inborn state of unrighteousness, we’re not fit for life with God, now or ever.

So, this is how Jesus prepares a place for you, how you can live with untroubled hearts: Jesus goes to the cross for us, the righteous God of all creation taking on human flesh, offers His sinless life to take the damnation and death we deserve so that all who trust in Him have the very same life God the Father restored to Jesus on the first Easter Sunday!

When did Jesus go? When He went to the cross!

When did He come back? When He rose!

And when we’re able to trust in Jesus, we know there’s already a place for us in God’s vast and gracious kingdom!

This is God’s Gospel Word for you and me, a Word that the Bible speaks to us repeatedly.

“At just the right time, when we were still powerless,” Romans tells us, “Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6)

And Peter reminds us: “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:18)

And in Ephesians, we’re told, “In [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” (Ephesians 1:7-8)

Of course, one day, this creation’s last day, Christ will raise those who have died while believing in Him and welcome them into His new heavens and new earth. All our grief, tears, and troubles will be behind us. But already, all who have been baptized into Christ and who have, by the power of His Word. come to believe in Him, live in His kingdom, live in the certainty that through Christ, all our sins are already and eternally forgiven.

By His death and His resurrection, Jesus has already prepared a place and given us a place with Him. Right now!

This is what the Bible means when it says, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

People say, “How can I know I’m saved? How can I be sure?” Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Yes. That’s how you know. If your heart, in response to the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the Holy Spirit can believe and if your mouth can declare that Jesus is your Lord, then you know you are saved!

So the next time someone asks you, “Are you born again?” you can say, “Yes! I was born of water and the Spirit according to the Word and will of Jesus as expressed in John 3, at my baptism. And, by the power of the Holy Spirit Who has been unleashed in my life since then, I know that Jesus Christ is my Lord. Now, get behind me, Satan.”

When Luther was taunted by the devil and temptation, he would declare, “But I am baptized!” It doesn’t matter how I feel, my salvation comes down to what God has done for me. Jesus has prepared a place for you. It’s already furnished.

Through His Word and His Sacraments, the crucified and risen Jesus comes to you today and promises that wherever He is, in heaven or on earth, there He is, triumphant over sin, death, darkness, weeping, and sorrow, with you!

Sin no longer condemns you, friends.

Jesus has destroyed its power over you, Don’t let the devil try to convince you otherwise because the devil has been a liar from the beginning. This is how He has prepared your place in God’s Kingdom.

Because He has, you can be assured that He is with you now and as His Holy Spirit empowers you to trust in Him, you are His now and forever.

Jesus has freed us to believe in God and in the Son He sent to spare you an eternity in hell. You need not be troubled.

By grace through faith in Christ, you belong to God, now and eternally. Amen.

Christ's Assurance in Uncertain Times

Below you'll find, first, the entire online worship service from Living Water Lutheran Church of Centerville, Ohio. Then, the text of today's message. God bless you.



John 14:1-14

We're now some weeks into the need for sheltering-in-place and social distancing because of the coronavirus. Even as some businesses start to re-open, we know, especially those with children and those who, like me, are in multiple at-risk categories, that the new normal under which we've been living will continue for some time to come.

We may find that discouraging, even when we understand the wisdom my nephew posted on Facebook this past week, “For the record, the virus doesn’t just go away because you’re tired of being inside.” 

My Catechism students tell me when we gather each week on Zoom, “I miss my friends.” 

And people who fully understand why we can’t go about our lives as usual still wonder when there will be testing, contact tracing, and a vaccine, things that will allow them to go to work again. 

One pastor said this past week, “I’m tired of giving sermons into a computer camera.”

To all of us, Jesus says today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.” (John 14:1) 

Now, if this is all that Jesus had to tell us, we might dismiss these as hollow words. But Jesus gives us substantial reasons for why our hearts need not be troubled, why we can believe in Him in any and all circumstances, even when we face death itself. In fact, in today’s gospel lesson, John 14:1-14, Jesus gives us four good reasons for why our discouragement should give way to hope and confidence that can only come to those who believe in Him.

