Let's turn to John chapter 14, John 14, and our study of God's word we are still in this farewell of dress of Jesus, and it's a fascinating address because it shows us as clearly as any passages we've studied so far, the heart of our Savior and His love for His disciples. In a time of not only their anxiety, but His own anxiety, as He is anxious knowing that the shadow of the cross has now grown dark across Him and there is no place else for Him to go, there is no ministry that remains except now to these disciples, and then ultimately to the cross itself, even as His own humanity as He was troubled in the prospect of His suffering, He now turns to minister to the disciples in their time of trouble and anxiety. John, chapter 14, listen for it is God who speaks to us, let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me. The Lord bless the reading of His Word. In Romans 828, there's a verse there that Christians have grabbed hold of and have rightly held for it and up as testimony to our confidence in God's grace and in His love for us. It reads very simply and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good. Sometimes end to proclamation of that it is stated as true as it is in time of our anxiety and heard by unbelieving years as escapism or avoidance. As if when we have no other real answer, all we can do is say, well, God will take care of it because God loves me. Now to the Christian, it's a comfort and it's words of truth that's based on not only our own experience, but the history of God's working with this people part of which we read in Acts 7 this morning as God, time after time has liberated and saved and brought His people to peace and rest. And we know that He does the same for us as well and times when we face, though, a bleak political moral landscape such as the one that appears to be before us now and times when we are thinking and reflecting upon or being reminded of the intent of those engaged in terror to kill us, we feel anxiety. And we wonder what it is that we should do or perhaps when it's even closer to home we have a sick parent or a sick spouse or perhaps in the raising of our children when one of our young people loses their way and begins to wander in the way of the world or perhaps in our own relationship our marriage is as they would say on the rocks or in trouble or maybe simply our own personal health has begun to suffer for whatever reason. And those times of genuine anxiety and concern and those times when we feel that our life is either on edge or we're made to walk as it were a razor's edge wondering if we will fall or collapse or if everything will come down upon our own heads is there really anything beyond a slogan, anything beyond a saying that our Christian faith offers to us to bring us genuine comfort, not simply a hope for some future comfort which is real but a genuine comfort in the present day based upon the realities which we know exist in Christ. Jesus was Himself troubled, we've read that as He said with the disciples that He was troubled and they knew and they could sense this anxiety. In fact the whole time in the upper room has been a time of tension from the time that He washed their feet to when Judas left and now Peter the rock of the disciples, the cornerstone of the disciples, the one that's always speaking and always the aggressive one has now been told before the morning you will betray me and deny me three times. They're shaken and they're troubled. We don't know, it may have been a very somber setting but it might also be that the disciples at this point are wailing and crying because their Lord has said I'm going to leave you and I will die and you will wander, all of you will scatter and Peter you will betray me. What would their response be even if they were quiet? They would be trembling in their hearts but they've committed their whole lives to Christ. They followed Christ, this is their whole purpose in being and He's now saying I will die, Peter will betray me, Judas is gone and all of you will scatter. And so now comes a word of comfort in these troubled times, Jesus, though He Himself is troubled now turns to minister to those who were anxious. In our verse, which we read, we find first a word of consolation, let not your heart be troubled believe in God, but then Jesus also gives a word of revelation, believe in God, believe also in me, promises that are bound up in the covenant and those promises that are bound up in the covenant which He has given to them and the Lord's supper just celebrated this blood as a new covenant as He has extracted them in the new covenant. He now is giving them the promises of the covenant, covenant, believe in God because He is the one who's given you covenant promises and believe also in me because it is in Christ as mediator that those covenant promises are made accessible to you and to me. But first these words of comfort, oftentimes in times of trouble, particularly at funerals, we turn to the Psalms. Why would we read the Psalms as words of comfort? I am afraid that very often now it simply becomes tradition that you read Psalms at funeral but to the believer, to the one who has a hope that their loved one has passed on to glory. What they hear in the Psalms is the faithfulness of God in times of trouble, such as in Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He takes me beside the still waters who restores my soul. Here we have the promises of God given to one who is in trouble in the Psalms. Or Psalm 46, which is very often also read at the funeral's God as our refuge and strength, a very present help and trouble. What words of comfort to one who's in trouble, one who feels their world is collapsing in chaos or is coming apart, and here we're reminded God is your refuge and strength. When those are persecuting you when the terrorists want to destroy you, when it seems that your job is about to be lost or failed, when the creditors are pressing down upon you, your refuge is in God. And that is where you will draw your strength from in the day of trouble. He's a very present help in trouble. What is a present help? One that is present now. We live, it seems, in an age of what we would call practical atheism, what is practical atheism. A practical atheist is one who makes a profession of faith that's credible and is real. They believe in God and they believe that Jesus Christ has secured their salvation from sin. They take up religious habits. They attend church. They change the way they speak. They rid themselves of vices in life. But then when trouble comes, anxieties of living, they turn not to God but to worldly resources. For not only their comfort, whether it be comfort by trying to secure an answer to their problem through worldly resources or whether