Turn with me to the gospel of John as we return to our study of the gospel of John. We are towards the end of the activities of the upper room discourse but really beginning to get into the dialogue of Jesus which we acknowledge on the evening which he delivered it would have taken only as much time as it takes us to read it, not counting of course what we do not have recorded. But as we study it we find here the capstone truths as it were those truths that bring clarity to all of the miracles and all of the teaching and all of the parables which Jesus has delivered to this point as the disciples are in despair or as they are very near panic we believe we've discovered in their reactions and responses recognizing that Jesus is about to be taken away, recognizing that he's already told them that not only is there a deliberate deserter among them but that all of them will scatter and none of them will be faithful even turning to the most outspoken and the strongest one of the bunch and saying you will deny me even before the morning is the cockroach's three times. So we find in their disposition now a state of depression is beginning to sink in on the disciples and Jesus is going to now speak to them words of encouragement. We find here his mention of their ultimate destination, not Proverbs rather, but the Gospel of John, chapter 14, let's read verses one through four together. Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me and my father's house or many rooms. If it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 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 and you know the way to where I am going. May the Lord bless the reading of his word and the hearing of his people. DL Moody noticed that the older we get the more interested we become in heaven. With age comes interest in heaven. He related that to most likely our as a child recognizing that our whole lives were here on earth and we didn't really know much about heaven. Big city, perhaps it's glowing or radiating light, it has streets of gold, there's God in the city and there will be a day of judgment that gets us there. But as he said as he was growing up, his brother passed away and instead of all the people that he knew and all the things he knows being here on earth he now knew one person in heaven. And as he continued his journey through life he lost more siblings and ultimately his grandparents and his parents and with each passing year or two of his life those he knew in heaven continued to increase in number and those relations and connections he had here on earth decreased in number. And he said that along with that his curiosity and his interest of heaven also not only changed but grew and the questions that he had about heaven became more pointed and his comfort with the idea of heaven became more settled. What comes to your mind when you hear the word heaven? Do you worry about what your daily routine will be? Are we just going to be issued a harp and find a cloud and settle in and sing holy holy holy to the same tune for the rest of our lives and there'll be no sleeping so we'll sing it 24 hours a day if there are days will there be days? What are we going to do while we're there? Do you wonder about the location of heaven? Growing up we look up into the sky and we assume heaven is there but as we grow older we understand that there is space above us in the sky. In fact one of the Russian cosmonauts and atheist is he was out in heaven he looked out of the window and he said I'm looking outside the window and I don't see God anywhere. I had a seminary professor that once suggested perhaps if he opened the door and stepped out he might actually meet God at that point. Do we wonder about the appearance of heaven? Will there be streets of gold? Will it be real gold as we know it to be? Will the walls be radiating light? Will there be 12 high gates with angels manning each of the gates? Will it be set on 12 pillars with the names of the apostles around it? Will God be inside the city? And will he actually be the source of all the light that is radiating out of the city? Do you worry about recognizing friends and family that you might be struck with holy amnesia once you get to heaven and you might pass your spouse in the street and not know who they are or worse not really care because they're all the same. Do you want to have those cherished relationships still or you worried that you might forget the love that you shared when you were here? Do you wonder what it will be like to be rid of sin? To be rid of a fear of death when you get there. Some of the first religious questions a child asked are about heaven. Mommy or daddy, what will heaven be like? And we find at the end of our lives while we are more settled and we have a better idea we still never are able to completely answer that question. There are so many questions that we have about heaven, perhaps they reflect our insecurities because we have a fear of what we might lose when we leave the earth rather than what we will gain. Again, will we be able to stay married? Will we be bored? That's the question I get from at least a portion of the population in my household? What if I can't sing well? I'm supposed to sing all the time. What if I can't carry a tune in a bucket? Will the people around me all move away when I began to sing? Or the more important questions? Will I get that younger body I had back? Or more important for some of the young people around us? Does this mean I'll never get my driver's license? The disciples in the upper room have been carried to the very brink of desperation