if you'd open your Bibles to
the 14th chapter of John. John chapter 14. This past Wednesday evening,
as several of us met, I referred to this text of scripture And
it's been on my mind ever since. And I've read it many times,
referred to it in messages many times, probably preached on it
two or three times in the years I've been here. But in looking
at this again, and this is the wonder of scriptures, we find
things we haven't found before. Beginning in verse one, we'll
read through verse six. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. In my Father's house are many
rooms. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I am going there to prepare a
place for you. And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come back and make you or take you to be with
me, that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the
place where I am going." Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know
where you are going. So how can we know the way? Jesus answered, I am the way
and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me. Now as I considered these words
over the last few days, it struck me first at how tenderly Our
Lord speaks to his disciples, not only the disciples that were
present with him at this time, but this is his manner of speech
with his followers, his disciples through all time. He speaks tenderly
to them. He even commanded his prophets
and preachers in the book of Isaiah Comfort ye, comfort ye
my people, says the Lord." How unlike so many preachers of our
day that seem to think that the best kind of message is the one
that, you know, scorches people's hair, you know, steps on their
toes. And true, there are circumstances. in which maybe some hard words
need to be said. But the general tenor of the
Lord's preaching, and this should be the general tenor of anybody
who claims to be a preacher, is words of tenderness. It also struck me how wise and
how apt were the words our Lord spoke. Of course, it is written
that he did not need any man. to tell him what was in the heart,
because he already knew men's hearts. And that goes a long
way in helping a man to know what to say. But there's no question
our Lord had a depth of wisdom to speak to people, his people,
in exactly the way they needed to be spoken to. And to say things
to them which immediately they would gain a benefit from, but
then later they'd gain more. In other words, it's a living
word that keeps bearing fruit in them. As I mentioned earlier,
I've looked at this passage many times, and yet I see more in
it now than I did a week ago. He starts by saying, do not let
your hearts be troubled. Now, he had just predicted his
betrayal, and he had said that he would suffer. And interestingly, before he
ever says these precious words in John 14, he sent Judas away
to go ahead and do his business. He called the herd, so to speak,
because though there were 12 disciples, there were only 11
of the elect of God there. And what he was going to say
in chapter 14 was not for Judas. And so now he has the 11 before
him. And Peter says that he will follow the Lord
anywhere. The Lord said, where I'm going
now, you can't follow me. Peter said, I'll follow you anywhere.
I'll lay down my life for you. Peter was a very passionate person,
and he's one of those kind of guys that When a thought comes
in the head, it's not long before it comes out the mouth. And I
can understand that. I hope over the years I've learned
to put a bit of a gate on my mouth and wait a little bit. Think about what you're going
to say before you say it. But the Lord said to him, will
you really do that? Will you lay down your life for
me? Now, he was challenging Peter not only on his courage and the
pride that was in the boast he had just made. He was also challenging
him on a very important point of theology, though he didn't
make it explicit at this point. But he says, will you lay down
your life for me? And the implied but unsaid words
are, I am here to lay down my life for you." You know, we should not judge
professed believers too harshly when they make statements like
this, because Peter was a believer at this time. He just didn't
understand everything, and we don't understand everything. There is this tendency in us
to want to be, for lack of a better word, champions for the Lord.
The Lord needs no champions. He is the champion. I don't know
how many times I was told the story of David and Goliath as
a child. And of course, David is set before
us as an example we should follow, and that we can meet the strongest
foe. That's not what the story of
David and Goliath is about. David represents Christ, not
us. We're no match for Goliath. But once David took Goliath down,
it says the rest of the Philistine army turned and fled. Then the Israelite army, who
would represent us, chased them down and took their stuff. And
killed a good many of them. And that's us in warfare. You and I, in the warfare we're
going, we are pursuing a retreating enemy. Goliath's not for us. But Peter
was, you know, I'll be the best Christian there ever was. I won't
fail. Don't ever get it in your mind
you won't fail. Because if you do ever have in your mind that
there is the possibility you won't fail, it's as though God
is duty bound to make you fail. He doesn't have to make you,
all he has to do is let you. Let you fail to bring you down
again. He says, let not your hearts
be troubled. And I think that that comes so
powerful when you think that these words come right after
the Lord said to Peter, you will disown me. You will deny me three
times before the rooster crows tomorrow morning. And it was
already well into the night. And then he says, but don't let
your heart be troubled. There are many troubles for the
heart. Now, let's make a distinction here. He did not say, do not
experience troubling emotions. The heart When the scriptures
use the word heart, you've got to look at the context to see
what it's really referring to. But basically, you can say by
the heart, the scriptures in general mean the inmost part
of a man or a woman, that which really defines what they are. And emotions may arise out of
it. But our emotions are subject
to many things. For example, not enough sleep,
and you kind of lose control of your emotions. Just illnesses, whatever. Our
emotions come and go, and it's very difficult for us to control
them. Often the best we can do is simply
ignore them. you know, when men are at war.
