The Christian’s Heavenly Hope - John 14:1-3

I’ve read in a variety of places that two of the most popular chapters within the Bible among believers are John 3 and John 14. And it’s easy to see why isn’t it? In these first three verses Jesus offers words of incredible comfort and speaks of the glorious heavenly reality that awaits Christians. What Jesus says here is wonderfully comforting.

And whenever we talk about comfort we must ask ourselves, what’s the source of your comfort? What’s the source of my comfort? Is it your health, the number in your bank account, your family? What is it?

Every now and again, we'll even settle for cheap comfort counterfeits like vague platitudes or perhaps a pat on the back, a smile, and a little nod.

All of those things might provide us with temporary comfort but none of it lasts. It’s all fleeting and we’re reminded in our passage this morning that true comfort is only found in Jesus.

Most Christians, I assume, know that as well. If you’ve been around the church at all you probably could have predicted that statement. We all understand that Jesus should be our comfort and peace. At various times, I’m sure many of you have either prayed that for yourself or for someone else.

And I think that’s a wonderful prayer, but we must understand that Jesus is more than a crutch we lean on in challenging circumstances, rather, Jesus is what gets you through life’s challenging circumstances. The Christian is empowered through his or her faith in Christ. It’s because of Christ you can overcome whatever life throws at you.

But in the meantime, the Christian must remember two things: first, that Jesus will provide for your every need. And second, no matter what your circumstances may be, Jesus will remember you.

Jesus is going to provide for your every need (v. 1)

These first few verses of chapter 14 are often read at funeral services and it’s easy to see why - in these first three verses, Jesus provides an incredible level of comfort. Don’t worry, I’m God, and I’m going to take you to heaven.

What wonderful comfort! But remember these verses didn’t just appear out of thin air. Because in chapter 13, Jesus revealed a lot of sad, depressing news. Judas is going to betray him, Peter is going to deny him, and worst of all, he’s going to leave them to die on the cross. Jesus twice referred to the cross in chapter 13 when he said, “where I am going you cannot come.”

And so, as you could probably imagine, a meal in the upper room that was anticipated to be this wonderful time of fellowship quickly became a den of depression. The upper room suddenly became a gloomy place.

The disciples' were probably experiencing a whole range of emotions: they were probably sad, frustrated and confused. How was Judas going to betray Jesus? And why would Jesus leave them?

Jesus gave them so much bad news all at once and didn’t give them a lot of details either!

Which is why what Jesus says in verse 1 is so shocking: “Let not your hearts be troubled.” You might read that and assume that Jesus is scolding his disciples for feeling emotions. You might think that Jesus is telling his disciples to toughen up! Rub some dirt on it!

But of course, Jesus isn’t forbidding emotion and on the other hand, he isn’t offering empty words of assurance either.

I’m a pretty optimistic guy. I tend to see the glass half full most of the time, so as you can probably imagine, I have a hard time delivering bad news. So often when I deliver bad news I try to soften the blow: “You’re in the ICU, but it’s not that bad. Everything is going to be fine. It’s all going to work out in the end. Don’t worry about it.”

One time I was talking to an ER doctor friend of mine and I was telling a story to him about something and I made the comment in passing, “it was as bad as it could get…” And he looked at me and said, “Jake, it can always be worse!”

But again, Jesus isn’t doing what I and probably many of you are tempted to do: offer meaningless words of assurance. We could read “do not let your hearts be troubled” as “all this bad stuff is about to happen, but don’t worry about it. It’ll all work out.”

He’s offering them genuine words of comfort because there are real reasons they shouldn’t be anxious. They must remember who Jesus is, even when things are pointing in the opposite direction they must continue to trust Jesus.

As one commentator said, “Though the disciples still loved [Jesus] their faith in him as Messiah-Savior was beginning to waver.” Because if Jesus really was the Messiah, why would Judas betray him, why would Peter deny him, why would all of these bad things happen to him?

Because in their minds, if he really was the Messiah-Savior then everyone would be jumping on board! More people would be lining up to follow him. People wouldn’t reject him and they certainly wouldn’t kill him. Everything they believed about Jesus was going to be stretched to the limit when they saw Jesus nailed to the cross.

