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How do you feel when you know something bad is going to happen? Maybe you’re on your way to the dentist or worse yet going into surgery, you’re about to take a test at school, you have a meeting with your boss or your landlord, you have a double-shift at work, or a long drive into the heart of the city at rush hour. How do you cope when you know something bad’s going to happen?

Some of us get nervous and can’t stop thinking about it, some of avoid thinking about it at all, some of us get angry and worked up, some of us get depressed, some of us want to get it done quickly and rip off the bandaid, some of us want to delay it and procrastinate as long as possible. We all have ways of responding to a bad future. 

In our scripture this morning, the 12 disciples know that something bad is going to happen and Jesus has a message for them. Our scripture this morning comes from John 14 verses 1 through 4 which you’ll find on page 769 of your Bible and I’d encourage you to turn there and read along with us. Here Jesus is speaking to the 12 disciples on the night before he was betrayed. And for the next several Sundays, as we move through lent, the period leading up to Easter, we’re going to listen to the word’s of Jesus’ from John 14, to Jesus’ message for his frightened, anxious, uncertain followers. Listen to the words of Jesus from John chapter 14 verses 1 through 4.  

 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house there 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 will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” 

Jesus spoke these words on the night that he was betrayed, the night before he was crucified, the Thursday before Good Friday and before Easter. And the gospel of John gives us the closest look at that long, sleepless night from Jesus’ life; John chapter 13 through chapter 18 covers that night and includes so much of what Jesus said in his last words before his passion. 

This text from John 14 comes immediately after Jesus gave the disciples a dire warning in the end of chapter 13. Jesus warned the disciples that one of them would betray him, Jesus warns the disciples that where he is going, they cannot come, and when Peter insists that he will follow Jesus, that he will lay down his life for Jesus, Jesus replies that this very night, before the rooster crows, Peter will deny Jesus three times.

The disciples knew something bad was going to happen: betrayal, abandonment, failure, and in the back of their minds surely they were worried that the Pharisees who had so long opposed and even sought to kill Jesus were about to make their move. Worry, fear, anger, lots of emotions must have been running through the disciples as they anticipated whatever bad thing was to come in their future, as they worried about what the future held, how bad it would be, and would they be alright. 

 

And into that situation, Jesus spoke the words of our scripture, Jesus said “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Right after all that troubling news of betrayal and abandonment and failure, Jesus says “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” 

How are the disciples supposed to do that? How are they supposed to remain untroubled? And why shouldn’t they be troubled by all this bad news? Jesus gives them the answer to all these questions in these four verses. And Jesus gives them three things in his words, information, preparation, and application, and that’s what we will look at this morning. 

Let's start with the information. When Jesus speaks these words the disciples are already troubled by the information they have already received, by all the bad news about what the rest of this night has in store for them. But Jesus counters this bad news with good news, with information that will comfort them in verse: In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

 

Jesus had told them that he was going away, going somewhere where for the moment, they could not follow him. But Jesus reminds them that where he is going they can go also, that in his Father’s house there are many mansions. Jesus is speaking here about heaven, about the place where God dwells, the spiritual realm. And just as Jesus is going to die, be resurrected, and ascend to the right hand of God the Father, so too the disciples as believers in Jesus have been promised that someday they too will be resurrected and will dwell in the presence of God. They too have been promised the perfect peace and blessedness of being near to God, at home with God. 

 

Now this is not exactly something new that Jesus is telling the disciples. According to the gospel of John, Jesus speaks many times about the promise of eternal life. In fact just before Jesus entered Jerusalem, back in John 11, Jesus came to the town of Bethany where his friend Lazarus was sick. And when Jesus heard that Lazarus had died, Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

And Jesus went to the tomb and he wept over his friend and then he told them to take away the stone that covered the entrance to the tomb and Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man came out.