Well, they're terrified. And they should be. They're facing
death. Those are terrifying circumstances.
But in the midst of that, you know, they can exhibit what we
call courage and say, the need of the hour is more important
than what I'm feeling. And yes, we should do that. But
he says, let not your heart be troubled. And I believe what
he's speaking of here is not just emotions. He's speaking
about our faith. Paul says, if you believe in
your heart that God has raised him from the dead. So he's saying,
in a sense, don't let your faith be troubled. Don't let the things
that you're about to experience, he's saying to these disciples,
the events of the next few days, do not let them overthrow your
faith. I believe that was the primary
meaning and application of what he's saying to these men at this
time. But we're not these men, and
we're a couple of thousand years removed from that time, but these
words have a voice for us. Because while we may not be about
to face the kind of troubles these 11 disciples were going
to face over the next few days, we do face troubles, troubles
of all kinds. I tried to think of all the troubles
that we can go through. Well, what did Job say? Man is
born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. I have never poked
a fire and seen sparks go down. They
go up. And just as surely as the sparks
from a fire go up, we are born to trouble. And trouble will come at us at
all in all kinds of ways. And these troubles will bring
us down sometimes to depths of sorrow. Sometimes they will initiate
in us a sense of fear. At other times, they will just
make us feel completely overwhelmed. We have often trouble in our
minds when we have, and I know this one's always been a struggle
for me, when I've got important decisions to make. I call them
important, they seem important. But you know, the more you set
your mind on things above, the less important the things of
this life seem. But again, that's not an easy
thing to do, set your mind and heart on things above. And so as we face big decisions,
we become troubled. Well, we probably can't avoid
that. But he does, the Lord does say,
don't let your hearts be troubled. Don't let these things take your
eyes off of Christ and who he is and what he's done. Don't
be so troubled. that you give up your pursuit
of Christ and all that is in Him. You know, the Lord sends
trials not to create faith, but to prove it. It's easy to profess faith, isn't
it? In fact, well, it's still the
case in the area we live in. It's a virtuous thing to do.
It's an expected thing. They would be quite surprised
and probably offended at anyone who said, no, I don't believe. So a profession of faith is one
thing. Actually believing is another. And God sends troubles
our way, trials that may trouble our emotions, that may cause
our minds to race or want to shut down or whatever, but he
does this And what happens, he sends them to all those who profess
to believe him, and those that really don't believe him, eventually
the trial drives them away. They'll go to something else. Because if they're going to remain
in religion, they're going to want to find a religion that
will somehow or another massage their ego and their inward feelings
so that they feel good. I listened to a message preached
in the 2000-somethings by my philosophy professor. And he
was talking about values and the different kinds of values.
And there's what's called an essential value. That is something
that has value in and of itself. And then there's things called
instrumental values. Now, he gave a lot of other kinds
of adjectives too, but I'm only mentioning these two. An instrumental
value is something that's valuable only because it leads you to
something essentially valuable. And he said something that kind
of shocked me. When he said it, it was so obvious. I was surprised
I'd never thought of it in this terms. He says, most American
Christians see God as an instrumental value. He is a means to get things. And when people have that attitude
and then trouble comes, Well, what value is God now? I'm not
getting the good things I expected. And so seeing him only as this
instrumental value rather than an essential value in and of
himself, they go on until they find a God that does for them
what they want done, or they just give up on the idea of God
at all. But those who have been made
alive by the spirit of God, There is what is called eternal
life in them. And the trial may come. And it
may bring them down to a point they wish they would die. Job
said, I cursed the day I was born. It would be better to be
dead than to live like this. Y'all believer never think that.
Yes, they would. He can send trial. so severe
that your faith is no longer visible. Those outside of you who can't
see your heart, they wonder, does he really have faith? And
I tell you, there's some hard-hearted people who are quick to condemn
struggling saints. And here's the thing. God can
send you trials so strong you can't even see your faith. Nonetheless, our Lord says, don't
let your heart be troubled. You say, well, what troubles
me is that I can't see my faith. And that makes me wonder if I
have any. Don't be troubled that these things come on you. Don't
be troubled that you struggle so hard with them, and at least
from your perspectives, fail. Do you know what victory in trial
is? It's really quite simple. You
don't quit believing, even if you can't tell that you believe.
