Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

John 14:1

Even in the final hours before Jesus is betrayed, tried, and is crucified, His focus is not on Himself. He uses the final moments before His death to comfort others.

What mercy!

In His final sermon on the way from the Upper Room to Gethsemane, Jesus comforts the eleven disciples in the most loving way. In the hours prior to this sermon, Jesus had told them once again that He was going to go away from them. This probably created many doubts and fears in their minds about what was to happen in the days to come. But He also added that all of them would forsake Him that night. This had to trouble them greatly, even though they deny that it would happen. Jesus responds, showing that He sees their troubled hearts and — He gives them comfort.

How is this possible? There is only one way — believe in Jesus. 

To find peace, and enter into true rest, we must believe in Jesus and the work that He finished. A belief in this truth will comfort a troubled heart. It is the only way for that comfort to come because it does not place any “chance” of eternal security in our hands. Confidence that Christ truly did it all gives rest.

It may seem like everything is working against the love of God but His love prevails every time. Our faith is not the cause of anything regarding our eternal security. It waxes and wains. Those who leave part of our salvation to our will or our works cannot answer this question. But grace tells us that Jesus paid it all and covered even our unbelief and lack of faith. 

This is not to excuse our doubts and unfaithfulness. It serves to remind us that, though we stray (as the disciples did so many times), Jesus is faithful and we will not be lost.

The main point that Jesus is making here is that we are to guard our hearts. Troubles are going to come into our lives. 

Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

Job 5:7

Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

Acts 14:22

We must guard our hearts so that they do not become a part of our daily thinking and decision making process or attitude about life. If we do not guard our hearts, then we have no peace. If we guard them by remembering and believing what Jesus did, then we will have peace even in times of trouble.

Later in this sermon Jesus will remind us where our hope is found. It is found in Him!

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

John 16:33