The Father's House

JOHN 14:1-3

INTRODUCTION

The Bible gives us many ways to think about Heaven.

All the descriptions of our Home in Glory are metaphors or images, I think, because it is impossible to describe such a glorious place.

Jesus spoke of a Banquet, where all the righteous would sit down in his kingdom with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the saints.

To the thief on the cross beside him, Jesus promised that today he would be with him in “Paradise.” Paradise is the translation of a word that means a beautiful pleasure garden.

John, in the Revelation wrote of a great throng of people and angels gathered around a throne waving palm branches and praising God.

John also tells us in his Revelation of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, with gates of pearl and streets of gold and walls of precious gems.

But today I want to tell you about how Jesus described our heavenly destination as “The Father’s House.”

This is what Jesus said:

“Let not your hearts be troubled;

believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father’s house are many dwelling places;

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 take you to myself,

so that where I am, there you may be also.”

Jesus says these words to his disciples because he is preparing to leave them.

The disciples he is talking to have left everything to follow him.

They have left their businesses and trades with the expectation that the Kingdom of God is soon to come. They have—as we say—“burned their bridges behind them.”

Jesus knows that what is about to happen will be a shocking experience and a great disappointment.

Their faith will be shattered.

So in this chapter we see Jesus preparing his disciples for his death.

As he says later, as recorded in v29 of this chapter: “And now I have told you this before it takes place, so that when it takes place, you may believe.”

I. Jesus says, “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me.”

A. “Let not your hearts be troubled.”

The word translated here “troubled” means to be stirred up, upset, terrified.

Jesus was no stranger to this emotion. In John 12:27 we heard Jesus say, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father glorify thy name.”

And later in the garden, Jesus would say, “My soul is deeply grieved, even to death.”

B. Jesus says, “…Believe in God; believe also in me.”

Sometimes faith is hard.

If you have given all to Jesus. doubts will shake you. But you hang on. You decide to believe in spite of your doubts.

When difficult things happen, you may be distressed and wonder if you can keep your faith.

You keep your faith by living “as if” it were true. That sounds crazy, but that’s the best way I can say it.

You tell yourself, “I am going obey God and live for God, whatever the devil whispers into my ear to make me doubt.”

The test of faith is not what goes on in your mind but how you live.

When people say, “I believe in God,” they usually don’t think about what they are saying. They think they are merely expressing an opinion.

But to believe in God is serious business. It means you bet your life that God is real

It means that if there is no God—or if God is someone other than the one Jesus told us about—you are the big loser. You have lived your life for a lie.

II. Now we’ll talk about “The Father’s House.”

A. Jesus tells us that “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places.”

You are probably familiar with the old translation: “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

Today a “mansion” is a big fancy house like Brucemore.

Four hundred  years ago when the King James Bible was translated, “mansion” simply meant a dwelling, any ordinary house.

When Jesus says that in his Father’s house are many “dwelling places” he is simply telling us that when we get to our Father’s “house”—that is, where God lives—there will be plenty of room for everyone.

Jesus is preparing a place for us. He’s getting everything ready for us to move in.

It’s going to be a wonderful place—wonderful beyond our imagining.

B. We will be with Jesus.

When the disciples saw Jesus die on the cross they thought they would never see him again.

But they did see him again. Three days later on Resurrection Sunday they saw him and talked with him and knew that he would never really be taken away from them again, but he would come again and take them to himself, so that where he is they would be also.

The promise Jesus gave to his disciples that day is also for us.

We have said good-bye to many loved ones who Jesus has taken to himself, and someday he will take us too.

It is a comforting thought, isn’t it?

CONCLUSION

I was drafted into the army in 1952, almost a year before the Korean War ended.

After basic training I was sent to Korea into the war.

I had never lived away from home or my mother and father and sisters and brothers for more than a few weeks at a time.

I missed my old friends and family. In Korea I walked guard for four hours every fourth night.

It was dark and lonely. I had a lot of time to think.

And the thing I thought about during those long dark nights was going home.

I used to imagine myself walking up the walk, up to the front porch, opening the door and being greeted by my family.