Have you ever noticed that at the times that you feel least
like a believer, you feel most compelled to cry out to God?
Why is that? Why would you do that? You see, Christians are a mass
of contradictions because they have two natures. But no matter what happens, no
matter how troubled your emotions, No matter how much in turmoil
are your thoughts, no matter how little evidence there be
that you belong to God, don't let your hearts be troubled. Now he tells us why. Trust in God, trust also in me. Every translation has to do a
little bit of interpreting. And especially, for instance,
in languages like Greek, where the
way this is written, both of the statements made there can
be considered merely a statement of fact or a command. the ones that did the 1984 NIV,
put them both as a command. I have heard of others making
them simple statements, you trust in God, you trust also in me. But I think, and it seems to
be most applicable to the context of what our Lord says, that we
take the first part as simply a statement of fact, and the
second part as an exhortation. And really the way it's written,
it seems that's what the Lord is saying, because strictly it's,
you trust in God, in me also trust. That's simply, you know, the
way it's stated. And so he's saying something
remarkable, something that I'm sure that the apostles did not
grasp the full meaning of it. But he says, you trust in God.
And they did. They were Jews, after all. They
certainly had the standard national belief in the God, or that is,
in the God of the Jews. But these men had more. They
actually believed. They truly from the heart believed
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They trusted in him. Maybe didn't understand much
about him, but then that's kind of the way we are too. But he
said, you trust in God. Trust also in me. Now, what's
he saying here? He's saying, I am as worthy of
trust as God is. And why is that? He is God. He's God manifest in the flesh,
but he's still God. I don't know how much of our
Lord's nature the disciples had grasped at this point. Peter
had said, you know, you are the Christ, the son of the living
God, which to claim someone to be the son of God is to claim
they're God. Nonetheless, and you know how
this is, Peter could make a bold statement like that in the moment,
and yet you don't always feel. He wouldn't always feel that
way. And so here, he's just told them about horrible things gonna
happen to him. How can that happen to God? How
can God be betrayed and handed over to wicked men and killed? You can't kill God. He says,
you trust God. And you know, our trust in God
is to be explicit and implicit. And we use those words, but explicit
means outwardly, purposefully. Implicit means that's just our
continual state of being. We trust God. And we trust him, and the reason
it's a matter of trust is not because of any evidence we've
been given, and it's not just a matter of, you know, when we
say we believe in God, we're not just saying that we believe
there is a God. The word trust is the proper
way to translate this word here. We trust him at all times, but
especially those times when we can't figure out what's going
on or why it's going on. You know, in the midst of trial,
we think, why? Why is this happening? And given
the religion I was raised in, we were always taught, well,
what sin did you commit recently? You know, God's punishing you
or disciplining you or whatever. So what did I do wrong? If God
wants to cause me trouble because of my sin, he doesn't have to
look far for an excuse, does he? I give him plenty. of justification for any level
of sorrow he wants to bring me at any moment. David said, if
you, O Lord, should mark iniquity, who could stand? So I know the Lord does discipline
his children, but I think when he disciplines his children,
they know what's going on and they know why. They don't have
to go looking for it. He's not like some abusive parents
that'll just come in to their children and they're mad and
they grab them and give them a whipping and don't even tell them why.
Before the Lord disciplines any of his children for their behavior,
he has already been dealing with them in their heart about it. So we trust in God in the midst
of trouble, even when we don't understand what he's doing, we
trust him when we read his exhortations. And I'm saying
that instead of commands, because I don't want us to get into the
whole legalistic business of here's a command you have to
pay. I mean, here's a command you have
to obey or pay the price. So exhortations, and we see how
he tells us to do things. And our wisdom can't see how
that could be right. But that's what we do anyway. Why? Because we trust God. Now, I don't see the sense of
this direction, but this is what God said. And I think he knows things better
than me. I remember Brother Fred's, one of his favorite scriptures
was, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your
own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge
him, and he will direct your path. Trust in the Lord. Why? Well, because our understanding
of things, you don't want to lean on that. And so he says, you trust in
God implicitly. Anything that you are certain
that God has said you are willing to do, and then he says, now,
you trust me the same way. Why would he tell them this at
this very point? Because what was going to happen
over the next three days would look absolutely ungodlike. In just a few hours, the Lord
would be arrested. He would be abused. He would
be beaten. They would see their teacher, their master, their
Lord, who could endure anything, who had healed, who had raised
the dead. They'd see him fall under the weight of the crossbeam
of a cross. They would see him nailed to
a tree. Of course, most of them by this
time had forsaken him and fled already. Peter would betray him. But those that stood around the
cross would see him die. And that looked nothing like
victory. It looked like utter failure.
