Alright brethren, let's go back
now to John chapter 14. Now last time we looked at this
on Sunday, we saw how Peter and the disciples were troubled and
they were troubled over many things and this is what the Lord
said to comfort them. You know the chapter division
is not here and it begins up in chapter 13 and Peter is troubled
and the Lord tells him, you are going to deny me Peter. three
times, and then he says these words here to comfort them. Now,
we looked at this last time, but this time I want to focus
just on something our Lord said here. Verse one, he said, let
not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my Father's house are many
mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. Now get that word right there. I go to prepare a place for you. If you've been born of the Spirit
of God and the Lord's given you faith to behold something of
His holiness, what He requires and something of your own sinfulness,
then whether you're troubled in your heart or whether you're
rejoicing in Christ, whatever the case may be, get these words
down in your heart and really, really think about these to you
personally. Our Lord said to each of His
blood-bought, His chosen children, born of His Spirit, you that
believe Him, He says this, I go to prepare a place for you. I go to prepare a place for you. Now, if there's anybody here
who does not yet believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, just imagine. I know right now it may seem
far off that you have to think about these things, but just
imagine being at the point you know you're
about to pass in this life. And think of what a blessing
it will be to have this assurance to know and believe that the
Lord Jesus Christ prepared a place for you. Believe on Him. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every word in this statement right here is just packed full
of instruction. It's packed full of comfort.
It's packed full of strength for God's people. So we're going
to just jump in here and get all we can out of this phrase
right here. I go to prepare a place for you. Now first of all, the cure for
all our trouble is who it is that said this. This is the thing
that's comforting, who it is that said this. It begins with
the words, I go. The Lord Jesus said, I go. And there's so much declared
in the fact that He's the one who said, I go. Holy God didn't
trust this work to any man, any son born of Adam. It couldn't
be. It could not be trusted. We sinned.
We've all come short of the glory of God. And the whole purpose
for which Christ was here was that He's saving a people. He's
preparing this place for somebody. But He's the only one who could
work the work. Not one son of Adam could do
this. Not one. We're completely, totally
disqualified. We come into this world disqualified.
And the thing about it is, is everything about us as we're
born the first time has got to be destroyed. Everything. Under the justice of God, back
to the dust, everything about us born of Adam has got to perish. So our Lord is the only one who
could work this. God came down. The Son of God came down. God
came to this earth and took flesh. I know that might sound difficult.
That may sound impossible. Faith believes God. Faith believes
God. And here's the thing. God created
everything. God upholds everything. The laws
of nature are God. He is the one who makes things
do what they do in this world. He's God and for Him to be able
to come down and take flesh, He can do that. He did that. God with us, Emmanuel, God with
us. And the God-man says, I go because
no other could. Listen to Isaiah 59, 16. He saw that there was no man
and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore His arm
brought salvation unto Him, and His righteousness it sustained
Him." No man, none could do this. None can contribute to what this
dwelling place will be, and none can contribute to putting us
in that dwelling place. Only Christ. Only Christ. I looked, and there was none
to help. I wondered that there was none to uphold. Therefore,
mine own arm brought salvation unto me, and my fury it upheld
me." The very fact he said, I go, and he went along declares, nobody
else could do this. Nobody else could do it but him.
Now secondly, so we see he says, I go, it's him. First of all,
here's the comfort. This is the Redeemer, the God-man,
the Mediator. Now here's the second thing.