Jesus’ words today come from His farewell discourse, spoken to His disciples--His followers--on the night before He was betrayed and arrested, the day before He would offer up His sinless life as the perfect sacrifice for human sin. 

Although Jesus knows with perfect foresight the suffering that awaits Him, His thoughts are not about Himself but about the disciples who will soon watch Him die. He wants to comfort them. 

He wants to comfort you today too. 

So, Jesus gives us here four assurances that will allow us to live with untroubled hearts as we believe in Him.

Jesus’ first assurance is in verses 2-3: “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

The believer in Jesus lives with the daily assurance that no matter what, even beyond death itself, there is a place prepared for us. Whether it’s in the midst of a lethal pandemic here or in the perfect face-to-face fellowship with God that we will one day enjoy in eternity, Jesus has a place for us. Our place is with Him. 

He has a place for us now when we come to His table, when He speaks His life-giving Word to us, when we pray to the Father in His name. 

And Jesus will have a place for us when we die and, like Jesus before us, the Father raises us up to live with Him forever. Jesus has a place for us and it’s with Him. That’s His first assurance to us today.

Jesus’ second assurance for us today is in verses 4-6 of our lesson: “‘You know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

Here, Jesus assures us that if we know Him, we will always know the way to go, even when we feel lost or discouraged. We go to Jesus. 

That’s because Jesus is the way to God. Jesus is the way to a life filled with the forgiveness, love, and presence of the God Who made us and has the destiny of the universe in His hands. 

Life in this imperfect world presents its detours; Martin Luther talks about, “false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins…” But when Jesus is our way, we have the way through sin, death, and darkness to God Himself. Jesus is the only way to the salvation, eternal life, and wholeness that God alone can give.

Jesus’ third assurance comes in verses 7-11: “‘If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’ Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.’”

Jesus says in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” When you know Jesus, you know the true God Whose love for us destroys the power of sin, death, futility, doubt, and discouragement over our lives and lifts us up to life with God.

Jesus’ fourth assurance comes in verses 12-14: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

Jesus tells us that when we believe in Him, trust in Him, He will do His work through us. Because from His place at the right side of the Father, He can dispatch His Holy Spirit to work in all the billions of baptized Christians who seek to serve God and to serve others in His name, Jesus does greater things now than He did while He walked on earth. 

On top of that, every Christian can pray in Jesus’ name, meaning that we pray according to His will and His character, and see His divine love and power unleashed in the lives of those for whom we pray.

It’s amazing to witness what God can do when we trust in Christ. This past week, I’d just completed one of the midweek Facebook Live Bible studies. I was sure that it had gone horribly. I was sure it had been a total disaster. Then I read some of the comments people sent. “Tonight was a very comforting way to end my day!” one person wrote. “Thanks for tonight. Had a few hours of ‘woe is me’ today but feeling good now,” said another. “So reassuring,” wrote another. To the extent that those comments were true, it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the Lord Who promises to do great things through those who trust in Him.

So, you and I as baptized believers can live each day with confidence, hope, and assurance because of the crucified and risen Jesus. Because of Him, as we turn from sin and turn to Him in trust we know that we have a place with Him, that He is the Way to the Father, that He is the Truth on Whom our lives can be built, and that He gives us a life with the Father that reflects the glory of God Himself. That includes times like these of a pandemic, sheltering in place, and social distancing. Jesus tells us today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.” 

This week, may He help us live with untroubled hearts as we trust in Him: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen

You don't have to love. You get to love!

John 14:15-21
A renowned theologian made a confession to a group of people who were celebrating his career. “For forty years,” he said, “I’ve told people, ‘You’ve got to love.’ Now I realize that I’ve had it wrong. The message of Jesus is, ‘You get to love.’”

It’s so easy for us to get the message of Jesus wrong.