in their journey now with Jesus. They've given up everything. They've walked away from their family, from their vocation. They've invested their whole lives into following Jesus and now it's being announced to them and made real in their awareness that Jesus is about to depart through death. Not that he's going to the next town or not that he's taking a sabbatical or not that he's going up on the mountain to pray to the Father as was his practice. He had had some temporary separations from them, but now they understand Jesus is leaving and so he's carried them as it were. It seems to them anyway and their mind and experience to the edge of a cliff and they are about to be pushed over the edge into the cliff. Jesus has just reminded them at the close of chapter 13 and the beginning of 14. Trusting God, trust also in me. They still loved Jesus, but their confidence and his messianic mission is beginning to waver because to them death marks the end of the work and so they're having trouble understanding how is it that Jesus will be Messiah if in fact he's going to die. Jesus saying just as you believed in the unseen work of God, just as you believe that the God whom your eyes could not perceive was always working for you just as you believed that then also believe that I, Jesus Christ, that is, though you will not be able to see me, I also still am at work for you. And then he begins to elaborate and he says in my father's house, this is a reference obviously to paradise or to heaven where he is going. Some have tried to think of heaven as a sort of nirvana. This is a Buddhist term, nirvana, saying that heaven is a simply a state of mind. It's a way of ascending is transcending our present infirmities and becoming more than we are joining a great orb of energy that will be a utopian paradise. It's a being at peace with yourself and without anxiety in life. That would be heaven in this view. This is again basically a Buddhist idea that our in-state will simply transcend the process of reincarnation that people go through, but this is not our Lord's idea and it's not the Lord's goal for us in life. No heaven is not just the state of mind that we are able to enjoy here and it is not a place on earth either. There's even been songs about heaven being a place on earth, but it's not a place on earth. Jesus is clearly saying that he's going somewhere, he's leaving them and he's going to the father, not a place here on earth. Later his visible ascension would provide to them continued evidence of Jesus' going to be with the father through ascension, provided the disciples with a concrete idea that Jesus had departed. A number of places in the Bible give us definitions of heaven or shall we say descriptions of heaven. Heaven a place so unlike where we are that we often have to depend on metaphors to understand, but there are places and if we compile them we can come up with some ideas about what heaven is. From the story of Lazarus and the rich man for example we conclude that we will not be struck with some sort of a holy amnesia, but we will remember our friends and our family, we will recognize those whom we have known in this life. Jesus even after the resurrection came to the disciples and seemed to continue to have an affection and a bond with the disciples as he recognized them and they recognized him. From second Corinthians we find their Paul talking about getting caught up in a third heaven and that has given a rise to much speculation. It simply is using the language of Scripture where the first heaven would be, where we see birds and flight above our heads in the heavens, the birds fly in the heaven links and then we know that beyond that is the space that lies beyond the skies, beyond the reach of the birds, that could be a second and then the third is what lies beyond which we do not have eyes to see. We are not able to know hence Paul was carried to that third heaven. The Cosmonaut would not have been in that third heaven even if he had stepped out he wouldn't have realized until it was too late that it had even existed. There was a heaven that is beyond the realm of the sky and even the place where the moon and the stars are in their orbit. Those would have been clearly visible to the people of Jesus' time and before they would have seen birds flying and they would have observed stars that were even above that knowing that there was a first and then there was a second and then Paul carried to a place that he calls a third heaven knowing it's not here but it's not just above our heads and it's not in the place where the stars are and so there must be yet a third heaven that he was taken to. Revelation is the witness of John to things which he lacks words to describe and so he uses analogy and he uses metaphor and figurative language to give us a spectacular view of all that his eyes were beholding but he did not have words to explain what it was that he was seeing so he sought to use language and describe hair as wool and eyes like blazing coals and feet like burnish bronze and sword like a double edged or a tongue like a double edged sword to explain his experience and poetic or metaphorical language to try and describe what he saw for us. John 14 Jesus is not trying to provide a comprehensive description of all these aspects of heaven his disciples have a single need at this point they need reassurance and they need to know that there is a continued purpose and that there will be a continued presence of Christ. He limits his explanation to what the disciples need to hear the idea of home that would be a summary I believe