(upbeat music) You see, anxiety is not a new problem. And it's not that God can't intervene. It's not that God doesn't intervene. God still works himself within all of our circumstances and our sinful behavior that come out of anxiety and worry and laziness and lack of pursuit of him. He still is always providing and always present. Shalom, my name is Josh Wyman, pastor of Grace Chapel. I'm excited to be with you today as we dive back into this episode of Gospel Daily. You know, when I'm in Israel, I will often say shalom. In fact, it's something that they say all the time instead of hello or even when they answer the phone instead of saying what or hi, they say shalom. This word shalom, it literally means peace to the deepest part of your soul. Can you imagine having such a greeting? If every time we saw each other, we said peace to the deepest part of your soul. That's exactly what shalom means. We all long for peace in our life. We long for the things that are trials at any given moment to go away. The relational strife that we face to be behind us. But the truth is we do face seasons where there is a lack of peace. But the Bible promises that there's going to be a future peace, a future reign of Jesus Christ when he comes back again. And there is an already sense of that when we have a relationship with him now. Today, we're gonna be looking at a passage from John chapter 16 where Jesus is giving this promise of future peace. In fact, I've titled the message exactly that, the promise of future peace. What we can find in Jesus Christ and in him alone. So let's listen to this message and begin to apply the truth of the gospel to our daily life. - When I was in Chicago, I was there as a pastor for several years and some of my studies there. One of my favorite things to do was to go downtown on Sunday evenings and to preach in the homeless shelter. Several homeless shelters would open up their doors and allow myself to come or any other young preacher just looking for somebody who would listen to come. And the rule was in most of the shelters they had to listen to the sermon before they could get the food. So I had a very captive audience and they would all sit there waiting for their meal. Some of them sleeping, others rather attentive and amening everything that I said. But I'll never forget this one woman who left a deep impression on my heart. She was struggling with so much anxiety, mostly because she was a hypochondriac. She was scared to death of germs. And she had been homeless of the majority of her life, living in homeless shelters. And I'm telling you, as a hypochondriac, as one who's afraid of germs, that is not a very great circumstance to be anxious about germs, right? But she said to me one time, she said to me, we're sitting at this grimy table in the bottom of a church and she said to me, she said, "Preacher, I wanna tell you something that somebody once told me." I said, "Okay, you go for it." And she said, "I want you to wash your hands often and pray all the time, because Jesus and germs are everywhere." (audience laughing) She said it just like that, but I will never get it, I will never forget it. We all along for peace in several different ways in a lot, we want peace, whether it's peace because we're scared of viruses or sickness. We want peace from wars and strife. We all along for peace. At the core of the human race, I think all of us, no matter what our background is, we long for peace. And this week I've entitled my message, the promise of perpetual peace. Last week was the promise of perpetual joy, but I want to show you the promise of perpetual peace. Found only in Jesus Christ. This is what I've learned. I've lived long enough to know that peace doesn't come with the absence of germs or strife or struggles or war. Peace comes only when God is present in my life. Peace is not the absence of something, but rather it is the presence of God Almighty. Now let's just talk about the problem here for a moment before we open up to the passage. The problem is clear. We deal with anxiety. We are a generation, a people that are plagued with anxiety. Anxiety in a lot of ways is the new depression. We moved from being a down and depressed culture to being a stressed and anxious culture. And I know first-handedly that anxiety is real. Anxiety is real, but it lies to you most of the time. And anxiety creeps up into our life, and certainly there are some today who entered this place and anxiety is nipping at your heels. Anxiety can overwhelm us. It will tell you that it's gonna win, but if you have Jesus Christ, it will not win. Anxiety manifests itself in a multitude of ways. Feeling distressed, uneasy, worried, upset, fearful, apprehensive, agitated, fretful, restless, nervous, fidgety, that's just to name a few. Anxiety can come from fear. Or fear itself can be a symptom of anxiety. I believe that fear and anxiety