It’s so easy to become Christian Pharisees, turning Jesus into a law-giver, and boiling our faith down to being obedient to His command (and the entire Bible’s command) that we love God and love neighbor.

But how confident are we of our ability to be perfectly obedient to God’s law of love? I hope not very confident.

Otherwise, the confession of sin we offered to God together at the beginning of worship today was a meaningless exercise.

Even more seriously, if you and I are confident in our ability to obey God’s law of love, we’re placing our trust in ourselves and not in God.

“Wait a minute,” you might say, “I’m not such a bad person. I do a fair job of loving God and loving my neighbor...to a point.”

To those who may be inclined to offer such a hedged defense, may I remind you of what’s involved in God’s law of love, as summarized in the Ten Commandments?

• You shall have no other gods before God. 
• You shall not take the name of God in vain. 
• Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. 
• Honor your father and your mother. 
• You shall not murder. 
• You shall not commit adultery. 
• You shall not steal. 
• You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 
• You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. 
• You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his workers, his livestock, or anything that else that is your neighbor’s.

“I’m good at nine out of ten of them,” some might think. Or, "I obey most of them."

But James reminds us: “...whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10).

And Jesus tells us that even to think of committing these sins is the same as committing them. “The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart,” Jesus says in Matthew 15:18-20, “and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…”

Considering these facts, the conclusion reached by the apostle Paul is unavoidable: “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23).

And since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), Paul’s question for himself in Romans 7:24 is one that every member of the human race should be asking themselves: “Wretched man [or woman] that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (ESV)

This, of course, is where Jesus comes in.

God looks on the children He created in His image with compassion, even though we are sinners who fail to abide by His law of love. It saddens Him because He doesn’t want us to condemn ourselves by remaining enslaved to sin, putting our trust in our own “pretty good” behavior. Every baby born into the world today is destined for death and condemnation for sin unless God acts to saves them.

That’s why He sent Jesus to bear the condemnation for sin we deserve and to rise to become our trailblazer to eternity. 

And that’s why He sends the Holy Spirit to teach us and to remind us to turn to Christ and be forgiven, turn to Him and live, turn to Him and be given new, eternal lives.

Today’s gospel lesson finds Jesus not laying down laws that will earn us salvation. No such laws exist.

You and I can never be good enough to be saved.

Instead, Jesus describes the life that He, by His death and resurrection, makes possible for those who trust in Him. 

He isn’t telling us, “You have to love,” but, “You get to love.” 

And, He tells us that we get so much more by the power of His grace and deity. 

Let’s take a look at what He says this morning in John 14:15-21.

Verse 15: “If you love me, keep my commands.” Already, Jesus has promised the disciples (including you and me):

• that all who follow Him have an eternal place in His kingdom prepared by Him (John 14:1-4); 
• that He is the way to life with God (John 14:6-7); and 
• answers to prayers to the Father offered in Jesus’ name (John 4:13-14),

for all who believe in Him.

Now, let me ask you something: Knowing that God has loved you so much that He does all of this for you as a gift to the one with faith in Jesus, what is the only appropriate response from you (or me)? 

Love. Trusting, grateful love!

We love God, as the apostle John writes elsewhere, because God loved us first (1 John 4:19). 

Once trust in Christ and gratitude for God’s grace infects a soul, love is the response.

And so, Jesus offers here not so much a command, but an observation. When, by faith, you have come to love God and God resides in you, you will do what God commands.

Not perfectly. Our old sinful selves get in the way.

But as we live in daily repentance and renewal, daily surrender to Jesus, the great arc of our lives will bend increasingly toward Jesus and His loving way of life.

You’ll do that as an almost automatic, involuntary response to the relationship of love with God into which Christ brings you.

After my mother died, I thanked my dad for all the many years he spent caring for her. He said, matter-of-factly, “Well, what else was I going to do?”

What else was I going to do? That’s the question of love.

