Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled
John 13:36-14:4,
36 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” 37 Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” 38 Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.
1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 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? 3 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. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”
Let not your hearts be troubled. The text was chosen months ago. And your pastors believe it was chosen before the foundation of the world for this church, on this Sunday, January 25, 2026.
“Let not your hearts be troubled.” (John 14:1)
Has your heart been troubled this week?
Pastor Jonathan talked last week about Jesus giving his disciples both a new commission — that we love one another — and a new location. For the first time, these men were going to follow Jesus in a world without Jesus. A world without Jesus. We know that kind of world, don’t we?
Most weeks, we live out there in a world without Jesus, and we see and feel his absence in all kinds of ways… Some of you were deeply troubled long before last Sunday — you’ve been staring down serious financial trouble. Or stubborn marriage trouble. Or sudden health trouble. Or heartbreaking trouble with your kids. All this might feel small compared to what weighs on you most right now. I know because we pray for you as pastors. You have laid in bed at night and wondered, Jesus, where are you? Why would you leave me here, to deal with this?
Every week, we live out there in a world without Jesus. And then once a week, we come together here, and it feels like he’s really here… He is of course here, we all know that. We say it at the end of every service, Matthew 28:18-20,
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. . . . And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
He was with us last Sunday, and he’s with us this Sunday, and if he doesn’t return, he’ll be with us next Sunday, whatever comes. He’ll never leave us or forsake us… And yet we can’t see him. But when we come together like this, it’s almost like we can — the singing, the preaching, the praying, the one-anothering — this gathering pulls his throne back down out of the clouds for an hour or two, just long enough for us to run back in and spend 6 days facing all the things that trouble us.
And then, last week, the trouble broken in and interrupted even that.
Or did it? It’s true that the service we had planned didn’t immediately continue as planned, that a scene unfolded that none of us wanted to witness much less experience, but as I watched it all happen, standing right over there, Jesus was so real in the chaos. Jesus was really real. He was real in you.
One mom injured herself rushing another family out of the Sanctuary. More moms quickly getting our kids to the safest part of the building. Men like Pastor Mike and the other Pastor Mike and Ben and Tommy and Eli and Warren and others quickly standing to shield others and calmly but firmly surround the protestors. Our people engaging the aggression with calmness, kindness, and truth. Attempting to talk and reason with them. Praying for them, and even with one or two of them.
Pastor Jonathan, with mics shoved in his face, responding with Jesus and Jesus and more of Jesus. We’re here to worship Jesus! And then since Sunday, you haven’t stopped. Every day, sometimes hour by hour, we’ve watched dozens of you rise to meet some need.
I’ve talked to a number of you now who have gone to visit immigrants in our church community who are hurting and afraid, bringing food and Scripture to strengthen them.
You keep stepping up, each in your own way, to comfort one another, to feed one another, to protect one another, to pray for one another.
We heard in the sermon last Sunday:
“They will know you are my disciples by the way you love one another.”
And, brothers and sisters, the whole world knows we worship Jesus because of how you loved one another last Sunday.
But last Sunday was troubling — the state of our city is deeply troubling. And the sermons of the last couple months are helping me process the trouble. Just a few verses before we get to verse 1, we heard, John 13:21,
“After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.’”
What does that mean? It means it’s not always wrong to be troubled. There is an unholy troubled — an unholy anxiety, an unwillingness to trust God. May God guard us from that. But Jesus knew Judas was going to betray him, he knew why he was going to die, he knew he was going to rise from the dead, he knew he was saving the world from their sins — and he was still troubled. It’s not always wrong to be troubled.
And so, when Jesus says to his disciples here, with his own heart troubled by Judas, “Let not your hearts be troubled,” I don’t think this is mainly fatherly correction — “Boys, stop being so worried and upset about all of this.” He’s certainly not afraid to confront and correct them (in fact, he corrects Peter right here in these verses), but that’s not the tone here. No, this isn’t mainly fatherly correction; this is fatherly encouragement for battle. They needed courage to face the trouble ahead, and a good father knows how to give courage in moments like these. These men have good reasons to be troubled, and he’s reminding them they have even better reasons to trust him and take heart. And he gives us reasons right here in these verses.
My three main points are questions:
How could he leave?
Where did he go?
How do we get to him?
1. How Could He Leave?
Before I get to how Jesus strengthens his friends, we need to try and feel their trouble with them. We all know the things we’re troubled about — I know what’s troubling me — but what was troubling them? I’m thankful that we put the end of John 13 with the beginning of 14. John 13:36, our first verse, helps define the trouble for us:
“Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’”
It’s a little hard for us to put ourselves in their shoes, isn’t it? They were desperate for a savior, for a king to come and conquer Rome. And they really believed this was their king. He’s here. And now this is the moment. We’re going up to Jerusalem again, but now we have the promised Messiah, the king, the champion. We’re going up there and we’re going to win. This time’s going to be different. We don’t have to live in a world without our king anymore.