This will lift us up above life's troubles right here. This will
lift us up beyond the waves. Hear what He prepared. He said,
I go to prepare a place. I go to prepare a place. Now
here's the truth of this. Go over to Matthew 25, just back
to your left a few pages. Matthew 25. This place, this
dwelling, it's called a mansion. It's a dwelling place. A place
where we're going to dwell. This place was prepared and the
kingdom prepared before the world was made. Look here in Matthew
25 and verse 34. Matthew 25, 34. Our Lord's given the parable
of the king, and speaking of him, when he returns and he separates
the sheep from the goats, and he's going to say to his people,
this is what he's going to say in verse 34, Then shall the king
say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. This is what our Lord Jesus Christ
did. And when he entered covenant
with the Father, the Father chose whom He would based on His love,
His grace, His mercy, and gave them to His Son. And His Son
entered covenant to save us. And not only was the kingdom
prepared, the kingdom is His people. The house is His people. And not only was the kingdom
prepared, His people were prepared before. Listen to this, from
Romans 9.23, He makes known the riches of His glory on the vessels
of mercy, which He had aforeprepared unto glory. By God the Father's
electing grace, by Christ's entering covenant, the work was finished
from the foundation of the world. That's why He's the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world, because Christ Jesus the Son
of God shall not fail. shall not fail." So this thing
was ordered and sure from the beginning. And this dwelling
place, He said, I go to prepare a place for you. This dwelling
place He prepared is prepared entirely by the personal work
of our Lord Jesus Christ, accomplishing atonement for His people, enduring
the cross, and entering glory for us. Solomon built a place
on this earth. He built a place to burn sacrifice,
and that's all he was building it for. And he knew. He knew
he could not build this dwelling place. He could not build a house
for God. This is what he said. He said,
Who is able to build him a house? See in the heaven, and heaven
of heavens cannot contain him. Who am I then that I should build
him a house save only to burn sacrifice before him? He's talking
about, I can build Him an earthly building where we can burn sacrifice
to Him, but I can't build this house. I can't prepare this place.
The Lord Jesus prepared it. Psalm 98 says, O sing unto the
Lord a new song, for He hath done marvelous things. His right
hand and His holy arm hath gotten Him the victory. Now, this dwelling
place, here's what's required. This dwelling place is where
God is. God our Father. This dwelling
place, it's called in scripture, it's heaven. It's where God dwells
and it's called His holy habitation. That's because God is holy. You
and I really and truly don't enter into how holy God is. Our
holiness is a relative holiness. You reckon if the Puritans came
here today they'd think any of us were conservatives? You reckon?
I doubt it. We got this geographical and
generational sanctification where we determine holiness. God is
so holy, every single person He saves has got, our body of
sins got to be destroyed, our bodies got to be buried, we've
got to be created entirely in His holiness and in His righteousness
or He can't receive us. Now can you do that? Can you accomplish that? Is there
anything you can add to that to do it? If you can, you ain't
been made holy. Because when you're made holy,
that's when you're made to see. It's so separate from everything
there is in this world called sanctification. Because when
you see what it took to make you holy and righteous, it's
separate from everything else. You know it's all in Christ,
it's all of Christ, it's all by Christ. Every bit of it. This
dwelling place, in order for a sinner to dwell with God, we
have to be holy and righteous. And so our body of sin has got
to be destroyed. So this house, this dwelling
place, did you notice there he said, in my Father's house are
many mansions. It's a mansion inside of the
mansion. It's a dwelling place, a room, a place just for people
inside God's house. But the only way we can have
that dwelling place, this is the only dwelling place ever
made through the blood of a lamb. This dwelling place couldn't
be made any other way. What does that mean, the blood
of a lamb? What does that signify? Life's in the blood. Your life's
in your blood. In other words, you have to die.
You have to die. You've got to die because you
sinned. And God says, ìYou, the soul that sinneth, it shall die.î
You have to die before God's holy justice. So the Lamb of
God came. That's the Lord Jesus. That's
what all the Old Testament lambs were showing. And the Lamb of
God came and took the place of His people and bore our sin and
bore our wrath and bore that curse that we deserve. And when
He died, we died. Romans 6 said, ìOur body of sin
was crucified in Him.î And when he came out of that grave, we
came out of that grave, all God's people came out of that grave
in Christ, an entirely new creation created of God, created of our
Lord Jesus. Entirely new, justified, righteous
before God. the deed having been accomplished.
But we need something else. You remember, the tabernacle
pictured this dwelling place. It pictured this house. And in
that holiest of holies, you had the first little room that was
the holy place, and then you had the holiest of holies. And
God said, that's where I'm going to meet with you. And that pictures
us coming into this dwelling place in God's presence. But
to be there, we have to have a high priest to represent us.