And the day I was discharged from the army and got on the train to come home from Camp Carson, Colorado, was the happiest day of my life.

But there’s another “home” I’m looking forward to now; that home that is my Father’s house.

It was good to get home from Korea. I got a welcome when I got home.

But that is nothing like the welcome I will get when I arrive at my Father’s house.

Jesus will be there.

Dear friends will be there who have arrived before me, and they will be glad to see me.

It will be a party.

And as the ages of eternity roll on the pleasures will increase: the pleasure of conversing with Jesus, the pleasure of my new resurrected body, the pleasure of the friendship of fellow believers, and the pleasure of worship with the angels.

I can only imagine what it will be like to “enter into the joy of the Lord.”

In an old book I read the saying of an old saint. He said, “Here drops of joy enter into us. There we will enter into joy.”

I have read that on the grave of a Christian named Atticus, buried somewhere in what is now modern Turkey. On the gravestone is carved this epitaph: “My soul dwells in goodness.”

We know nothing else about Atticus. Was he rich? or poor? prominent? or insignificant?

We don’t know. We only know the one thing that’s important. He loved Jesus.

And one who knew Atticus and knew his love for Jesus, wrote this testimony for him on the stone: “My soul dwells in goodness.”

Believe this. Think about it. Pray about it. Imagine it.

If you belong to Jesus, someday you will dwell in goodness.

Someday you will “enter into the joy of the Lord.”

The Parable of the Pearl of Great Value

MATTHEW 13:45-46

Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:45-46).

In Jesus’s time pearls were much more valuable than they are now.

Nowadays we have plastic pearls that you can get at Kmart, and they are hard to tell from real pearls.

You learned in school how real pearls are formed.

By pure chance a grain of sand gets caught in the body of an oyster, and the oyster’s body secretes a material called “nacre” around the grain of sand to protect its delicate body from the irritation of the pearl.

As layer after layer of nacre forms around the pearl, the pearl becomes larger and larger. The cross section of a natural pearl is like an onion, with layer after layer of this valuable material.

Sometimes this process takes years. I read that the largest pearl ever seen was found by a pearl diver in the Philippines. It weighed 14 pounds!

Nowadays people have learned how to induce oysters to make pearls by opening a live oyster and putting in a tiny piece of oyster shell in the body of the oyster. The oyster will then make a pearl around that tiny piece of oyster shell. This is difficult but it is a much easier way to make a pearl than the natural way that is left up to chance.

So these cultured pearls are not so expensive.

But in ancient times pearls were very valuable—like diamonds or rubies.

Pearl divers had to dive many times and bring up many oysters to find one pearl.

Pearl diving was very dangerous. Pearl divers suffered from the pressure of the water in their lungs and from being attacked by underwater creatures. Many pearl divers died in their quest for these valuable gems.

Jesus chose to tell a story about a merchant seeking precious pearls because pearls were so very precious.

Jesus’s parable consists of only one sentence. But we can use our imagination to fill in the details.

I can imagine an antique dealer who got into the business because he loves antiques.

Or a dealer in fine paintings who loves fine paintings.

Or a dealer in fine violins, who is really excited about violins.

Or a dealer in old, rare books, who has a passion for rare books.

This merchant was in the pearl business because he loved fine pearls.

He was always on the lookout for the finest pearl in the world.

Suddenly in his search he found a perfect pearl, a pearl of such a size, and perfect shape, and dazzling color, that it was a dream come true.

In his excitement, he sold his house, his furniture, and his whole stock of pearls, and whatever else he owned so that he could possess it.

I don’t know what he did with this wonderful pearl. Maybe he sold it to a great king and lived happily ever after on the proceeds of the sale.

This parable has two meanings for us.

I. First of all, the parable tells us how valuable we are to God..

A. God is the merchant in search of fine pearls.

The “pearls” God is in search of are you and me.

I found a prayer in an old book that goes like this:

“Why, Lord Jesus Christ, why dost thou so love men and women?

Why are they all thy treasures?

What a wonder is this,

that thou shouldst so esteem them as to die for them!”