And then as they gird up their loins and prepare for battle, the Messiah says, “Actually, I’m going to leave you now.” What! It felt like their savior was leaving right when they needed saving. . . . The wine at the wedding, and the bread and fish in the dessert, and even raising Lazarus from the dead, that’s all amazing, but we need you now, Jesus. Like, none of that means anything if you don’t come through for us now. You’re supposed to be the one who delivers us. . . . And now you’re deserting us? You’re leaving us to try and live here, without you?
Now, we know where he’s going, and so we want to say, “Hey Peter, relax, it’s going to be alright. He’s going to die and rise. You’re going to win — like really, really win.” But we do the same thing they’re doing, don’t we? We might not get in Jesus’s face like Peter did, but we ask the same questions — we do if we’re human anyway. Some of you were asking verse 36 questions this week. Jesus, you’re just going to leave us here — with this? Jesus, why did you have to leave? If you loved us, why would you let us go through all this without you? You were already here! You could have just stayed and made all of this right by now. How could you leave?
How could he leave? He had to leave. The question we should ask is: Where did he need to go? And that’s really what these next verses are about.
2. Where Did He Go?
“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?”
Where was Jesus going when he left his disciples behind? He says he was going to his Father’s house, and he was going to prepare a place for them, for us.
He’s talking about heaven, the place where God dwells. That’s where he was going. But why did he call heaven “the Father’s house”? . . . The Bible doesn’t talk this way about heaven a lot. I think Jesus calls heaven a house at this particular moment, right before intense suffering and opposition, because he wanted them to know that heaven isn’t just a shelter for forgiven believers — no more sin, no more fear, no more tears. That would be an improvement on these cities. That would be an improvement on any city. It’s certainly better than eternal destruction in hell. No, Jesus wanted these men to know, in the face of great danger, that heaven is more than a shelter; it’s a home — it’s a place where you belong, where you’re loved, where you feel safe. It’s a place for family.
The heaven Jesus bought for you is a home — and don’t you want a new home? Don’t you want to be a part of that kind of family? You might think you have a great home, in a great part of town, hemmed in by great neighbors, but even there you’re hit with waves of heartache and temptation and uncertainty. Because of sin and all the horrible consequences of sin, we all want to go home. We’re all out of place here. And some of us feel that more than others. You feel very, very far from home here. Jesus is going to say in just a few verses, “I will not leave you as orphans . . . ” (John 14:18). I’m going to provide a home for you. A place to belong. A place to be loved. A place where you are fully and finally safe.
And in that house, he says, there are many rooms. Why did he say that? Because he wants us to know that there’s plenty of room.
“For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Heaven isn’t going to be like the inns in Bethlehem when Christ first came. No, there’s always room in this house. Do you want to live in this house? There is room for you — and there’s room for everyone you know (and everyone they know).
If every soul in these cities turned to Jesus, he’d have a place for every single one of them. And that’s our mission as a church. This is a big, big house, and our prayer is that God would fill up the rooms — that he would bring many, many in our city home, even through the horrors of what’s happening right now. The people in our city are hurting and divided and afraid and they need a King. I’ve prayed, with all the extra attention on our church, Lord, fill up the rooms! Make Jesus impossible to ignore. And make him impossible to resist. There’s always room in this house. He won’t turn you away.
And if you’ll believe in Jesus, not only is there room for you, but there’s a room for you. Listen to him carefully, “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?” When you get to this house, he’s not going to be scrambling around to make room (Hey, Epaphraditus, can you bunk with Aquila until we find a spot for Pastor Max?). No, there will be a place prepared for you. And when you get there, you’re going to know it’s yours.
Our kids got a number of things for Christmas this year, but the biggest hit was a case of colored pencils my wife bought for our son. I didn’t know my wife had gotten this gift for him, and so when he opened it and I saw his eyes, I cried. I cried! Why did I cry about some colored pencils?
Because as soon as I saw it, and saw him holding it, I knew it was the perfect gift for him. You could have shown me that pencil case anywhere in the world, and I would have said that’s something my wife would buy for our boy, because she’s a good mom who knows and loves her son. No child in the world is going to love this more than he does. That’s what your room’s going to be like. Your place in heaven. It’s going to be obviously yours, prepared for you.
Some of you have never had a home like that. A lot of people feel that way in Minneapolis and St. Paul right now. You sit in your home, in this city, and it feels like anything but home here. You’re anxious. You’re angry. You’re troubled. And into that persistent sense of homesickness, Jesus says, “If you’re with me, Oh I have a home for you. I’m going to prepare a place for you.”