When, in the words of a great song by B.B. King and U2, “love comes to town,” when it comes to save you and when it comes to take residence in your life, what else are you going to do? Love becomes not a command, but a way of life.

Jesus shows this in His great parable about the last judgment when He says He will say to His sheep: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me..." And the sheep will ask Jesus, "When did we do any of that? We don't remember doing any of that!" Jesus says that His sheep are the ones who respond to His love with love for God and love for neighbor, simply living without a thought of getting credit or keeping score! (Matthew 25:31-46)

But how will we love? After all, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

These verses from the Bible's "love chapter," of course, are often read at weddings. When I read them at weddings, I will often look up at the couples standing before me as they smile smugly, their expressions saying, "Yes, that's our love. That's how we love each other." Really?

How is it possible for us to perfectly keep Christ’s law by loving in the style of the love chapter?

Jesus tells us. Verse 16: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.”

To baptized believers in Jesus, Jesus comes to live. Through His Holy Spirit, Jesus comes to us. He speaks Jesus’ word of truth to us, in us, for us.

• He does this at the Baptismal font, where we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then “marked by the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit forever.” 
• He does it in His Word, where we read and hear God’s life-giving truth. 
• He does it in the bread and wine, where He says, “Take and eat; this is My body...Take and drink; this is My blood,” offered to bring us forgiveness and effecting the miracle of re-membering us to Christ--breaking down the walls of separation, the walls of sin and death. By this, I mean that when Jesus gives us His body and blood at Holy Communion and says, "Do this in remembrance of Me," He is not saying, "Bring memories of Me to mind." He isn't saying, "Recollect Me." He's saying, "Be remembered to Me. Be reconnected to Me. Be the branches to My vine and take My life into your very body, soul, spirit, and will."

To the unbelieving world, the notion that by the power of the Holy Spirit, God comes to us in the Word and sacraments is crazy.

When you’ve never dared to open yourself to Christ and His love, talk of the Holy Spirit seems like foolishness.

But we know better.

When Jesus knocks on the doors of our hearts and we let Him in (Revelation 3:20), we know what it is to have life-giving communion with the God revealed in Jesus.

The Holy Spirit lives in believers in Jesus.

• When we sin, He calls us to repent. 
• When we love, He tells us, “good and faithful servant.” 
• When we don’t know what to pray, He forms our longing into groaning prayers too deep for words. 

Despite a bad news world filled with sin and death and selfishness, even within ourselves, the Holy Spirit empowers us to trust that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and that because Jesus, crucified and risen, lives, we too will live.

The Holy Spirit brings Jesus’ love into the centers of our souls and we know that we’re not orphans and, fortified by His love, He makes it possible for us to love when we can’t.

I’ve told you that one prayer I’ve offered through the years is, “Lord, I find myself incapable of loving so-and-so. Please love them through me.” I find that God not only loves those people through me, over time, He creates within me genuine love for them.

I’m sure that others have offered similar prayers regarding Mark Daniels.

A woman heard me share this years ago and told me months later that she had tried this on her husband. “I’d gotten to where I couldn’t stand him,” she told me, “but after awhile, I began to see him differently and his behavior seemed to change as I loved Him.”

When Christ’s love and the Holy Spirit come to town, when we let Christ and the Spirit lodge within us and we surrender, we will love.

We will keep Christ’s commands without thinking of it. That’s how grace works.

Jesus continues: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

Here’s an incredible thought: The Creator of the universe ushers with faith in Jesus into the same relationship of intimacy, trust, and love He has enjoyed within the Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--for all eternity. He wants you beside Him now and in eternity.

When we surrender to the grace that accepts us as we are and works to make us all that we can be, our relationship with God is totally transformed. We are transformed.

“You shall have no other gods before me,” for example, is changed from a command to a promise.

Through Jesus, we know we have no need of other gods.

We don’t look for love, affirmation, success, peace, or hope anywhere else.

We have it all in Jesus!

No other gods will bother us, entice us, or drag us down.