And in the old covenant, they couldn't ever go into that holy
place. Never. Only the high priest could
go in there. And he only went once a year,
and he had to go in with the blood of a lamb. And here's how
this dwelling place was made. Not only did Christ come and
as the lamb lay down His life, but as our high priest, He arose
and went into the heavenlies, into the holiest of holies, into
God's presence, as our high priest, with His own blood. And He is
the mercy seat. Remember in the holy place there
is a mercy seat covering the law. And blood had to be sprinkled
on the mercy seat. Christ is the high priest. He
is the Lamb who shed His blood. He went into the holiest of holies
through His own blood. And He is the mercy seat where
God says, now then, I will have mercy on you. I will have mercy
on those for whom He died. He is the propitiation for our
sin. And we need the incense of intercession. the incense of intercession.
There was always incense in that holy place, and in this dwelling
there's always incense, and that incense is His intercession.
God can't receive our prayer. He can't receive anything from
us. When we're in this world right
now, the sin is so mixed with everything we do, God cannot
receive us. Not even our prayer can enter
into the holiest of holies without it coming through Christ our
High Priest. with His perfume, His intercession,
making it sweet to God. And because of His intercession,
we're going to see later in John, He said, I'll pray to the Father
and He's going to send forth the Holy Spirit. And this is
something else we have to have. We have to be born again. A new spirit's got to be created. This is the only way we're going
to behold Christ as the only one who prepared this dwelling
place. And then we believe Him. Then we trust Him. And God says
through faith in Him, trusting His Son who He provided, His
only Son, the Son of His love, the Son that God's pleased with,
you believe on His Son and God will receive you. And you want
to talk about peace, you want to talk about joy, you want to
talk about the burden lifted off. If you ever see your sin
and see the weight of it and see the impossibility of saving
ourselves from our sin, when Christ is revealed as the only,
only, only Savior of His people, what burdens are lifted? To have
peace with God and know God receives you? And if we're going to get
to this dwelling place and we're going to be brought into this
place and dwell there, we're going to have to have an advocate.
Supplicating God, interceding with God on our behalf the whole
time we're going through this place below. We're looking for
a city. We're looking for a city, a holy
city, a habitation that He's prepared in the heavens. And
we're going to have to have an advocate, and Christ is that
advocate. When he said it's finished on
the cross, and they stood and they watched him 40 days later
ascend up to God, that's nothing for God, to just ascend up in
the air. He made the air, he made gravity,
he can control that, he just ascended up to where he was before,
as the glorified God-man. And when he said it's finished,
he said it's prepared. We have a high priest, we have
a lamb, we have a mercy seat, we have an advocate, and he's
the judge, and we have acceptance with God in him. The place is
prepared, the dwelling is prepared. Now how fully is it prepared?
How fully is this place prepared? Did Christ say, I'm going to
start preparing a place? I'm going to start on it, now
you're going to have to finish it. He said, I go to prepare
a place for you. How prepared is it? How prepared
is it? Everything we're looking at in
this dwelling place, in this new heavens, this new earth,
it's a new creation. Now, what did you do to help
with the first creation? Absolutely nothing. But here's
what happened. Here's how the first creation
was made. God spoke and He created everything. He made everything. He made the heavens. He made
the earth. He made the seas. He made everything that lives.
He made everything. He prepared the place, the dwelling. He prepared it. And then He created
man out of the dust of the earth, a body. God did that. And then
God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became
a living soul. And when he opened his eyes,
and he looked around, there wasn't one thing for him to do. It was
prepared. It was prepared. And when the
Lord sends the Gospel, and He sends the Spirit, and He enters
in, and He breathes life into a sinner, and creates a new man,
Similar to how that first man was created, but this one is
more miraculous than that, because it is done through the blood
of Christ crucified. And He creates this new man in
you, and your eyes are opened, and you behold what Christ has
accomplished. That is when you know. That is when you are sure.
It is prepared. It is prepared. The dwelling
is prepared. The place is prepared. Because Christ said, I go prepare
a place for Nothing to add. It is prepared. This dwelling
has a sure foundation. Every house has got to have a
foundation. Christ is the one foundation. Every house doesn't
have to have a sure cornerstone to hold the whole house together.