are closely related. They are not one and the same, but if I am fearful of something, then I can, in turn, feel anxious. And if I am anxious, then obviously I can be gripped by fear. They are different, yet they are interrelated. Dr. Archibald Hart, a PhD who studies behavioral health, he wrote this, he said that there is difference between fear and anxiety. And the difference is that fear is usually caused by tangible objects or threats. Anxiety, though, picks up where fear leaves off. It's mostly directed towards imagined or unrealized objects or conditions. Anxiety is more vague than fear, yet it is far more pervasive, end quote. I'll be honest with you and tell you that though I have had fears in my lifetime to real objects, I often have anxiety in my life tied to something that is imagined and is not yet realized. Anxiety has a time share on the property of my soul, and often it will find its way to sneak into my daily life or my weekly life, and it will plague my thoughts where I will be worried and fearful of something that is not yet real. Now, anxiety in and of itself is absolutely senseless. Anxiety in and of itself is purposeless. Anxiety is just you shaking and shuddering like a leaf because you're worried and worked up about something, but it actually accomplishes nothing, unless, unless. We take our anxiety, worry, fear, whatever it may be, and we use it as a catalyst to propel us to deeper trust in God. It is only then that anxiety can have purpose. If we use it to make us believe and trust God more. You see, the problem with anxiety is absolutely pervasive in our culture. It's everywhere. There was a girl named Sarah Fader, who is a social media woman from Brooklyn, New York. She had all sorts of influence on the web, and she had over 16,000 followers in Twitter, and one night she's texting with a friend. She texts to her friend, says, "Hey, why don't you come over? We'll spend some time together." And her friend does not text her back. A day goes by and she tweets this. This is what she puts on her Twitter. She says, "I don't hear from my friend for a day. My thought is she doesn't want to be my friend anymore. Hashtag, this is what anxiety feels like." She simply started this little hashtag, this is what anxiety feels like, to which then went absolutely viral, almost as viral as the feelings of anxiety themselves, and all sorts of people started tweeting using this exact hashtag. They were putting out phrase after phrase after phrase, saying, "This is what I'm anxious about." Then, using the hashtag, "This is what anxiety feels like." Now, if we're honest, I think every single one of us could probably think of a phrase, a relationship, or a circumstance of which we could slap this hashtag on in 140 characters or less. You and I could say, "This is what anxiety feels like." I think Miss Fader, she struck a nerve. Thousands of tweets went out, thousands of tweets retweeted as people went on and on, saying, "We are anxious about this, that, or the other thing. We're all anxious. Why are we anxious?" Because we're humans, and humans get worked up about all sorts of things, even unreal things, all the time. The New York Times reported that our society has moved from being depressed to being anxious, in an article that I found called Prozac Nation, is now the United States of Xanax. Anxiety disorders are the number one mental disorders in America right now. Over 40 million people are dealing with anxiety at this moment. 18.1% of all adults have a mental classification of being over the top plagued by anxiety. 36% of all teenage girls between 13 and 17 are plagued by anxiety, and 26% of all teenage boys are plagued by anxiety. It's the number one thing on college campuses that college students are seeking help for, and if you look at what has happened with Google Trends, in the last five years, more people have Googled about anxiety, or it's doubled, I should say. The results have doubled in the last five years, and they have Googled that more than any other mental disorder out there. People are wondering what can we do with anxiety? Anxiety is not a new problem. In fact, I would propose to you that anxiety goes back all the way to the Garden of Eden. Anxiety, and the origin of it, really started at Genesis chapter three. Here you have these two people, Eve and Adam, who lived in perfect relationship with God, and then because sin entered, they now were placed outside of the Garden of Eden, that the perfect, joyful relationship that they had, the harmony that they had with the Father, it was broken because sin now entered the picture. And now they are, for their own protection, I should add, but nonetheless, because of sin, they are put outside of the Garden, and the relationship that they had with God that was perfect and unhindered is now changed. And the cruel reality of a world full of anxiety and sorrow begins to