We’ll have the God we meet in Jesus and, through Him, we have life.

The message of Jesus then is that you don’t have to love, you get to love, just like the Lord Who made you, Who died and rose for you, Who speaks His truth to you again this morning.

Through Jesus, you get to be a free, redeemed child of God, now and forever. Hallelujah!

Now live in His love!


[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for today's Sunday worship services.]

Never Forget the One Who Never Forgets You!

John 14:1-14
Has this ever happened to you?

You go to the grocery store with a list of eight items in your mind. You’re confident that you’ll remember every item because you rehearsed the list over and over again earlier in the day. You get a cart and start to pick up the items. Bananas; check. Lettuce; check. Asparagus; check. Gluten free bread; check. Lunchmeat and cheese; check. Orange juice; check. You look at your cart: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 items.

But what was the eighth again? You think and think, but can’t remember.

You’re still not worried, though. You’ll just saunter up and down the aisles, hoping that you’ll spy the eighth item on your mental list.

The saunter strategy only makes things worse because, as you see things on sale or items you think you might need, you load up your cart with them. It only buries the forgotten item into the deeper recesses of your brain. You keep on forgetting until, just as your garage door goes up, you remember that you needed to pick up the main course for the night, chicken!

Our memories can be faulty. Unless we take the proper precautions, we are all at risk of forgetting the most important things in life. If we’re not careful, we can forget the important things that we know.

This is even true of our relationship with the God revealed to all of us in Jesus. In the rush of daily living, we can forget Jesus.

I’m not talking about forgetting the facts surrounding Jesus. Nobody who knows the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed is apt to forget that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, was true God and true man, died for our sin, and rose to give life to all who believe in Him.

But, though all of these statements describe life-giving truths about Jesus, knowing them and even memorizing them without knowing Jesus won’t bring us life with God. Only Jesus does that. And only those who maintain a relationship with Jesus, daily turning from sin, daily following Him and trusting in Him, have life with God.

Christian faith isn’t a set of religious propositions. Christian faith is a relationship with God enfleshed, Jesus Christ.

And you know what? Relationships have to be nurtured.

A woman was married to a man who loved her. But he was boring, not flashy, predictable. She had an affair with a man who was none of those things. But after the excitement wore off, she realized that this man didn’t love her the way her husband did. So she committed herself to reconstructing her relationship with her husband. Later, she told a friend, “I took my husband for granted. I’d forgotten who he was and what he did with me and for me. I nearly lost him.”

As our gospel lesson for today begins, the disciples are in danger of losing their relationship with Jesus. Jesus, heading for His crucifixion, speaks to them in what we call His “farewell discourse.” He tells them: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

The disciples should have known exactly what Jesus was talking about when He claimed to be one with God. They had heard Him say: “Before Abraham was born, I am,” using strange grammar to claim for Himself the same name God revealed to be His to Moses back at the burning bush, Yahweh, I Am (John 8:58). The disciples had heard Jesus say, “I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). They had watched Jesus raise His friend Lazarus from the dead (as well as countless other signs).

They also should have known where Jesus was going. They’d heard Jesus tell Lazarus’ sister, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). They had heard Jesus tell Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

But now, in the rush of their daily lives, looking down the barrelhead of opposition and death in Jerusalem, they seem to have forgotten everything. They had gotten so accustomed to live with “the Word [made] flesh,” that they forgot that this flesh and blood rabbi they followed was (and is) also God. (John 1:14)

Verse 5: “Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’”

Dr. Jim Nestingen says that Thomas was looking for a roadmap. We don’t need a roadmap. If we know Jesus and follow Him, we know the Way and that’s enough.

Jesus is the way because He’s the foundational truth on which the new creation is built. Any life not built on Jesus is a lie. Other ways promise life, but only Jesus can deliver. Jesus told Pilate: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to Me” (John 18:37).