It’s wonderful that the God of the universe loves people.

It’s wonderful that God made us—and made a beautiful world for us to live in.

It’s even more wonderful that when our human race fell in to sin and wandered far away from him, he brought us back to himself at the price of the blood of his own Son.

The merchant in the parable gave everything he had so that he could possess this wonderful pearl.

God gave everything, even the life of his Son, so that he could possess you and me—and bring us to his home in glory so that we could be his friends for ever and ever.

Some people think they are worthless.

But no one is worthless. We are each of infinite value to God.

Jesus died for every one of us, as if each of us were the only person in the world.

This is why the symbol of our faith is the cross. The cross represents the cost of our redemption—and the infinite love God has for each of us.

That is why in our churches we often celebrate the Lord’s Supper…or Communion…or the Mass…or whatever your church calls it. When we eat the bread and drink the wine we remember how much God loved us and what Jesus did for us. We remember how much we owe him.

B. Because men and women are so valuable to God, they should also be valuable to us.

If you and I love God as we ought to love him, we must also love other people as God loves them.

I will tell you the rest of the prayer I quoted at the beginning of my message. The whole prayer goes like this:

“Why, Lord Jesus, dost thou so love men and women?

Why are they all thy treasures?

What wonder is this, that thou shouldst so esteem them as to die for them!

Show me the reasons of thy love, that I may love them too

O thou, who art most glorious in goodness,

make me abundant in this goodness like unto thee,

that I may as deeply pity others’ misery and as ardently hope for their happiness as thou dost.

Let the same mind be in me that was in Christ Jesus.

I pray thee, teach me first thy love to me, and then unto mankind.

(Thomas Traherne, 1637-1674, in Centuries)

II. Now I will tell you the second meaning of the parable.

A. The merchant is also you and me.

We go through life searching—searching for happiness…

…for the meaning of life…

…for the satisfaction of knowing that our life has made a difference.

We keep searching—whether we know it or not—searching for God

Because God is the one who gives meaning to life.

God is the one who makes us a blessing to others.

And when we find God, it is like a dream come true.

B. And, like in the story Jesus told, it costs us something.

It costs to have Jesus—our “Pearl of Great Value.”

It costs us our pride, our sins, our self-sufficiency, our good opinion of ourself, our independence.

For some it costs much more.

A friend named Chris told me this story a few weeks ago.

Chris has a friend named Don, with whom he was studying the Bible.

As they studied the Bible, Don felt more and more drawn to God.

One day he said to Chris: “I’ve decided to stop doing drugs. But I’ve got this big stash to get rid of, so I’ve got to sell it.”

Chris said, “Selling it is worse than using it, you know.”

Don said, “I know, but that’s a lot of money.”

Chris said, “You need to throw it out, man. Just flush it down the toilet.”

Don said, “This God thing is scary. It’s like, committing yourself to your Creator is a huge decision, and I’m really afraid.”

Chris said, “The fact that you’re afraid shows me that you’re on the brink of following Jesus.

Don became agitated. He face became flushed, he opened and closed his eyes. Finally he said, “All right, I want to do it?”

“Do what?” asked Chris.

“Follow Jesus,” said Don.

Chris said, “That’s awesome!”

Don beamed and exclaimed, “I feel happy! I feel like a different person!”

Our stories aren’t probably so dramatic. But it’s the same idea. It’s a big decision to follow Jesus.

To follow Jesus is to become a different person.

It’s worth everything we have.

For Don it meant getting rid of his stash of drugs.

For you it might mean letting go of your grudge against someone…

It might mean praying for someone who hates you.

It’s a big decision to follow Jesus.

But Jesus is worth it all. He’s the Pearl of Great Value.

CONCLUSION

The parable of the Pearl of Great Value is the parable of God seeking us and us seeking God.

God is priceless for us—and we are priceless for him.

The King of Heaven is searching for us, and we are searching for the King of Heaven.

And a seeking Savior and a seeking sinner will surely find each other.

Has Jesus found you? Have you found him?

To find Jesus and to be found by him is the greatest thing in life.