plague them immediately after Genesis chapter three. You see, anxiety is not a new problem. Anxiety's been a problem as long as humans have been around, or at least as long as sin has plagued the humans that have been around. And it's not that God can't intervene. It's not that God doesn't intervene. God still works himself within all of our circumstances and our sinful behavior that come out of anxiety and worry and laziness and lack of pursuit of him. He still is always providing and always present. Yet we are people who live in a world full of distrust and full of self-love. And anxiety continues to get the best of far too many people. And then what happens is we start searching for joy and peace, only to be left bitterly disappointed in the end because we haven't found the true source of peace. The one true God who said, hey, remember what I created at the beginning of time in Genesis one and two? That kind of peace exists in a relationship with me by access through my son, that no matter what your circumstances are, my spirit can give you peace. You see, God responded to our utter restlessness by giving us his son. And even far before he gave us his son, we see this invitation to enter into a relationship with him all the way back to Isaiah chapter 55 around verses one, maybe even all the way through verse seven, he gives this invitation, come, even if you have no money, even if you have no bread, come and eat, if you have nothing, come to me, all you people who are weary, come. Reminds me of the same invitation that we've looked at from Jesus's lips in John chapter six or John chapter seven, where he says, come to me, if you're thirsty, I'll refuel you, if you're hungry, I'll give you bread to eat. I am living water, I am the bread of life. Or what we talked about last week in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, he gives us this invitation of come, come, come to me. You see, though we may be people that are plagued by anxiety, we have a father who has said, come to me, you weary soul, you sin-laden person. And I will give you forgiveness. I will give you rest from your striving. I will give you lasting joy. And I will give you peace that is unconquerable by any anxiety or lie that is told to you. It's with that that I want you to enter into this passage in John. I want you to see the truth of what Jesus is speaking to, not only the first century context of his disciples, but also to us today that we can have hope and that the lies that our anxious souls tell us, they won't win because we have a victorious lamb who has already won. Open up your Bibles with me to John chapter 16. And I want to look at verses 25 through 33. It's found on page 902 and 903 and the ESV Bibles in front of you. If you don't have a Bible, please take one of those home with you. And I've given you my notes on the back of the bulletin. There's six fill in the blanks. I want you to write down the other things that God speaks to you. And if at any time you have a question during the message, feel free to text this number, which is also located on the back of your bulletin. And I'll do my best to answer those questions for you in the days to come. I want us to be people that move from simply saying, God, I need you in my life, to saying, God, you're all I need. These disciples were in the middle of needing Jesus to stay close, but he had to go to the cross, right? And it would be easy for them in the final hours of Gethsemane to say, God, I need you, God, I need you. And what he's trying to say is, no, no, no, change your perspective, change your vocabulary. I want you to understand that all you need is me. You don't need me plus anything, but all you need is me. He made that clear, I think, at the beginning of chapter 16. And we looked at that with Daniel Henderson when he talked to us about the presence of the Holy Spirit, this great farewell gift that was given to us that the Holy Spirit comes and reminds us continually, verse 14 and 15, about what Jesus has said and done. And then Jesus uses this analogy in verses 16 through 24, a kind of a crazy one. As he's telling them, listen, you have the promise that I will rise again, you will rise again, you can be assured that there is resurrection and future hope to come. You can also be assured that I will hear your prayers from heaven, so he's saying I'm leaving you, but I'm still with you and I'll be with you in an even more real sense in the future. But then he uses this crazy analogy of childbirth. And he talks about how a woman can go through sorrow and pain to finally bring a human life out into the open and he says, that's kind of like you. In due time, you might have to go through sorrow, but there is joy on the other side. They're still trying to get their minds around what all this means. They're trying to get clarity around where he's going. And so Jesus continues on to make his