Jesus had said “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” and then he raised a man from the dead. Jesus had made it very clear that belief in him meant salvation, even salvation from death. So when Jesus said to his disciples “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Jesus was not telling the disciples something new. Rather, Jesus was reminding the disciples of something they already knew, that Jesus had promised them a place in his Father’s house. Jesus was reminding them of the promise of eternal life for all who believe in him. 

 

And we see that this is a reminder in how Jesus frames what he says “If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” “would I have told you” Jesus is saying he already told them this. I’m sure we’ve used and we’ve all heard language like this. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ ‘Didn’t I tell you the stove was hot?’ ‘Didn’t I tell you we needed to leave by 8 o’clock?’ ‘Didn’t I tell you that guy was up to no good?’

When we say ‘didn’t I tell you,’ ‘I told you so,’ “would I have told you,” we’re reminding someone of what they already know. And while this is often negative, ‘I told you so’ can also be positive. ‘didn’t I tell you your hard work was going to pay off?’ ‘didn’t I tell you that you’d get that job?’ ‘didn’t I tell you you’d get over it with time?’

 

In Jesus’ case, this seems like a positive case of ‘didn’t I tell you.’ He’s trying to comfort his disciples. He’s trying to make sure their hearts are not troubled. And Jesus comforts them, not by doing anything new, but by just reminding them of information they already knew: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

My wife Marci’s sister Emily works with horses at a Christian camp. And when she’s training horses, one of her principles is that a horse’s short term memory is only 3 seconds long. If the horse does something right or does something wrong you have to reward her or punish her within 3 seconds. If you wait longer than that, the horse’s brain will have already moved on and won’t understand why you’re hitting her or why you’re giving her a carrot. Horses have a 3 second short term memory. 

 

Now us human beings we’re a little better, we’re a little smarter than a horse, but not that much smarter. We human beings need constant reminders too. We’re very quick to forget what we’ve been told too. Quick to forget what’s happened before and what that means for us now.

 

Even though the disciples had walked alongside Jesus for three years, had seen Jesus heal the deaf and the lame and the blind, had watched Jesus raise a man from the dead, and had heard Jesus say not that long ago “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die,” even though the disciples had done all that, when the moment of crisis comes, when Jesus warns them that betrayal and abandonment and failure, the disciples have a 3 second memory. 

 

The disciples hear about trouble in their future and they are troubled. All that Jesus has promised, all that Jesus has done, shrinks in importance compared to what is happening right now, and the disciples are troubled. And Jesus doesn’t rebuke them, doesn’t reprimand them, Jesus reminds them of information they already knew: In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 

Jesus is the word of God; Jesus was sent to repeat and embody God’s message for us: that he loves us, that we are broken by sin, that we need God, and that if we believe in him we can be saved. 

 

When we’re troubled, we need to remember the truth about God and what he has done for us and what he will do for us; we need to be reminded of the information we already have. We can know our future through Jesus because Jesus has given us that information; he has told us our future, his Father’s house has many mansions and he has gone to prepare a place for us. 

And the information that Jesus reminds the disciples of, is about all the preparation he will do for them. And Jesus elaborates on this in the next verse, in verse 3: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

 

Now to me, Jesus’ talk of preparing a place for us sounds a bit strange. What does he mean he needs to prepare a place? We know Jesus is talking about heaven, about the place where God the Father is, about the pure presence of God. When I first hear this, I think, isn’t heaven already perfect? Isn’t heaven the place where there is no sin, no death, no pain, the place where God will wipe away every tear from eye? If that’s heaven, it sounds like it’s ready to me. If heaven is perfect, what does Jesus need to do to prepare it for us?

 

The answer is not so much that heaven isn’t ready for us, but that we aren’t ready for heaven. Let me make an analogy. Imagine a couple who lives in a perfect house. Everything is clean. Everything is beautiful. It’s full of nice furniture and art and decorations. It’s like one of those houses you see in a real estate listing set up to be as pretty as possible. 