Christ is the cornerstone. He is the firstborn son in this
house. Everything we need in this house,
Christ is. And when He bids you to come,
He says, come, because all things have been prepared. Listen. Remember the wedding feast? There's
going to be a wedding feast. We're going to a wedding feast
one day. And what did He say about that wedding feast? He
gave this parable of this man. He said, he sent forth servants
saying, tell them what you're bidding. Behold, I have prepared
my dinner, my oxen and my fat ones are killed, and all things
are ready coming to the marriage. And that's what, when our Lord
bids us to come, He doesn't bid you to come and be a carpenter. He bids you to come and enjoy
this dwelling. and the hope of this dwelling
that we're going to enter into that's prepared for us. He did
the preparation. So those that have never come
to Christ, come to Him now. Believe on Him now. Wouldn't
it be something now if Christ was speaking His word into the
heart of somebody here, a living soul here, and speaking His word,
and you found yourself believing Him? That's how it happens. It's,
you know, before faith comes, you want facts. You got to have
proof. You got to scientific. Science
is everything. And you got to have A, B, and
C. And everything's got to be logically
figured out. And you have to prove it so.
And then you'll believe it. Well, that ain't faith. Faith
is God working a work in your heart and making you see things
that you can't see with the carnal understanding. And making you
know things more sure than any science or anything in this world
could make you know it. Faith is the evidence of things
not seen. It's the substance of things
not seen. So let every believer here, you
that don't believe, believe on Him. Believe on Him. Trust Him.
He prepared this place. If you can believe on Him, He
prepared the place for you. And for those that do believe
on Him, rejoice that this work of redemption is done. This man,
when he offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at
the right hand of God. And all those he purchased sat
down at the right hand of God in him. And by him sitting down,
he is declaring, He is prepared. He is prepared. All things are
now ready. Now, thirdly, I want you to see
this. Behold who Christ prepared this dwelling for. And I pray
you can put your name here. This is what He said. He was
talking to those He had called to Him and giving faith to Him.
And He said to His disciples, I go to prepare a place for you. Now sinner, have you been born
again of God? Do you see what a wretched, wretched
sinner you are? Is Christ your only, only hope
you have? Your only hope. Do you hate your
sin? Do you long for the day you'll
be conformed to Christ, to His image in perfection? By perfection
I mean in body and in spirit. If so, this is for you. He said,
I go to prepare a place for you. What good news? What Christ has
prepared is just incomprehensible for us right now. It's incomprehensible. We can't even begin to understand
what it is. But He has prepared it for you
that wait for Him. And this is what He said. Isaiah
64 verse 4 says, Since the beginning of the world, men have not heard,
nor perceived by the ear, neither has the eye seen, O God, besides
Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him. You
recognize that. Paul quoted it in 1 Corinthians. It just hasn't entered into our
heart what He's prepared for us. But we're waiting for Him. We're waiting for Him. He said,
in my Father's house are many mansions. God is Christ's Father. He said, in my Father's house.
And He's our Father. And He has a house. And His people
are going to dwell in His Father's house. In Deuteronomy 26.15,
now when He talks about His house, He's talking about heaven. He's
talking about wherever God dwells. But it's heaven. He said, look
down from thy holy habitation from heaven and bless thy people
Israel. That's where he is, that's his
habitation, his holy habitation in heaven. Now we've seen, we've
all been driving down the road or going through some place in
the country and you see a mansion on a hill. And just a big mansion,
and it's surrounded by all this farmland as far as you can see,
and there's cattle on the hills, and there's servants running
about doing the master's bidding. Now, I want you to picture God's
house. Just picture God's house. You're in it right now, in a
degree. Because all the heavens and the
earth is His house. It's all His. And he owns all
the cattle on a thousand hills, and everybody on this earth is
his servant, whether they know it or not. Everybody is doing
his will, accomplishing his purpose, even when they are trying to
reject his will. But this is his house. But the
house here, he said, every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle
upon a thousand hills. He said, I know all the fowls
of the mountains, the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were
hungry, I wouldn't tell thee. The world is mine in the fullness
thereof. Talk about owning a lot of pets. Our God owns all of
them. He made them all. And this is
all His house. But behold Him in His house in
heaven. Behold Him there and let this
sink in. Christ, for you that know Him,
Christ has prepared a dwelling place for you in God's house. in God's house, a mansion within
the great mansion for each and every chosen, redeemed, regenerated
child of God. No one else should be able to
claim your dwelling place. There's a dwelling place there
that's got your name on it and nobody else will have it. This
is so of all His people, everybody He died for. It's a perfect dwelling
for each of His people, for all eternity. Now everything we see
here, I'm describing this as God's house, and it is. We're
in His house. But all this heaven and earth
is going to be destroyed. And this new heaven and new earth
will entirely be the work of Christ Jesus. He's the creator
in grace. He's the creator in salvation.