it be through substance abuse or relational abuse. Whatever it might be, they turn there for their comfort and their ease rather than to God living as it were as practical atheists. Why or what I call it practical atheists? Because we don't believe God is our refuge, our strength and a very present help in times of trouble. A passage in Deuteronomy 6, verses 10 and through 12, and when the Lord, your God, brings you into the land that He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, to give you, with great and good cities that you did not build and house us full of all the good things that you did not fill and sisters that you did not dig and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant and when you eat and are full, then take care, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. When God has given His people all of the blessings He has promised, when He has sustained us and He has carried us, He has liberated us from sin and delivered us in the redemption of Christ to salvation. When we are enjoying the blessings of the peace of Christ, be careful. It's in that time of prosperity, maybe not materially, but in that time of prosperity when our conscience is at ease with the Lord, be careful lest you forget the Lord. Let not your heart be troubled, Jesus told them, reminding them to believe in God. Just as we do when we are mourning the death of someone we love, the minister in reading the Psalms is saying, let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe in God, and by reading these Psalms seeking to remind us of God, if someone mentions their thoughts of heaven, getting them through a tough time, we often are faced with charges of it being simply a psychological device, something that we need to get us through those times. There's no sense of the reality of the present help of God. This comforter that Jesus said He would send to us doesn't really comfort, or do we turn to somewhere else? Jesus was recognizing that growing anxiety in His disciples. They had that same anxiety which we experience, perhaps even to a greater degree, because they had invested their whole lives in Christ who now said, gentlemen, we're at the end of the road. I am going to die, Peter will betray me, and you will scatter where are they to go? What are they to do? They've left their friends, their vocations, in some cases even their families to follow Christ, and now they would return to what? Jeers, and I told you so, and look what you've wasted. There's a great deal of anxiety in their lives, Jesus recognizes it, and He recognizes in that anxiety their vulnerability to temptation. Their vulnerability to turn from God, their vulnerability to succumb to the world, just as when He was in the boat with them, and the waves began to swell around the boat, and the waves began to break over the bow of the boat, and they began to sink the boat. They were confident with Christ before the storm. They were excited to be with Christ before the storm, and then as the storms hit and they grew anxious, how was their confidence in His power then? They turned and they said, don't you even care? We're going to die, dude, don't you care if we die? Have you no regard for our lives accusing Christ of not caring about their own lives? And so Jesus stood up at that moment, and He said, peace be still, and He stilled the storms around them. Second Corinthians chapter 1, verses 3 and 4, is a verse that brings comfort to us, and that reminds us of that scene in the boat. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies, and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort which we ourselves are comforted by God. Believe God, Jesus says to us, believe God. What were the promises that He Himself were drawing on when He said, believe God? Jesus was facing death, and yet He turns and He says, believe God for your comfort, because God had promised Him, I will not abandon your soul in the pit. I will not leave you in Hades, Shio rather, I will not abandon you to Shio. In fact, and then the verses that follow this, Jesus displays His confidence in that by telling them that even though He's about to die, He's about to go and prepare a place for them in heaven. He is about to go to the Father to prepare for their arrival to Him and the Father. Jesus is ministering to them out of what ministers to Him. He's saying, believe God, because I believe God, if I can face death, if I can face the cruelty of their jeers and the slaps and the flogging and the staking of my hands through the cross, if I can face that with confidence in the comforting words of my Father, then you be comforted as well, because though I'm facing death for sins of this world, and though I know that my Father will turn His face for me because of that sin, I still have a confidence that I will reside with the Father ultimately, and that confidence can see me through the trials which I face today. When trials and temptations come, they're like the waves troubled by stormy winds, and He says, don't let your hearts be troubled. It's a picture of that word, trouble, isn't it? The confusion and the misdirection of all these waves that were battering the boat is the same with our own hearts. When our hearts are troubled, is it their confusion and misdirection? As our heart is pulled this way and that and moving back and forth, Jesus is saying to them, don't let this happen. Don't become this way, don't surrender to the confusion, don't become ruffled and discomposed in your hearts because that is a state that belongs to those who lack a knowledge of God. They're even described in Ephesians 4, 14, they are children were told, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. A knowledge of God, an understanding of the waves of God and the purpose of God, an understanding of the providence of God in life. What uses doctrine, we say sometimes, what purpose of doctrine it just calls as people to fight. Without doctrine, there is no real knowledge of God. There's an idea of God, but no knowledge of God, and without the knowledge of God, when real persecution and real trouble comes, what will we draw upon for confidence? What will we turn to and say, I know that my God lives and I know that these events remain within His sovereign hand to guide me because the scriptures have taught me so. Without that we will be carried by every wind of doctrine. That's the promise of the scriptures is that we will indeed be tossed and buffeted about by the storms of life. There's comfort in belief in the 77th Psalm in verse 11, the first 10 verses are the state of the psalmist who's in confusion, and he's in despair wondering, where is God? It's the prayer of most of us, most of the time I regret to say, as we are facing life's troubles and we wonder why