And then imagine the couple has the baby. Will their perfect, beautiful house be ready for their baby? No, not at all. They need to prepare, they need to babyproof the house. They have to make sure the cabinets stay shut and the cleaning supplies are far out of reach. They need to cover up the electrical outlets and make sure none of their furniture can fall over. They need to make sure no delicate vase is sitting where the baby could knock it over. Babies, despite being very cutre, are very dumb, and left on their own, it’s easy for a child to hurt themselves. So that perfect, beautiful home is not ready for a baby and that perfect, beautiful home needs to be prepared for that baby. 

 

In the same way, heaven is perfect and beautiful, and it was not ready for us. Not because there was anything wrong with heaven, but because there was something wrong with us. And that thing is sin. Sin. Sin is a word we don’t use much anymore, we don’t like to talk about it, the word sin sounds harsh, judgmental, sounds like fire and hell and brimstone. 

 

But sin is a concept with great explanatory power; it helps us make sense of the universe. Just like you can’t understand physics or architecture, you can’t build a rocketship or a house, without understanding gravity, just like you can’t sing or make music, without understanding in tune and out of tune, you can’t understand life without sin. Sin is breaking the moral law, doing something we shouldn’t do, feeling something we shouldn’t feel. The concept of sin reminds us of two things, first that there is a right way to live, second that we fail to live that way. And sin has great explanatory power. 

Why do bad things happen? Sin. 

Why do I do things that I wish I didn’t? Sin. 

Why does God seem so far from me? Sin. 

And sin makes us like that baby wandering around a beautiful house; we are prone to hurting ourselves, to breaking things, to crying out selfishly for what we need. And none of those things are compatible with heaven. The presence of God is perfect, spotless, holy and it is not possible for a broken, sinful creature to enter in the presence of God. No, God tells us “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” No sinful man can come into the perfect presence of God in heaven. 

 

So Jesus went to prepare a place for us. He said “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” Heaven is no place for a sinful human being and we are all sinners, we all do wrong, so Jesus had to prepare a place for us. 

 

How did he do that? How did Jesus go to prepare a place for us? There is a reason Jesus said these words on the night that he was betrayed. Not long after Jesus said this Judas came with armed men and arrested Jesus. They bound him and took him to the high priest. They interrogated him and falsely accused him. They spat on him and beat him and scourged him with a whip. They dragged him before Pilate the governor and when the governor offered to show mercy on Jesus, offering to release him back to the crowd, the crowd cried out “crucify him! Crucify him!” And they let a murderer go in his place. And they crucified Jesus. They nailed his hands and his feet to a piece of wood where he hung and he bled and he slowly suffocated until he died. 

And on that cross, Jesus took the punishment we deserved for our sin. On that cross, Jesus prepared a place for us in heaven, because on that cross he took our sins away, making it possible for us to come into the perfect presence of God the Father, making it possible for us to go to heaven. 

This is the information that Jesus reminded the disciples of: that he was preparing a place for them, he was suffering for their sins, because of the crimes we committed he would be arrested, because we struck our neighbors, he would be struck, because we lied, he would be lied about, because we betrayed and abandoned others, he would be abandoned and betrayed, because we murdered our fellow man, he would be murdered. Jesus reminded the disciples that God loved them so much he was prepared to suffer the weight and the pain of every sin so that they could be with God. God loved the world so much that he suffered that much for us. John put it best: God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

God gave up his only son. Can you believe that? Can you imagine sending your child to suffer all that? His only son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

 

Friends, we all have things we worry about, we all have bad things coming in our future. But we can know our ultimate future through Jesus. We can know our future through Jesus. Jesus has prepared a place for us through his substitionary death on the cross for our sins and if we believe in him, Jesus says “I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” We can know our future through Jesus: eternal life.

 

And because Jesus has prepared a place for us, there are consequences for how we should live now. There are applications for us today. 