I'm going to the Father to his house and I'm preparing a place for you there that you will go to Jesus is saying I'm going to my Father's home and in that home I'm preparing a place that it also would be your home the idea of home just the word home without even placing it in a religious context or religious discussion brings a sense of comfort to us no matter how far we travel no matter where our lives take us we always have this idea of where home is and we always have as our goal the hope of getting back to home Jesus will elaborate on how is atoma the coming of the spirit and his second coming will all mean that they will be together he's going to elaborate on that as we go through the 14th 15th 16th chapter that's part of Jesus' teaching but right here he simply is telling them in my Father's house in heaven or many mansions as it's been rendered because of the Latin rendering of it but more properly translated as rooms or actually apartments would be a better a better way of rendering the word too often this comforting analogy those have been made literal just as people take john's struggling to explain what he saw in Revelation and they try to take that and make literal pictures of what heaven will be like so here people will take the concept of many mansions or many rooms and they'll try to come up with something that usually ends up being a health and wealth theology they'll begin to describe our upgraded housing that we get in heaven or they'll say it's the apostles that got the mansions and the rest of us if we work hard and are faithful and perhaps receive this or that spiritual gift we will have to settle with maybe a split level or a nice ranch home perhaps our yard will be based size will be based upon how faithful we have been or how much we have worked or how much we've given to the ministry whatever it might be that earns us a mansion in heaven do you think Jesus was intending to put before them these disciples which had just been arguing about who would be the greatest in the kingdom and Jesus having put that down Jesus having taught them about the laborers in the vineyard which recorded in another gospel of how about how it doesn't matter if you come in at the last moment and begin working or if you had been there all day your pay at the end is the same do you think now Jesus would turn around and say but let me tell you you guys are getting some nice houses when you get up there everybody else is going to have for me it would most likely be a pup tent but for you you're getting a mansion when you get to heaven now the translation mansion I'm not necessarily trying to squash I understand that that has been a traditional use and again it comes from the Latin from the Volgate that's where that was brought over into the King James particularly and I think also the author the RSV I think kept that but the proper understanding of it is not a house that you will be assigned quarters in as if you were in the military going to a new post being assigned quarters on the installation the rest of us having something less the word is used for rooms ordinarily convey the idea of apartment as I already mentioned in that day you had either a palace or you had a home or you stayed in an inn there weren't plantation style homes that we have a history of in the south where you could seek to have or aspire to have one of those plantation style homes while others did not ends were larger structures in that day they were structures where they had many rooms that could accommodate many guests but there was always a chance in the disciples experience of arriving at one of these larger ends and hearing those infamous words recorded in the gospel I'm sorry but there's no room in the inn Jesus here is telling them there's plenty of room in my father's house there is room enough for all in my father's house you will never hear there's no room in the inn Jesus is promising that the disciples there's a place for them at home that they have a home and that he will secure a place for them in that home and he says if it wasn't so that he certainly would have told them they're basically he's acknowledging to them that they are basically in their mind maybe not actually articulating but wrestling with the thought why have we come all this way for it all to end now and Jesus is helping them at this early stage in his teaching on the afterlife to understand this is not the end this is the beginning where I am going I'm preparing a place for you and you have admittance to it there is a place reserved for you it's not hypothetical it's not whimsical it's actual there is a real place for you every laborer from the field will have a room and not only is the room prepared for you by Jesus not only that but it's also made ready for you he says in my father's house are many rooms and I go to prepare a place for you have you ever arrived at a hotel before check in time and you go in and it's been a long trip and you try to get a room but it's not ready yet you can't go upstairs the room exists your reservation exists but the room is not ready you can't go in because made service has not come and cleaned the room and made it ready for you to go to it's dirty you can't go into a dirty room I've been led into a dirty room before accidentally trust me it's good that they have these rules you don't want to go where some of these people have been staying it's wonderful what they do to turn these rooms around and to make them right Jesus at the cross open to heaven up he made it ready by his own atonement by his obedience to the Father when his blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat it had a cleansing effect and a toning effect to make ready a room for us and when the veil was torn into at his death it was as if the doors to these rooms were opened up for us to enter in but unlike a inn or a hotel that is temporary this is a home it's a home you're not just checking in for a stay you're checking in Tuesday Jesus doesn't just call it a place but he says it's a place for you for you someone once said a house is made of walls and beams a home is built with love and dreams growing up we take our home for granted it seems that most of our young lives is spent trying to get away from home and then the rest of our lives it's been trying to get back we long for the day we can escape from under the authoritarian rule of our father we assume he must have some angry or some dementia that he's suffering from that he wants to exercise some powerful authority over if we can just escape from this oppression and then we realize that that's what kept our lives in order all of those years and then once we escape we find everything exploding in chaos and we just want to go back home where somebody is in charge not long after unless shame makes us wonder so that we're not able to go home because of our own conduct like the prodigal that wonders off to enjoy the world and cannot return home until he is completely broken except for those cases we begin to long for home again and our hearts seem to be made to desire home wherever that home may be whatever shape it may take our hearts seem to have a desire for home as we get older and our parents begin to pass from this life to their eternal home many lose their sense of home they lose their sense of roots when I go home to see my parents I pass by my grandmother's home my dad always called it the home place it was sold out of necessity and a developer came and with a bulldozer he removed the home place leaving the trees so now as we drive by we see the driveway and the mailbox still standing which I went down all those many many years the front yard where every Easter we would all come as family extended family we'd hide eggs over about an acre's worth of property probably some of them are still there to this day all of that was there but all that is left now are the trees in the circle where there now exists a hole where my grandmother's home was my father's childhood home and it represents the hole that it leaves in one's heart when the home is taken away a testimony to the history which we have lived for our home my own childhood home still stands but it now is a daycare center the place that I grew up I still pass by when I go to visit my parents the front yard is now paved the climbing tree that was in the front by the road is gone but the yard next door where we played baseball so many days so many years it's still there I stopped one time and I went inside walked across a porch where my father had bricked and some of the bricks were uneven he was younger than I am I thought that he could do anything but now being 44 I would not even touch a project like that and so there was a place where one of the bricks stuck up a little and wouldn't you know it that's exactly where I fell I still have a scar on my knee from that porch and so I walked over the porch where I still had the scar because of my time spent in that home I walked inside and I could still recognize the walls I could still recognize all the places where I played I crawled behind the couch growing up when I was supposed to be in bed and refused to sleep all the things that I did in that home I could still picture I could still hear the sounds but it was quickly drowned out because the house was full of about 25 or 30 that were in my home but it's still home though I know I could never go back all of our desire for security for home will never be realized in this life because nothing here remains permanent nothing we try we build our homes of brick we secure our mortgages pay them off early we do all that we can to make sure we won't lose our home but in the end it will go to someone else and they may be disposed to dispose of our home we come to realize as we grow older that our roots even our deepest roots here are temporary perhaps to cultivate an appreciation for our real home we're not able to have a permanent home here since the time of Adam and Eve and when they were expelled from their home we have been wanting to go back and have home even Abraham when he was promised when he was promised a very real and a very local home got even described the boundaries and the rivers of his home even then his praise was not because he finally settled in his home but in Hebrews 11 10 we know that even Abraham though he was promised real estate he was looking forward to the city that has foundations whose designer and builder is God Abraham's heart new that no matter how deep his roots could be in the Middle East and no matter how secure his borders no matter how great his estate his real home was with the Father earthly homes are necessary and good but our real need and the thing that our hearts ought to cling to is not longitude and latitude not a place of dirt not a roof a particular roof over our head but to be at home with God and to be content in his service in fact it is a betrayal of where our real hope is by how much we cling to that which is temporary on earth and how much we neglect that which is eternal a home was made ready and a door was opened by Christ a permanent home that's real where those we love have already been gathering and are waiting a home with Christ