Consequently, He said, you trust me. I know what's happening. I know what's going on. And thus
it is written. And thus it must be that I suffer. You just, you know, like on a
roller coaster, just hang on. Don't let your hearts be troubled
over this. Don't be overthrown by what's about to happen. Then
he says, in my father's house are many rooms. Dwelling places
is what it means. I don't see heaven as filled
with these huge high rise condominiums and each one of us got our own
little apartment in or something like that. I don't even know
that we'll have any need of buildings as such. But what he says, in
my father's house, there's room for a lot of people. Now, our translation says, if
it were not so, I would have told you. And that's what nearly
all translations say. But the newer version of the
NIV says, in my father's house are many rooms. If it were not
so, would I have told you I am going to prepare a place for
you? And when I see a difference like that, I go to the originals
and look it up. There may be among the Greek
texts that we have available to us, there are some differences.
Maybe the Greek text that the King James people had was a little
different. But I looked at the Greek text
and that other rendering is the better one. He said, in my father's house
are many rooms. They had asked him, shall only
a few be saved? He said, many are called, but
few are chosen. Nonetheless, he encourages them, there's many
rooms, many rooms. Maybe in respect of, you know,
compared to the unbelieving world, it doesn't look like many, but
there are many. Some seem to think that there's
great, you're being a real powerful and straightforward preacher.
if you act like, yes, God's gracious, but not many people are going
to make it to heaven. Our Lord said, there's many rooms. Then if that weren't the truth,
would I have told you I'm going there to prepare a place for
you? Evidently, he told them that already. I go to prepare
a place for you. Now, what wonder is here? personal
word this is. He says, I'm going. Now they
didn't like that. You know how it is. You don't
like to be separated from your friends. They had been with him for three
years. They had enjoyed being with him. They were being taught
much. They wanted to learn more. They
wanted this to go on forever. And I perfectly understand why
they would like that. And now he says, I'm going. I'm
going. But he's not just going away.
He says, I'm going to prepare a place for you. Now, it's obvious where he was
going. He's going to his father's house. because he already mentioned
that. He says, in my father's house,
there's lots of places. I'm going to prepare a place
for you. Now, child of God, I want you to think of this. Take it
this way, because this is exactly the way we're supposed to take
it. This is the Lord Jesus speaking to you. He didn't just say, there's a
lot of places in my father's house, and I'm going there to
prepare some. He said, I'm going to prepare a place for you. You have a place in my father's
house, is what he said. Is there anything else you want
to hear from the Lord? Doesn't that pretty much cover it? Now, in the religion in which
I was raised, which was based on the concept of free will,
they said, yeah, he's prepared places for everyone. It'll be
so sad. all those empty rooms in heaven, we're gonna see in a minute there
won't be any empty ones, not a single one. And our Lord's
already implied that. He didn't say, I'm going to prepare
a place for everyone and then see how many arrive. He said,
I'm going to prepare a place for you. Now, the issue which they did
not yet understand is the road he would have to
take to get to the Father's house. That's what they didn't understand.
They could have understood it if he had done exactly what he
did some 50 days later, or excuse me, 40 days later when he ascended
unto heaven. That would have made perfect
sense to them. But he's been talking to them about dying. You're going to prepare a place
for us, but you're going to die? How can you die and prepare a
place? That's how he prepared the place for us, because he
took our natural place. And in so doing, prepared the
place for us. And being successful in standing
in our place and enduring in our place everything that we
deserved. The Lord, his father, set him
free from the bonds of death because he put away the sin that
he bore and that's, well he came before the father and it said
he offered himself without spot to God and it was by that means
that he eventually went to the father as a man seated at his
right hand. The path to the Father for him
was through death for us. But he was willing to walk that
path to the Father in order to prepare a place for us. Now, verse three. And if I go there
and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you
to be with me, that you also may be where I am." Now, those from my religious
background who would say Jesus Christ has prepared a place for
everyone And they'll admit most people,
it seems like, aren't going to end up in heaven. They've just
made a liar out of the Lord Jesus. Because the Lord Jesus says,
if I prepare a place for you, I'm going to come back and get
you. And that's what struck my mind
the other night as I was speaking to the group that met Wednesday
night. It occurred to me, our Lord has
promised Everyone for whom he prepares a place, everyone for
whom he goes to prepare a place, he is going to return to get
them. Henry used to put it this way,
in heaven there's plenty of room but no vacancies. And I want you to see here how
much the Lord is showing forth his love for us. He says, I go
to prepare a place for you. And what a horrible path he must
follow to go and prepare a place for us. But he doesn't just leave
it there. He says, and I will come back
and I'll get you. And here's why he's going to
get them. To take you to be with me, so
that where I am, there you may be also. I'm going through, well, literally,
hell to prepare a place for you in my Father's house. And here's the reason. I'll come back and get you, and
I'll bring you to the place I prepared so that you can be with me." Now, we often say, I long to
be with Christ, and that should be the longing of our hearts.
