TROUBLE AND ITS REMEDY
‘Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.’
Of all the verses in the Bible there is none which has given so much comfort to the whole Church of God as this. Could you go through the world and enter into every sick room, and every chamber of sorrow, you would find more Bibles open at the fourteenth chapter of John than at any other part of the Holy Scriptures.
The moment at which our Blessed Lord uttered these memorable words was one of no ordinary character. He had just been revealing to His disciples—more plainly than He had ever done before—both His own coming sufferings and death, and their own sad desertion of Him in His dying hour. At such a moment Christ would draw out, from the quiver of His consolations, His best arrow: you may be sure that the balm was the very sweetest.
I. The remedy for everything.—Faith—faith—faith in Himself. Faith in Christ is a remedy for everything. ‘Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.’ There are times of sorrow in this world which show the utter mockery of all the world’s comfort. Ah! in your hours of prosperity—when health is strong, and the outer world is silent—you may think that you need nothing more; but when sickness comes you need the comfort of religion.
II. A command.—Look upon these words in the light of a command, a command and the way to keep it—a command, a positive, absolute command. It is in the imperative mood—a positive command—‘Let not your heart be troubled.’ It speaks as to men who are responsible for their griefs. Remember this. When little cares of daily life are vexing you, remember this command, ‘Do not be troubled.’ When the grave has brought bitter grief, still the voice says, ‘Let not your heart be troubled.’ When the violence of temptation comes, and sins hang about you, and the retrospect is bitter, and the prospect is dark—there are the same words, ‘Let not your heart be troubled.’ There is something in the expression which seems intended to stir up a man from the indolence of sorrow; and to make a man feel himself accountable for an outdrawn grief. I say not, brethren, that the Christian has not deep sorrows; but I say this—in indulging sorrow there must be either ignorance or sin. God never commands what a man cannot do; and He has made it as positive a command as any command in the decalogue—‘Let not your heart be troubled.’
III. Is it too hard?—Let us go on. Whenever Scripture lays down a difficult precept, I have always found there is close in its steps the means whereby that precept may be kept. ‘Let not your heart be troubled.’ There is the command. ‘Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.’ We must analyse this a little closer. It seems to be as if Christ intended to lay down this general proposition—that the only cure for a wounded heart is to have a ‘belief’ in the Second Person in the Trinity—the same in kind, and the same in degree, as we almost all have for the First Person in the Trinity; and it is made, that is, natural religion, the stepping-stone up to the revealed.
There is no one who has not been, or who is not at this moment, or will not be very soon, in some ‘trouble.’ It is very important, before that hour, to know quite well where the secret of true comfort lies. It lies, believe me, in a sure assurance of our own interest in the Lord Jesus Christ. So has He said, Who Himself knew the heart which He made, and Who Himself knew the power of the Cross which He carried, ‘Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.’
—Rev. James Vaughan.