Listen to the unabridged sermon here: Not Lost, Not Alone
We don’t live in an easy world.
That’s not a particularly inspirational way to open, I know. But it’s where John 14 begins, and it’s where Jesus begins, so it’s where we need to start.
The scene is the upper room. Judas has slipped out into the night. Jesus has predicted his own death. He has told Peter, loyal and headstrong, that before the rooster crows at daybreak, he will deny knowing Jesus three times. A shadow of foreboding hangs over the whole evening. And into that shadow, Jesus opens his mouth and says:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”
I’ve spent a lot of years in ministry telling people that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life. And honestly? It’s a pretty easy sell to college students. College is, for many people, four years of living your best life — no real responsibilities, buffet dining halls, a kind of extended cruise before adulthood begins. In that season, a message about God’s wonderful plan lands well.
But then real life starts.
And real life is hard. We live in bodies that break down. We inhabit a world fractured by sin and suffering — and we contribute to that fracturing ourselves. We’re not simply victims of a broken world; we’re participants in it. And when your marriage is struggling, or the diagnosis comes back, or the relationship falls apart, or the grief won’t lift — “God has a wonderful plan for your life” doesn’t just ring hollow. It can feel like a lie.
What Jesus offers instead is something more honest, and more durable.
He doesn’t deny their pain. He doesn’t paper over the darkness of the evening. He looks at eleven heartbroken men and says: I know your hearts are troubled. Do not let them be.
That’s not the same as “everything is fine.” It’s an invitation to trust — in the middle of something that is clearly not fine.
You Are Not Lost: A Future Home to Hold Onto
Jesus moves almost immediately into the language of home.
“My Father’s house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” (v. 2)
The word translated “house” here carries the idea of dwelling — a place where you belong, where you are expected, where there is room for you specifically. This echoes back to the very beginning of John’s Gospel, where he tells us that the Word “dwelt among us.” The whole arc of John is the story of God making his home with his people.
When everything is falling apart, Jesus says: you are not lost. You know where you are going. There is a home being prepared. You are not wandering without a destination.
Thomas, predictably, pushes back: “We don’t know where you’re going, so how can we know the way?”
And Jesus gives one of the most famous answers in all of Scripture: “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
This isn’t just a theological proposition to be believed. It’s a promise for the person lying awake at 3 a.m. staring at the ceiling. You are not lost. You know the way, because the way is a person — and that person is with you.
You Are Not Alone: A Present Helper to Lean On
But Jesus doesn’t stop at future hope. He knows his disciples need help for right now — for the next hour, the next day, the next year of their lives after he is gone.
So he makes a promise that is easy to read past: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate.” (v. 16)
The word for “another” here is worth pausing over. Greek has two words that can be translated this way. One (heteros) means another of a different kind. The other (allos) means another of the same kind. Jesus uses allos. The advocate coming is not a substitute or a lesser version — he is one of the same kind as Christ himself.
That is a staggering claim. The Holy Spirit — the paraclete, the one who stands alongside us, who advocates on our behalf, who dwells within us — is of the same kind as Jesus.
You are not an orphan. That’s Jesus’s own word for what they will not be: “I will not leave you as orphans.” (v. 18) The Spirit comes to live with us and in us. We are not left to navigate this world alone.
Peace That Doesn’t Depend on Circumstances
That brings us to the final gift Jesus offers in this passage: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” (v. 27)
The disciples knew what the world’s version of peace looked like. Pax Romana — the peace of Rome — was enforced through violence, domination, and fear. It was conditional. It required compliance. It came with strings.
Jesus’s peace is different. It is unconditional. It is not the absence of trouble — he has already made clear that trouble is coming. It is a settled confidence that you are held, that you are known, that you are not alone — even when the world is shaking.
We experience that peace through the Spirit living in us. Which means we can have it now, not just at some future point when circumstances improve.
The Broken Supports We’re Leaning On
Here’s the honest question this passage presses on us: what are we actually leaning on when things get hard?
Because we all have our go-to’s. Some of them are as benign as a Dairy Queen run or an evening of Netflix. Some of them are more serious — the drink that becomes drinks, the escape that becomes an addiction, the relationship that starts as comfort and ends in wreckage. The spectrum runs from the banal to the devastating.
But they share a common logic: they trick us into feeling like we have some control. And that’s the seduction. We’d rather hold onto something we can reach for than release control to the Spirit — who is real, and present, but cannot be managed.
I remember sitting in my mentor’s office and he asked me: Why don’t you want to trust the Spirit? What are you afraid of?
I said: Losing control.
And he let that sit there.
Life, it turns out, is too big to control. Too hard to hold in our hands. Eventually we either find something powerful enough to numb us to that reality, or we learn to release it to the one who can actually hold it.
Thomas à Kempis, writing about this very chapter, captured what Jesus is offering in a few spare lines:
“I am the way which thou must follow, the truth which thou must believe, the life for which thou must hope. I am the inviolable way, the infallible truth, the never-ending life.”
Without the way, there is no going. Without the truth, there is no knowing. Without the life, there is no living.
You are not lost. You are not alone.
In the midst of pain — trust Christ.
This post is adapted from a sermon on John 14 preached at Peace Presbyterian Church in Flint, Michigan.