But do you realize that the Lord longs for us to be with him?
That he actually wants this reunion even more than we do. A few chapters
later in John 17, here's his prayer. Father, I would that
the ones you have given me would be with me where I am. The Lord prayed to His Father
for His people to be with Him. And He's praying this on the
night, just a few hours. He knows what's
going to happen. He knows that his prayer, that
his people would be with him for its fulfillment, is going
to require that he undergo not only the physical pains and agonies
of crucifixion, but the spiritual torture of the wrath of God. And yet he says, that's what
I want. The Lord has prepared a place
for a people, His people. And everyone who trusts the Lord
Jesus can say, I'm one of them. And in as much as He prepared
a place for each one of them, He will come back and get each
of them. Now, most people make this a
reference to his return at the end of the world. And I don't
have a problem with applying it to that. But Paul tells us that to be
absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So the Lord didn't come in for
us all at once. there will be a time when he
comes and gets whoever remains of his people in this world.
And he'll bring history to an end. But as I read this, and
especially as I read this from the viewpoint of one, you know,
I'm 67 and I realize, I think the oldest, by no means the oldest
person here. But I'm a whole lot nearer the
grave than when I moved here 35 years ago. When we're young,
we can put the grave so far in the future, we don't even think
about it. Or we can talk about it clinically. The older we get,
the more pains we feel, the more illnesses we have to deal with,
the more weakness we experience, we realize, hey. And the more
quickly we realize that time is going by. we realize it won't be long. And death is a fearful thing,
because it's unknown. Some of it's because of the unknown.
All these beyond and back stories, none of them are true. It's interesting,
several people were raised from the dead in the scriptures, and
not one of them gave a beyond and back story, except Paul,
who says, I can't tell you what I even heard, much less what
I saw. But these people that go beyond and back now, they
can give you a detailed accounting of everything that happened. We don't know. Some people say
you go into soul sleep until the resurrection. And others
say, well, it's not soul sleep. When you die, you're instantly
transported into the future whenever the resurrection is, and you
participate in the resurrection. I don't have to know any of that.
Here's what I know. When I die, the Lord did not
say, I'm going to prepare a place for you and I'll be there when
you get there. He says, I'm coming to get you. When we look into the future
and see the grave, we do not need to look at that and say, I don't really know
what's going to happen. I can tell you, believer, exactly
what's going to happen. The Lord will come and get you.
He won't send for you. He'll come and get you. Why? He's prepared a place for you.
And he is determined that you occupy that place. And he's not
going to leave one moment of your existence unattended. He won't send people or angels
for you. He won't just give you a map.
He will come and get you. Now, if you're laying there on
your deathbed, Let me start over. If someone
just came to you and said, the Lord Jesus is going to come
get you today. He's coming right to you and
going to get you. And you're going to be with him
forever. Well, that's good. I like that idea. When the time comes, unless you're
killed instantly and didn't see it coming, but if you see your
death coming, don't say, oh, death is near. Say this, the
Lord is near. He's coming to get me. My father-in-law, when he was
dying of cancer, And his last known words, or
certainly his last known prayer, he said out loud, Lord, come
and get me. Come and get me. No wonder John said, even so,
come, Lord Jesus. Don't let your heart be trouble.
The Lord's got this in hand from beginning to end. Nothing's been
left to you. Nothing can happen in this life.
Even if you royally screw things up, nothing's going to happen. It's all in his hands. He already
did the hard part. He's already gone and prepared
the place. And your days are numbered by
him. And at the appointed time, he will come and he will get
you and take you to the place he prepared for you. And you
will be with him always and forever. Now, is there really anything
to be worried about? I'm not saying we won't worry, but we
really don't have anything to worry about, do we? Well, may
God bless his word. I didn't ask for helpers, but
I'm gonna call on Scott and Bernie if you guys can help us with
the Lord's Table.