So Jesus gives them something to hang their hat on: continue to put their faith in him because He is God. Jesus tells his disciples, “Believe in God; believe also in me.” Put another way, Jesus is saying, “Trust in God, therefore trust in me.”

He emphasizes his equality with God because he is God in flesh, the incarnate deity, being one substance with the Father. He is the Son of God.

But he’s not encouraging his disciples to have a generic intellectual assent sort of faith. “Look guys, just refer to yourself as a Christian the broadest sense possible. Just say you believe in God and in Jesus.” That’s not at all what’s going on here. He’s encouraging his disciples to maintain, sustain, and continue to trust him regardless of what’s going on around them.

William Hendriksen in his commentary on John translates verse one as, “Continue to trust in God, also in me continue to trust.” His translation is a little clunky, but Hendriksen was clearly trying to capture the point that Jesus was making to his disciples: just as they needed to continue to trust in God, they needed to continue to trust in Jesus. They should never doubt his words and promises even as he approaches Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha. Those terrible places where the faith of the disciples' would be tested.

Their faith and trust in Christ was about to be stretched to the absolute max.

Jesus is comforting them by telling them, “regardless of what you experience and see, keep on believing in me. Keep trusting in my words.”

I wonder how many of you need to hear that this morning? Regardless of what you’re experiencing or going through, keep on trusting the words of Jesus. Never for a second doubt the goodness of his words or wonder if he’s going to follow through on his promises. Don’t let your mind go there, because we know that he will follow through. After all, he rose from the grave!

And this is the truth that grants us comfort and peace. The Christian is protected and guarded because of who Jesus Christ is.

He’s our strength and our shield, and our very present help. I recently read that whenever Martin Luther and his protege Philip Melancton were struggling with doubt and discouragement, Luther would say, “Okay Philip let’s sing Psalm 46!” Psalm 46 is paraphrased in that famous hymn of the Reformation, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God a bulwark never failing. A bulwark is a rampart or a wall. But the Lord never fails.

This is exactly what the disciples’ needed to hear wasn’t it? Because when Jesus was hanging on the cross with the death rattle in his lungs, it was going to be hard for them to look at him and say, that dying man is going to save me from my sins. Everything in that particular moment would have indicated the exact opposite, but of course we know the story! We know what happens! Christ doesn’t stay on the cross, but rises from the grave in triumphant power.

But the reality is, at some point, your faith will be engulfed in the flames of the refiner’s fire. And when the flames are leaping up all around you - you must remember the words of Christ: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Jesus is going to take care of you and me, he’s going to provide for our every need, we just have to trust him.

What’s probably the most shocking about verse 1 as a whole is the mere fact that Jesus is taking the time to comfort his disciples. Just think about that for a second: who’s going to endure the greatest hardship here? The disciples or Jesus?

Jesus doesn’t throw any of this in their face either! There’s no “oh, you want to know more about the trials you’re going to face, well let me tell you about mine!” He’s so selfless that he’s not even thinking about himself, he’s thinking about them. He’s comforting them. And he’s telling them to keep on trusting in him, because he’s God, and he’s going to take care of them.

Jesus hasn’t forgotten about you (vv. 2-3)

Which is somewhat ironic when you consider the fact that twice in chapter 13 Jesus says where he is going the disciples cannot come. He was leaving his disciples through his sacrifice on the cross and eventual ascent into heaven.

Obviously, he was leaving them in an earthly bodily sense, but of course, Jesus would send the Holy Spirit after his ascension, and they were (along with every Christian) united to Christ by faith, but the disciples wouldn’t be physically with Jesus anymore.

But Jesus doesn’t leave them for no apparent reason. He left them so that he could prepare a room for them in heaven.

Look at verse two with me. “2 In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

Jesus is revealing something to us about heaven, specifically that there will be “rooms” or “dwelling places.” In heaven, you will receive your very own spacious living quarters. You’re not going to be cramped in a tiny broom closet New York City style apartment. You won’t have to share it with ten other people either.

Some of you probably remember the way the King James Version translated this verse: “In my Father's house are many mansions.”

And of course, Jesus is telling them and us something about heaven that he has firsthand knowledge of. Jesus is intimately familiar with heaven.

