No. 4.
(Read John 14:1.)
“Let not your heart be troubled.”
His own heart might well have been troubled (and was, but not for Himself, chapter 13:21), when He thought of the way that lay before Him, darkening now with every moment that flitted by—a way the terrible depths of which no heart but His own and His Father’s could understand. Who will ever know, as He knew it, the awful load then pressing on His loving heart? Had He “loved His own which were in the world” as never man loved? One disciple had gone out to betray Him (13:30); another, the most affectionate, was about to deny that he knew Him (verse 38), and that with oaths and curses; and the rest to forsake Him. Did He love His people Israel? Let the tears which, “when He beheld the city,” could not be restrained (Luke 19:41); the sigh that came spontaneously when forcibly reminded of His people’s sad condition by the deaf and dumb man (Mark 7:34); the groans He uttered as He approached the grave of Lazarus (John 11:38), whose very name means leprous, and whose sleep in the dark tomb shadowed forth the long night of death coming on His people; let these, and many another glimpse we get of what was ever near His heart, answer the question. Yes; He loved as neither Moses (Exodus 32:32) nor Paul (Romans 9) could love the people of Jehovah. Yet their voice it was, as He well knew, that should shortly “prevail” to send Him to a lingering death of agony and shame. (Luke 23:23.) Let a mother who has been stricken to the heart by the only child she ever cradled on her breast, a father whose gray hairs are going down in sorrow to the grave through the son of his love, comprehend, if ever they can, something of what Jesus felt on that night, and at that moment, when He said, “Let not your heart be troubled.” And beyond all this, and deeper far than any sorrow with which man could wring that tender heart, lay depths through which He needs must go, if God was to be glorified and sinners saved. But who shall tell them out? Who shall adequately describe the utter loathing of the HOLY ONE for sin, of the LIFE for death? who comprehend the crushing force of the foreseen forsaking of His God to that heart which had never known a moment in which communion the most blissful had not been enjoyed, and that in the full consciousness of being God’s delight? (Proverbs 8; John 1:18.) And was not all this pressing on His spirit? Were not the shadows of Gethsemane, and the Judgment Hall, and Calvary, closing round His path? Oh, heart of hearts! who shall mentally grasp thy weight of anguish then? Yet must we do so, if we would, try to fathom that depth of sympathy and love which, ocean-like, swallowing up all thought of thine own suffering, could be occupied about the sorrow of a handful of disciples, whose trouble chiefly sprang from disappointed, though rightly founded, hopes, and which, through faith in God, lay at the root and raised the conflict, had in it much of the element of self. (Mark 9:33; 10:37; Luke 24:21.)
What moral grandeur, what inimitable tenderness, what sweet sympathy, what love divine, find their expression in that short, simple sentence, taken in connection with all that lay around and pressed upon His blessed Spirit— “Let not your heart be troubled!”
May every “glimpse” we get of His perfections endear Him more deeply to our hearts, constrain us to more self-denying service, enhance our joy, raise the tone of our praises here, and enlarge our capacity for the eternal enjoyment of Himself hereafter. K.