First: believe. Jesus says it as clear as day: Believe in God; believe also in me. Information doesn’t do you any good if you don’t believe it’s true. If you know your mother said the stove was hot, but you don’t believe her, it won’t do you any good, you’ll go right ahead and burn yourself. 

You can know everything there is to know about the Bible, about theology, about Jesus, but if you don’t believe it, it won’t do you any good. Jesus has promised eternal life to all who believe in him. And maybe you don’t. Maybe you see some appeal in Jesus, but still have second thoughts about some things. Maybe you’re figuring out who this Jesus is and what he’s all about. Know this. You can understand a lot of things about Jesus intellectually, a lot of things on the head level, but until you believe, until you accept Jesus on a heart level, you won’t really get it. 

 

Paul writes, those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Some things, some information is spiritually discerned and without belief we will never discern it. We need to believe in Jesus, to believe his words are true, to believe that he is Lord and God has raised him from the dead. And if we believe those things, we can know our future through Jesus. We can know that he has prepared a place for us and will come again and will take us to himself. 

 

Second: behold. We need to behold what God has done for us. We need to contemplate God’s wonderful deeds towards us and the words he has spoken to us. Jesus did not tell the disciples anything new in these verses; he merely reminded them of what they already knew but had forgotten. It’s easy for us to forget. It’s easy for us to focus on what’s happening right here and right now and to lose sight of all that God has done for us. So we need to behold, we need to pause and contemplate the works of God. 

 

We need to set aside time to pray, to speak to God and to hear his voice. In the morning when we get up and at night before we go to bed, we should cry out to God in gratitude, thank you for another day. We need to take a second to behold what God has done for us, or we’ll forget. 

 

We need to set aside time to read our Bible and to learn what God has done not just in our life but in the whole world, how he has made himself known throughout history, how he has delivered his people over and ovr again, how God has been faithful and merciful and just. 

 

We need to set aside a day in the week to come together as a church, as one body in Christ, and to worship him, to behold the majesty of God through music and prayer and the proclamation of the scripture. 

 

When we pray and read our Bible and worship, we behold the wonderful works of God. We remember all that he has done for us and all that he has promised to do for us. When we behold God’s work, we know our future through Jesus, that he has promised eternal life for us, whatever may happen here on earth. 

 

Third, we need to behave. Jesus began by saying: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Which is a strange sort of thing to say, it’s hard to control your heart, to control your emotions, to stop yourself from getting upset about something, and yet that is exactly what Jesus commands: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Jesus tells us that we are responsible for our hearts and so we need to take control of our own emotional life so that we are not troubled. 

 

And the best way to do that, to take control of our hearts, is through our actions. Our actions shape our hearts. If we act like we are not troubled, soon enough we won’t be. Life tries to trouble us with worries about the future, with problems and crises that seem impossible, that seem like the end of the world. But we need to behave, we need to act in accordance with what we believe. We need to do the right thing. And if we do that, if we do the right thing, our hearts will not be troubled, not right away, but in time, our hearts will be transformed and will not be troubled because we know our future through Jesus, that we will spend eternity with him. 

And this transformation of our hearts, sounds like an impossible task, but all things are possible with God, and God gave us his Holy Spirit to enable us to do the right thing, to empower us to control our hearts and not be troubled. 

 

And this passage, these verses can be a great comfort to those who are troubled. I heard this passage read at two funerals just last year; it’s a common passage at funerals. It’s good to remember when a loved one has died, that Jesus has prepared a place for them through his death on the cross and that our loved one is now experiencing the joys of heaven in the presence of God. But it is even better to remember these words while we are still living, while they can still make an impact on our lives, while they can still spur us to do great things for the kingdom of God, when they can encourage us to serve the poor, to love our enemies, and to pursue holiness. 

 

With our future certain and known in Jesus Christ, with our place prepared in heaven, we have nothing to lose and can follow God boldly wherever he leads, trusting the faithfulness and love he has shown us and promised us in Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.

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