Which is of course why he says, “If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

Again, remember that Jesus had told his disciples in chapter 13 that he was leaving them and that where he was going they could not come.

But it certainly wasn’t because Jesus was sick of the disciples and was leaving them to figure things out for themselves. Istead, he was leaving them for a very specific purpose: to accomplish their redemption on the cross and prepare a place for them in heaven.

He hadn’t abandoned or forgotten about them, rather, he was getting heaven ready for them.

And then notice what he says in verse 3: And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Hopefully you can see the logic here: Jesus is going to leave the disciples. But he’s going to prepare a place for them in his Father’s House. And then he’s going to return to take them home.

The truth is, Scripture doesn’t give us a detailed description of what heaven is going to be like. We know we’ll have glorified bodies, we’ll worship the Lord. We have other indications based upon passages in places like Revelation and what the Garden of Eden was like prior to the fall. We also know that you don’t need to sink a lot of time into figuring out how to play the harp either!

But one of the things that Jesus really stresses is the personal nature of heaven. He’s preparing a place FOR YOU. And he’s going to take you there.

Is that the way we talk about heaven? That Jesus is getting things ready for us there so that we may one day join him there? Or do we think of going through the security checkpoint at the airport? As long as you show the right credentials they’ll let you in Airport to get on your flight, but once you’re in there no one cares about where you’re going or what you’re doing.

Heaven isn’t impersonal, in fact it’s incredibly personal.

The only thing that I can think of that’s somewhat similar is when someone invites you over and they roll out the red carpet for you. They take your coat when you walk in the door, their house is freshly cleaned, they fix an amazing meal, and they take a particular interest in your life and what’s going on with you. And then as you leave you think, “It probably took them a long time to get all of that ready for us…”

In a similar way, Jesus is telling his disciples he must leave them in order to get everything ready for them.

It really challenges the way we think about it. Jesus is preparing a place for us and then is going to take us there. Verse 3, “I will come again and will take you to myself…” Hallelujah, what a Savior!

It’s so easy to simply focus on what Jesus said about heaven that we completely miss why he said it. You can easily miss the forest through the trees. Jesus told his disciples that he was going to heaven to prepare a place for them in order to assure them and give them confidence that regardless of the trials, struggles, pain, and temptation, they may face they were going to overcome it.

Not because they were going to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, or because they had an incredibly high pain tolerance and were just so tough. It’s not any of those things.

Jesus is telling his disciples that they were going to make it through the trials because he was going to carry them through it. He was going to get them to the other side. It was such a done deal that he had to leave in order to get their room ready in heaven.

It explains why the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 8: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Or how the Peter could write in 1 Peter chapter 1:

“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Even Peter, the man who denied Christ three times, made it through the refiner’s fire.

If your faith is in Christ, then it’s settled. Jesus has your room ready. He’s just waiting to bring you into his presence.

Because here’s the reality: Christians are not promised freedom from doubts, struggles, pain, or discouragement. In fact, the Bible seems to indicate the exact opposite - that is you can and should expect trials because you’re a Christian. No one is granted immunity from suffering just because you’ve placed your faith in Christ.

But here’s what the Christian is promised: Christ is going to get you through it.

“I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” What wonderful words?

It would certainly seem that Jesus is hinting at the glorious doctrine of election. That believers are chosen in him before the foundation of the world. The words “I will come again and will take you to myself” certainly seem to indicate it.

But I want you to think about these words in a slightly, perhaps more simplistic way: Jesus wanted to be with his disciples.

Isn’t that the overall message of these first three verses? Jesus is telling his disciples that he’s going to leave, he must accomplish redemption on the cross, they’re going to face all sorts of trials in the meantime but he’s going to get them through it.

Why is he preparing rooms and promising to take care of them? Why all the effort and trouble Jesus? Because he loves them and wants to be with them. And he wanted to be reunited with them face to face.

And the same is true for each of us this morning. If Jesus loves you and wants to be with you, then, nothing can stop him from accomplishing it, not even death itself. You see that’s the real hope and comfort of this passage!

If you’re resting in Christ for your salvation, then he wants to be with you. And guess what? You don’t need to worry about getting to heaven because if you're his, he’s going to take you there himself.

Let’s pray together.