Salvation is a new creation entirely of Him. Entirely of Him. Every neighborhood is going to
be perfect. You start thinking of houses now. Every neighborhood is going to
be perfect. Every neighbor is going to be
perfect. Every one of them perfect. Each one sinless, each one holy,
each one righteous, each one perfectly honoring God at all
times. No more class differences, no
more racial differences, no more differences of any kind. No rich, no poor, no degrees
of glory. There's not going to be some
bigger dwellings and smaller dwellings and some on the backside
over here where nobody wants to go to, no. All created in Christ's righteousness,
all perfect, all glorious by His glory. No more seed because
there's no more division. There's no more pride. Christ
said, I'm going to sit you down at my table in my kingdom and
I'm going to serve you. What kind of king do you know?
You ever see the president going around the table when he has
visitors serving the visitors? This is what Christ is going
to do. There's no pride there. Just perfect love, perfect righteousness.
No reason to be upset with anybody. There's not going to be any fleshly
ties there. There won't be any marrying or
giving in marriage. We're going to be one. We're
going to be perfectly one, united in spirit. Christ is going to
be preeminent in every heart and every person there will have
one preeminent motive in their heart and desire of their heart
is to honor Christ, worship Christ and give Him all the glory. That's
a perfect place. Can you just imagine a place
like that? No tears, no sin, nothing left of what
took place in the garden in the fall. Everything here that men
want to blame on God and say, you know, God, why would such
a good God let bad things happen to good people? There are no
good people. And all the sin that comes about is because of
sinners. It's us. We can't blame God. But when
God gets finished, when our Lord said, and the only sense in which
He's not finished with this is He's calling His people to Himself.
He's calling us to Him. to wait on Him to bring us to
that dwelling. But when He gets done, it'll all be His work. Now lastly, here's where I want
to end. Our hope, our hope, and it's
a good hope, it's a sure hope, our hope is in what this means
for us. because Christ prepared it, because
he prepared it fully, because he prepared it in his righteousness
and his holiness by his blood, because it is finished. This
is what it means for us. Verse three, he said, and if
I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive
you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also. Brethren, that's heaven. That's
heaven, where Christ is. Wherever He is, that's it. That's what we're looking for.
Him. Him. And He promises here, He shall
come again. He comes right now in spirit.
He comes right now and strengthens us. He comes just like He came
back to them after 3 days and was with them for 40 days and
let them see Him, let them touch Him, ate with Him, let them know
that He was really alive and assured them. He keeps coming
to us and doing this now in our heart. And He's going to keep
doing it all the way to the end. The Lord looks from heaven. He
beholds all the sons of men from the place of His habitation,
from His dwelling. He looks down and sees us. There's
no king saved by the multitude of a host. A mighty man is not
delivered by much strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is
upon them that fear Him, upon them that hope in His mercy. to deliver their soul from death,
to keep them alive in the famine. We're going to go through famine.
We must through much tribulation enter the kingdom. We have to
bear our cross because we have to go through the fire because
He's purging the dross. He's making us stop trusting
anything about us so that we have to trust Him. I tell you
who you'll be trusting and I tell you who you'll have your confidence
in when you're about three breaths from that last one. That's when
you're going to know I really can't do anything about this.