joy and peace clear. He builds upon the word picture that he has given them and dissects it by giving us a little bit more clarity. Verse 25 says, I've said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but will tell you plainly about the Father. That's a hopeful statement, right? That's hopeful. Verse 26, in that day, you will ask me in my name. And I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf. Now hold on, verse 26 is not something I want you to miss. This is a powerful statement. He says, you will ask things in my name at least twice before he has told us to ask in his name, meaning ask within his will. He will hear us from heaven. So we're told to ask within his will. But he says, you will ask in my name. But I do not say that you will ask in my name and then the Father will give to you whatever you ask. Not because I'm twisting the Father's arm is the Joshuaian translation. Don't think that you ask and I go to the Father and twist his arm to say, please, we just do it this time for them. No, no, no. He goes on in verse 27 and says, when you ask things in my name, the Father will do it on your behalf. Verse 27, for the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. And now I am leaving the world and going to the Father. Now this is a powerful statement because what he's saying is the very nature and character of the Father will be ever more applied to you by me going to be with the Father. It's that whole idea of I go so a greater can come, a greater in magnitude, but the Holy Spirit will also bring all that is true of the Father. And everything that Jesus has taught to us, he will bring it to our minds and apply it to us. The very nature and character of God will be more clearly revealed by him going. And then he says, you ask anything in my name and the Father will give it to you. Not because I'm up there making some paper rock scissors but with the Father seeing if he'll actually do it. He does it because he loves you. Don't miss verse 27, the Father himself loves you. If you need proof that he loves you, then you can look just to Jesus Christ and go, wow, wow. He loves me enough to give his one and only son to die on my behalf, to appease his own wrath so that I may be in a right relationship with him. And he says, not only look to me as the proof but the fact that you have believed in me, the fact that you have accepted me, the fact that your faith is in me, the Father's love is on your side. As he's already said in this farewell of this course, you are no longer counted as servant but you are counted as friend. He loves you. Now here's where anxiety goes off the rails. Anxiety fails to acknowledge that the Father cares for me and is completely in control of my life. When I'm plagued by anxiety, then I probably, most likely, at least momentarily, have forgotten that the Father loves me and that he's absolutely in control of my life. He's sovereignly working everything out for his glory and for my good. He loves me. He is God and by being God, by being the very nature of God, by being the most powerful one, he has to have all power, which means he has full control. In his full control, his full power is realized in the fact that he is all knowing. He has to be all knowing if he's going to be all powerful. So if he's all powerful and all knowing, then he's also going to be all present. Everywhere I go, there he is. There is nowhere I can go away from him. Psalm 139 makes that clear. And if he's going to be all present, then he has to be all eternal. You see, all powerful, all knowing, all present, all eternal. He's all of these things because he is all God. So if he is all of those things, that's a beautiful thing to know. But when I begin to grasp that he loves me and that because he is powerful, and knowledgeable, and present, and eternal, he has everything in his control and I can trust him. Anxiety goes off the rails when we forget that he loves us and that he's in control. Let me illustrate it with this story. Wednesday, 4th of July parade, neighborhood parade. We have everybody there lined up. The parade takes off and it's my daughter Carolinas' first chance to ride her bike in the parade. Up to this point, she's been pushed in a stroller. But she was set on riding her bike in the 4th of July parade. And I knew, most likely, she would ride it there, but I would carry it back, right? So I was kind of opposed to the idea. But trying to be a good dad, I said, yeah, no problem. Do you just, you get on that bike, this is gonna be great, okay? And she had it mostly down, she has training wheels and she knew how to pedal backwards so it'd break and all that kind of stuff. But I put her on her bike and the first thing she says to me is, dad, don't let go. Dad, don't let go. No problem, I got you. Now I didn't know it meant don't let go ever all the way till we get to the park. I didn't see that coming, right? But