Jesus is the way because when He ushers us into intimacy with the Father, we are connected to the only One Who can make life or make life new. Thomas should have known all of this already; but he forgot. We too can forget. We too need to be regularly reminded or risk forgetting the Way.

Verse 8: “Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.’”

Philip, one of Jesus’ first followers, the disciple who told his friend Nathanael, “Come and see” (John 1:46), had evidently forgotten the things he had seen and heard: the miracles, the teaching, the changed lives. He demands that Jesus show them the Father. Jesus reminds Philip that Philip had already seen the Father in Jesus. And, Jesus pleads, “If you don’t believe what you’ve seen in Me, then believe in what you’ve seen Me do.”

I sometimes forget Who Jesus is and what He has accomplished for you at the cross and from His empty tomb.

I forget His promises, promises for which His death and resurrection are the downpayment and the guarantee.

I get so caught up in all my doing, that I forget that the God we know in Jesus Christ is the One in Whom “‘we live and move and have our being.' “ (Acts 17:28)

Jesus’ death and resurrection prove that He can deliver on His promises to us, promises like forgiven sin, new life, the presence of God with us along this life’s way. 

And promises like the ones He makes at the ends of our lesson today: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” 

Jesus promises that the people who remain connected to Him, His Church, will do even greater things than He did during His three decades on earth.

He promises too, that whatever things we ask in His name--in other words, whatever things we ask of God that conform to Jesus' will, that draw others to life through Christ, that reflect His character of love and goodness, Jesus will see that they happen.

Some of you know the amazing thing that happened when my mother was dying a few weeks ago.

At the hospital, my niece contacted a friend of hers who also is a friend of my brother’s and asked her to tell my brother what was going on.

We hadn’t seen my brother in six and a half years. But we had prayed that before either of our parents left this life, there would be a reconciliation. We didn’t want our brother to live with any unnecessary guilt. I dreaded the thought of that.

My brother came to the hospital. We didn’t know that he had only moved back to the Columbus area two weeks earlier! (The God we know in Jesus is the master orchestrator of events!) There was a wonderful reconciliation.

What if we had given up on praying for reconciliation?

What if my niece had given up on trying to reach out for my brother?

What if my brother had turned a deaf ear to the Savior in Whom he believes?

When we remain connected to Jesus, trusting in Him, not everything in this world goes as we want. (After all, this isn't heaven!) But Jesus gives us the strength to endure when all seems hopeless. And He enters the places and the lives into which we invite Him to transform hurt to healing, despair to hope, life to death. In fact, He specializes in doing just those kinds of things.

I have no magic formula on how you can remain connected and intimate with the Savior, Who by His grace, saves all who trust in Him. This is a relationship that requires time, commitment, and work, not as the prices we pay for salvation, but as the sacrifices we willingly to make to remain intimate and alive with the Lord Who sacrificed all for us.

Do you want to always remember Jesus and stay connected to Him? Here’s how:

• Be in corporate worship every week you can. We are strengthened by God's Word and God's Truth as we gather in Christ's name.
• Receive Christ’s body and blood, which brings you His life and forgiveness, every time they’re offered. Someone once asked my mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, how often people should receive Holy Communion. His answer: "Every time you can!" In this supper, Christ comes to us, giving us His very life and imparting His forgiveness to us. Holy Communion is God's Word incarnated. It's a treasure not to be passed by or forgotten!
• Join hands with your Christian family for prayer, study, mutual encouragement and accountability, and service in Jesus’ name. 
• And spend time each day personally in God’s Word, asking the Lord what He wants to tell you and how He wants to lead you that day. 

Then, fortified by God’s Word and His presence in your life, go do those works of love and gracious power Jesus promised that each of us who bear His name would do. In these ways, you won’t forget Jesus and He will empower you as His disciple.

Jesus never forgets you; please, never forget Jesus.

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for worship on Sunday, May 14, 2017.]

Don't Be Troubled; Follow Jesus!