does God leave us this way? And then in verse 11, what does He do? He says, I remember, I remember that my God is able to save the comforting words of Hebrews 13.5, I will never fail or forsake you. It's a triple negative in the original language. We would read it that way as saying, I will never, never, never fail you or forsake you. And notice the second word, do not let your hearts be troubled, not second in order, but second in our treatment. Our heart is the fortress of our fortitude. If our heart begins to tremble, then our resolve is ultimately lost. It was Pharaoh's heart that turned hard and deserted him and directed him. In Exodus 25, we're told it's the heart that moves people and they're giving to God. In Deuteronomy 6, we're told it's the heart that is to love God. In Deuteronomy 8, it's the heart that fills with pride and forgets the Lord. In Deuteronomy 30, it's the heart that is drawn away leading us ultimately to idolatry. In Joshua 14, Caleb returned from the promised land with the other spies and he said that the land was full and wonderful and it was a land where God had given them great provision but the other spies told the people that the land was full of giants and that they could never take it. When we read my brothers who went up with me made the hearts of my people melt and so for their melted heart for 40 years they were made to wander. Why? Because they did not believe and their hearts trembled and their hearts melted and so they were not able to enter into the rest of God. Believing God Jesus says and then just like lumber that's cut to be tongue and groove where they fit together and they lock together, he says believe in God and then believe in me. Believing God, believe in Jesus. Jesus wants them to apply all of the comfort and all the security that they're able to, that comes to their mind because of their study and their meditation upon God and his work with them, he wants all of this to be applied to himself and he reveals to them a hope. His death which some of them would watch from the foot of the cross, they would watch his agony and they would watch his bleeding and they would watch his dying and they would not leave. They would stay there with Christ until he died because even there he was having them to know that he was leaving not in death so much as to prepare a place for them, the promises that are made by God are fulfilled in Christ and Hebrews 11 were told that by faith Abraham went to live in a land in the promise and he was living their intense but then in verse 10 we read he was looking forward to the city that has foundations whose designer and builder is God. If we were to continue a couple of verses in Hebrews 11, 36 to 39, we would read simply others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stone, they were sawed in two, they were killed with the sword, they went about in the skins of sheep and goats, destitute afflicted and mistreated of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and dins and caves of the earth and all these though commended through their faith did not receive what was promised. These saints of old were looking forward to Christ believe in God Jesus says and believe in me and then in chapter 12, 1 verse, the second looking to Jesus the founder and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, believe in God and believe in Jesus the founder and perfector of our faith, the promises of God are made real to us by the mediation of Christ, the mediator of a sure and better covenant. Let me conclude with this simple story, it's told by Donald Gray Barnhouse he passed away from this life November 5th, 1960, he also was pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church. The last book that he was writing even when he died, he was in a process of writing this book, is titled The Cross Through the Open Tomb. I particularly like to read the books of these great men of faith later in their life as they've come to understand not just the truths of the scripture as important vital as they are but also understand the taste and taste of the sweetness of the gospel as they draw closer to their own advent to Christ. He tells a story in there when he was pastoring in France, it was before World War II and there was a young French girl named Simone, I believe is how it would be pronounced. She came over and he says nearly every day to spend time with his wife, she was trying to learn English but she also was being ministered to following that Titus II Prince Bull, his wife was ministering to this girl and teaching her practical Christian living, she was a believer. There was a box that they had there, it was one of those Bible promise boxes which remain even today where you have hard cards that you draw out each day perhaps and it has a promise from the scripture of a blessing from God. And he said that she would delight sitting at the table as they would each draw out the card and read a verse from scripture which was a promise of God. She liked it so much in fact that she went and took her French Bible and wrote out her own cards and made her own promise box which she kept. Many years later as World War II came and went and as the Germans retreated in the American advance they had forced upon the French people German money, paper money which as the Germans left was worthless and could not buy anything. So this young lady with her family and her children was left destitute and impoverished with no means to buy anything at all. She would go to one of the local shops and all that the man could afford to give her were the peels off of potatoes and he would give her the peels of these potatoes one peck worth. She would take them home and boil them and that was all they had to eat she was emaciated, her children cried and they were hungry and she finally reached the end of her rope and there was no place else to turn and there was nothing else for her to do and she went into her bedroom to pray and she looked down on her nightstand was the boxes of the promises and she asked God Lord I'll open the box just give me some hope in one word and as she reached for the box her hand slipped and the box fell and it busted open and all of the hundreds of papers she had written scattered all over the floor and it was at that point she realized that God actually did answer her prayer it's not a single promise that you would pull out in Christ all the promises of God all the blessings of God are for us all the time. He withholds nothing he doesn't parcel it out to us he gives us all of his blessings at all the time second Corinthians 120 for all the promises of God find there yes in him that it's why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory all the promises of God find there yes in him in Jesus Christ.