she kept saying, dad, don't let go. Dad, don't let go, dad, don't let go. I would pull my hand off just to see if she knew, dad, don't let go, right? And I kept having to hold her, hold her shoulder, hold her chest, hold her head, I just had to somehow be touching her. So I took it as a moment to live out Deuteronomy chapter six, verse seven. Teach your children as you walk along the road in a 4th of July parade about me, right? (audience laughing) So I said, sweetheart, you know, and we're like the back of the parade at this point, okay? And I said, you know, babe, there's a lot of times in our life where we say to God, please don't let go. Please don't let go. And guess what? He promised that he'll never let go. And just like I'm not gonna let go of you, God promises that I will never let go. He's not gonna let you go, but guess what? Sweetheart, there's gonna be times where it feels like he let's go. And there are gonna be moments where you don't feel his hand anymore, but he's still there and he's still present and he's still holding you. And I don't know if she was still listening, but I was preaching to my own heart, right? (audience laughing) Because there have been many, many moments in my life where I've turned to him and said, father, don't let go, please don't let go. And the moments where I feel like his hand is removed, I can trust the promise that he is still there. I have to trust that he's still there. He said he wouldn't let go. Peace starts with trust. If you're going to have peace in your life, then you must trust God's hand. And behind his hand is a loving heart. So whether you're leading a company or a department or teaching your kids or meeting quotas or leading a meeting or hitting a deadline, whatever you have to do in your life, it should all come back to acknowledging that God is God and you are not. And he asks for you to trust him. And by trusting him, you're tapping into his power. You're tapping into his power and he's all knowledgeable and he's all present and he's all eternal and his power is present for you. He says, I have peace for you. Now listen, I know that anxiety is real and I know sometimes we need counseling and we need medicine to help us overcome our lack of peace or the anxiety that plagues us. And I'm not downplaying any of that. But what I am saying is that if we have Christ in our life, then we should be constantly growing in our trust, not constantly growing in our anxiety. - Well, that's a convicting statement. We must be constantly growing in our trust, not just growing in our anxiety. This is Josh Wieben, pastor of Grace Chappell. And that was a message that I preached entitled The Promise of Future Peace from John chapter 16. That's only the first part of it. So join us back here as we dive into the second part of the truth that we can have peace in Jesus Christ. But let's talk about that for a moment and apply it to our own life. You know, I've been going through a season where it felt like there's been a lack of peace. It seems that everything around me is in turmoil and I'm longing for some sense of peace, some sense of calmness. Jesus promises us that, but he doesn't promise it in maybe the way that we think of a retreat center in the mountains or a nice chair by the beach. He promises that in the midst of the tornado and the turmoil, he will still calm our hearts. The Bible tells us that we can have peace that surpasses all understanding. How sweet is that? So my friend, I don't know what you're facing today, but I promise you, you can find total and complete peace in Jesus Christ and in Him alone. If you'd like more resources to point you on the way of finding peace in Christ, would you stop by our website, gospeldaily.org? That's G-O-S-P-E-L-D-A-I-L-Y.org. I hope you will continue to apply the gospel truth of peace in Jesus Christ to your life, daily. - Hi, my name's Pastor Josh with Grace Chapel and Gospel Daily. I'm also the author of a book entitled "The End of Anxiety," the biblical prescription for overcoming fear, worry, and panic. The buzzword these days seems to be mental health. Everybody's talking about their anxiety and what's happening. Did you see that recently in Denver, children's hospital declared an emergency among even our youngest population that they are overly depressed and super anxious and many of them trying to commit suicide. My friends, we need the gospel now more than ever. We must find the end of anxiety. I've written this book to help people grasp the truth that God can use our anxiety to bring Him glory and that in the midst of our anxiety, we can have true joy. You can find this book, "The End of Anxiety," wherever you purchase your books. Or go to our website, endofanxiety.com. That's endofanxiety.com. On that website, you'll find a free resource with 51 actions to help you end anxiety today. Again, our website is endofanxiety.com.