I can't, I can't contribute to this salvation. I can't, I can't
bring myself out of this grave. That's when you're going to know
you need another to save you. And I pray you can find out about
it before you get to those three, three breaths. But right now he's providing
everything for us. He's, he's our life and he's
prepared a table for us in the midst of our enemies right now
in the midst of the famine. And He's not going to allow one
single one to perish. But He's coming again. And everybody's
going to see Him as our prophet, priest, and king. And when He
comes again, every knee is going to bow to Him. Every tongue is
going to give Him the glory. And they're going to behold Him.
And those that refuse to believe on Him, He's going to cast them
out. Cast them out from His presence. There won't be a dwelling place
for those that don't believe on Him now. this world and everything you
love in it and all the sin that you relish right now and everything
you think is so needful, it's all going to perish and it's
going to cause you to perish and in the end you're going to
say, why was I fooled into going after this? Oh, God speak in your heart and
give you faith to look to Him and not be like the foolish virgins.
They didn't have oil in their lamps and when the Lord of the
house returned they weren't ready. But if He speaks and the oil
of the Spirit is in your heart making you believe Him, you'll
be ready. You'll be watching for when He
comes. You'll be like the wise virgins. And He's going to usher His believing
people into our everlasting abode in our Father's house. That where
I am, there you may be also. Our souls are waiting on the
Lord. Our soul waiteth for the Lord, he's our help and our shield,
for our heart shall rejoice in him because we've trusted in
his holy name. Let thy mercy, O Lord, be upon
us according as we hope in thee. And because you believe him and
hope in him, he will not let you be ashamed for trusting him."
Nope. He might make us ashamed of ourselves,
but he won't let us be ashamed for trusting him. He said, Israel
will be saved, In the Lord, with an everlasting salvation, you
shall not be ashamed, nor confounded, world without end. He promises,
read it there again, I will come again and receive you unto myself,
that where I am, there you may be also. Now he said this to
comfort his disciples. You know what he tells us? When
he gives this word again through Paul, he tells us that you comfort
one another with these words. This is our strength. This is
our strength. If we want to walk with our living
Redeemer and we want to know the fellowship of His Spirit
and the fellowship of His sufferings, when we're suffering, we need
this Word and we need each other to speak this Word to each other.
He went and prepared a place for us. And He promised He shall
come again. Hold your head up. Hold your hands up. Strengthen your feeble knees.
Look to Him. He's coming. He's coming. Seek grace from Him for all the
good comes from Him. Every perfect gift comes from
Him. Seek more faith. Seek more love. Seek more patience,
more zeal. Seek greater brotherly love,
more patience and kindness and humbleness of spirit. It's all
going to come from Him. And soon we're going to behold
Him as He is and we shall be changed into His image. That's His promise. Go over to
2 Corinthians 5 and we'll end with this. 2 Corinthians 5. We live in a world that's looking
to nothing but this earth. Everything begins and ends with
this world. What happens in it. That's all
carnal man looks at. When God afflicts us, the end
of chapter 4 tells us, verse 17, it says, 2 Corinthians 4,
17, our light affliction is but for a moment, but it's working
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Through
the affliction is what the Lord reminds you. It's like He, you
say that, what's that saying? I'm dreaming, somebody pinch
me. We get to dreaming. about this life and thinking
this life is our life. And He comes and pinches you
with affliction. And sometimes it takes some heavy
affliction to wake us up. But what does it do? It reminds
us we're not looking at things which are seen. Look at verse
18. But we're looking at things which
are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary.
But the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know
that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved,
and it shall be, we have a building of God, a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan. Right now in this life we are
groaning in this body, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with
our house which is from heaven. If so be that being clothed we
shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle
do groan, being burdened, not for that we should be unclothed,
but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up of life. And this is what we're anticipating
most of all. Christ said that where I am,
there you may be also. That's what we're anticipating
most, to be with Him. Behold Him and know Him and worship
Him perfectly for eternity. He's promised where I am, there
you shall be also. Amen.