And the best part of the home he makes for you is going to be him.
“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.”
So he left to prepare a place for you, and he’s coming back to make sure you get there safely. Did you hear that? He’s not going to prepare a place for you and then waiting to see if you can get there on your own. No, when it’s time, he’s going to come back, pick you up, and escort you there himself. Not one of you will be lost or left behind.
And when you get home, he’ll be at the center of everything you love about that place. You’ll be happier than you’ve ever been — Do you believe that about heaven? You’ll be happier than ever before, and it’s not going to be about the colored pencils he put next to the bed — it’s not going to be about all the things you’d want to do if you could do anything you want in heaven (and I think we’ll do all those things in heaven). No, you’ll be happier than you’ve ever been, and it’ll be because he’s there. I promise you. You won’t have to convince yourself he’s the best. No, it’ll be so good to be with him that it’ll be a little hard to believe that he’s really just there, every day, for thousands and thousands of years.
More than anyone besides the Bible, Randy Alcorn has helped me long for that home. He says in his book on heaven,
“Nothing is more often misdiagnosed than our homesickness for Heaven. We think that what we want is sex, drugs, alcohol, a new job, a raise, a doctorate, a spouse, a large-screen television, a new car, a cabin in the woods, a condo in Hawaii. What we really want is the person we were made for, Jesus, and the place we were made for, Heaven. Nothing less can satisfy us. . . . Not only will we see his face and live, but we will likely wonder if we ever lived before we saw his face!” (Heaven, 166, 172)
So he’s going to the Father’s house, which has many rooms, there’s a room prepared for you, with him at the center, and he’s coming back to make sure we get there. But how do we get there?
3. How Do We Get to Him?
Verse 3:
“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.”
You don’t think you know. That’s exactly what Thomas says in the next verse,
“Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
Pastor Jonathan will preach those verses in a couple weeks, but we get a taste even here in these verses. When Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you,” what did he mean by prepare? Did he mean he had to leave because he needed to do some work on the house to get it ready for us? Is he framing out doors and laying sheet rock on a couple floors? No, this isn’t that kind of preparation.
The house is finished. All the rooms are ready. No one has been forgotten, and no detail has been missed. The problem isn’t the readiness of the house; the problem at this point in the Gospel of John is that there’s no way to get in. When he says he’s going to prepare a place for them, he’s going to install the front door. And this glorious door is made of two horrifying beams of wood. He’s going to die for his friends. That’s really why he had to leave.
When he says he’s preparing a place, he’s opening the home. And so yes, where’s he going? He’s going to the Father’s house. But he gets there through the grave. “I am the good shepherd,” he told them. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. . . .” (John 10:11). He’s going to die for their sins, so that they get to go home. He’s going to lay down his life for the sheep, for his friends. As he’s leaving them, we realize he’s not abandoning them; he’s rescuing them. All they can see is the immediate threat — we can relate to that — all they can see is the immediate threat ,but he was focused on a far greater threat. They’re focused on little Rome, and he’s about to go to war against hell — and he’s going to win.
Colossians 2:13–15:
“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”
How could he leave? Where was he going? That’s where he’s going. “And,” he says verse 4, “you know the way to where I am going” (John 14:3–4). Again, you don’t think you know the way — we’ve felt that way this week, haven’t we? We don’t think we know the way forward, but we do know the way, because we know him.
Even You, Peter
As we turn to the Table, then, that leaves us with three verses I’ve said almost nothing about. This is chapter 13:36–38. I’ll be brief here, in closing, but I’m so jealous for you to see this.
“Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.’ 37 Peter said to him, ‘Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.’ 38 Jesus answered, ‘Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.’”
Next verse, next words out of his mouth, in the very next breath as far as we know:
“Let not your hearts be troubled.”
Think about that. “I will lay down my life for you!” “No you won’t, Peter. You’re going to fail me, you’re going to disown and betray me three times today . . . . and I’m still going to lay down my life for you, so you don’t have to be troubled.” He doesn’t say that to Judas (he’s already left by now), but he says it to Peter. I’m going to prepare a place for you, Peter. Yes, even you.
And so I say to you this morning, it doesn’t matter how you have betrayed him and how many times you have betrayed him — how many times you have run from him and sinned against him. Maybe you betrayed him three times in the last 24 hours. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from this Sunday. And it doesn’t matter where you were sitting, standing, or shouting last Sunday. If you will turn and believe, he has prepared a home for you. You can be forgiven. His death can cover you. His wounds can heal you. His house can shelter you. Yes, even you.
So, Cities Church, let not your hearts be troubled.