[This was prepared to be shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 14:1-14
This morning, as we continue to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on the first Easter Sunday, our Gospel lesson from John takes us to a time when Jesus was teaching His disciples just before His arrest and crucifixion. Please pull out your Celebrate inserts and read what Jesus has to tell us in John 14:1-14.

Verse 1 says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Jesus speaks these words in the Upper Room just before His betrayal and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples sense that Jesus will refuse to wage a war to chase the Romans who occupy their country from Jerusalem. He won’t make Himself king by force. The pall of death hangs over them, a sense that their Master was going to be killed.

Whether they realized it or not, the disciples knew that the people of their world—Jews and Gentiles—like Adam and Eve, the first sinners, and like all of us who descend from them, wanted to “be like God.” And what better way to clear the way to being God-like than to kill off Jesus, the Word made flesh, God incarnate?

But Jesus tells the disciples not to be troubled. That may seem like an impossible command. But it’s not.

The fact is that troubles come to us, each and every day. But we need not be troubled by our troubles. Yesterday, Becky handed me a little sack containing three crosses. She told me, “Give these to anyone who needs a little reminder.” You see, during Danny’s recent hospitalization and heart bypass surgery, she had found a similar cross in the gift shop at Mount Carmel Hospital in Columbus. When things got scary, Becky touched that cross just to remind herself that Jesus was with her. When troubles come, we can place them and ourselves in the hands of Jesus. Troubles that overwhelm others will not trouble the follower of Jesus Christ!

Verse 2 tells us why we can go through life untroubled. Look at what Jesus says: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. 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, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

Man, I love this passage! Everyone who repents for their sin and entrusts themselves to Jesus—which what Jesus means when He speaks of believing in Him—can spend each waking moment of this life knowing that the risen Jesus, Who has conquered death through His death and resurrection, is readying a place for us with Him in eternity! That puts the troubles we face in this life in perspective. Wherever followers of Christ arrive in this life, it isn’t our final destination.

But we dare not be flippant about that. Eternity with God is a free gift. But claiming it doesn’t come cheap.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says that we can have none of Him or His gifts unless He takes precedence over everything—our fathers, mothers, wives, children, even our lives.

Look now at verses 4. Jesus says: “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Whether they realized it or not, the disciples knew the way Jesus was going. They understood that the only way Jesus could claim the kingdom He had come into the world to establish was through a cross. And the only way we can claim the life that Jesus wants to give to us is for us to submit the crucifixion of our old selves, with all its self-driven sinfulness.

That’s not something we like. A man told me about an affair he’d been having for several years. He said: “I hate myself for doing this. I love my wife. I tell myself that I’m breaking things off. But, then I set up a time to meet the other woman.  I want her.”

I think that this man wanted me to tell him, “There, there. God understands how hard it is for you. You just can’t help yourself. Keep on doing what you’re doing.”

But the fact is that while Jesus loves sinners just as we are, He also calls us away from our sin. He calls us to enlist the help of the Holy Spirit to resist temptation. He calls us to follow Him, even when it isn’t easy. He calls us—He commands us—to yield ourselves to Him, even when doing so will lead us away from the sins we enjoy. We can't hold onto Jesus and our sins at the same time. We must let go of one and hold on to the other.

Elsewhere, Jesus says, “…the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction [that is, to hell], and there are many who take it…the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it…”

Anyone who would follow Jesus and take up the resurrection He offers to those who do, must also submit to the crucifixion of our old sinful selves. We must die to ourselves so that Jesus can raise us from the dead and take us into eternity with Him. And we must do this day in and day out as long as we're breathing and tempted by sin.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it memorably: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Death to self is painful; but it’s the only way to God and the wholeness He wants for us.

In the next few verses, let's be honest, Thomas and Philip play dumb. Look at verses 5 and 6 of our lesson: “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.' The way that Jesus is going to eternity, to resurrection from the dead, also leads through a cross and death. And the only way you and I will reach eternity with God is through faith in Jesus Christ.

Faith in Jesus is more than intellectual assent. Faith in Jesus is betting everything you have—your whole life—on Him alone.

It’s submission to that crucifixion of self I mentioned.

It’s trusting that beyond all that troubles us, Jesus is there.

It’s trusting that as we let go of our sins—all our idolatries, materialistic cravings, gossip-mongering, hatred, thievery, sexual intimacies outside of the marriage between a man and a woman, and dishonoring of parents, whether lived, thought, or fantasized—beyond all that—Christ will give us a life filled with real living.

Faith is trusting that Christ will fill us with all the joy, peace, and excitement we try to steal when we sin, but that Christ gives freely when we surrender to Him.

Faith is trusting that Christ will catch us when we fall into His arms!

Psalm 139 is a prayer to the same God we meet in Jesus: “If I climb to the sky, you're there!  If I go underground, you're there! If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon, You'd find me in a minute— you're already there waiting.”

Christ waits for you and me today. He’s already prepared places for us. But only the repentant who follow Him through the cross will live in those places with Him.

In verses 8 through 11, Jesus deals with a request made by Philip. Philip tells Jesus, “Show us the father and we will be satisfied.”

This is interesting coming from the apostle Philip. Philip was one of the very first to spread the news that Jesus was the long-sought Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed King. Early in John’s Gospel, we’re told that Philip went to Nathanael and said, “We’ve found the one that Moses and the prophets said was coming. He’s Jesus of Nazareth.” When Nathanael skeptically asked if anything good could come from a blighted little town like Nazareth, Philip had said, “Come and see.”

Philip was a visual person. He had once seen Jesus and believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

But now, facing the troubling proposition that Jesus would be killed and no longer with him and his fellow disciples, Philip wanted to see God the Father.

Jesus tells Philip, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.”

Some people, sometimes because of their troubles and fears, sometimes because of their boredom and lack of faith, want to see God.

Others, maybe to make themselves seem important or pious, will even claim to have special knowledge of God, including when Jesus is returning to the earth.

But the fact is that God can already be seen clearly by those who dare.

He can be seen in Jesus, on the pages of Scripture, in the waters of Holy Baptism, in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, and in this fellowship of recovering hypocrites and sinners that the Bible calls “the body of Christ,” the Church.

The Bible introduces us to Jesus and when we see Him, we have seen the Father.

Our Gospel lesson ends with Jesus making a big promise. In verses 12 to 14, Jesus says: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

While on earth, Jesus performed miracles, signs pointing to His identity as Lord of the universe. But He also voluntarily limited Himself in that time to living one human life.

Today, the risen Jesus can be everywhere simultaneously. He's here right now as we gather in His Name. He's in heaven at the same time. He can be with billions of others who call to God in His Name all at the same time.

The risen Jesus carries our prayers and our lives before the Father. And while we know that life on this earth isn’t and never will be perfect, I’m confident in saying that everyone here, either in their own lives or in the lives of family members, has been touched by all that Jesus does through His people.

Whether it’s to bring healing, hope, or simple direction for our lives, Christ uses His Church to do greater things than He accomplished while on earth.

The Church is the conduit by which Christ’s grace and power is brought into the world each day. A woman approached me after worship. I had never met her before, but our church—one of my previous congregations—had prayed for her. Her cancer was in remission. “I don’t know what my future holds,” she told me. “But I knew when the people of the Church were praying for me. God became very present to me. And that has changed me forever.”

I later  presided over that woman’s funeral. A life had been changed for eternity because Jesus is still empowering His people to pray, repent, believe, proclaim, love, and serve their way to doing greater things than He accomplished during his three decades of life on earth.

Whatever troubles we face, we know where we are going and we know that Christ will do great (and unexpected) things through those who follow Him. We need not be troubled. That's because Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the one and only way to God for the whole human race. Keep following Jesus and keep sharing Him, confident of the place He's preparing for you. Amen!