[0:00] We're going to read the first 18 verses. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth,! For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,! And there was no longer any sea.
[0:16] I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
[0:27] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
[0:42] He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
[0:54] He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. Then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.
[1:04] He said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To him who is thirsty, I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.
[1:19] He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
[1:44] This is the second death. One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
[2:00] And he carried me away in the spirit to a mountain great and high and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel like jasper, clear as crystal.
[2:19] It had a great high wall with 12 gates and with 12 angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the 12 tribes of Israel.
[2:32] There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south, and three on the west. The wall of the city had 12 foundations, and on them were the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb.
[2:47] The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide.
[3:01] He measured the city with a rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall, and it was 144 cubits thick by man's measurement, which the angel was using.
[3:20] The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold is pure as glass. Let's open up the word of God.
[3:31] Please turn with me to John chapter 14. John 14. Follow along as I read only verses 1 through 3. Let not your heart be troubled.
[3:46] Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you.
[3:58] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may also be. Let's pray together.
[4:10] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the invitation to your house. We thank you that though we are sinners, you invite us in, in the name of the Lord Jesus.
[4:22] And you've promised that where we've gathered, you will be here in the midst. So, please, Heavenly Father, would it be that your Son would merge with us and walk with us in the cool of this Lord's day.
[4:38] And may He cause our hearts to burn within. We ask it in His name. Amen. In July of 1976, a flight filled with around 250 passengers, most being holiday-bound Israeli Jews, departed from the Tel Aviv airport, heading for the beautiful destination of Paris.
[5:05] But during a brief stopover in Athens, a handful of stealth anti-Semitic terrorists boarded the plane and hijacked it at around 25,000 feet.
[5:17] And looking out the plane window, feel the lump in the throats of those passengers who knew their plane had been hijacked.
[5:28] And they dreaded, this just isn't going to end well. Just isn't going to end well. Either we're going to be plunging into the Mediterranean Sea, or we're going to be crashing into an Alp mountainside, or we're going to be touching down someplace in the Arab world where we'll be gunned down, firing squad style in an airport terminal.
[5:56] And our hearts on that airplane were very troubled back in 1976. And it's probable that there are lumps of varying sizes in the throats of most of us in this room here in 2018.
[6:12] And for countless reasons. Many of us can look out the window of our lives and have fears that this just isn't going to end well.
[6:24] And for various reasons, our hearts can be troubled. So let's go to this passage, John 14, 1 through 3, where our Lord Jesus treats the troubled hearts of his disciples with a really sweet sedative.
[6:41] We want to unpack this in five main headings. We'll look first at a troubled heart. Secondly, a landing place. Thirdly, a father's house.
[6:52] Fourthly, a thorough preparation. And fifthly, a hoped-for reunion. So come on with me, firstly, out of five, to a troubled heart. In verse 1, let not your heart be troubled.
[7:08] But that's just what the disciples had there in the upper room. Troubled hearts. Jesus saw it on their faces. And so he said to them, let not your hearts be troubled.
[7:23] Why did they have this anxiety lump in their throats? Well, truth be told, these disciples had begun a very pleasurable flight three years earlier with Jesus in Galilee.
[7:38] Their experience took off when the Lord Jesus Christ said to four of them, come with me, leave your nets there, I'm going to make you fishers of men. And things were really going well just a short while later in Canaan when Jesus turned water into wine.
[7:55] Everything was beautiful. But now, their flight had been hijacked and things had gotten downright ugly. And they dreaded, this isn't going to end well at all.
[8:08] Jesus had spoken that Judas is going to betray. Didn't know it was Judas, but one of them would betray. They had to look on their face that their hearts were troubled.
[8:21] Let not your hearts be troubled, Jesus says. The Greek word there for troubled is terraso. It means to be disturbed or upset or distress. Why?
[8:32] Well, as I said, Jesus had divulged, look in 1321, one of you is going to betray me. And this sent them reeling.
[8:43] It was repugnant in their mind that one of them would hand Jesus, the master, over to the rulers and the Romans and they knew that an assassination plot had been brewing for months now.
[8:58] There was an anonymous traitor among us. They were troubled. There was cynicism and skepticism in their hearts regarding their own mission. One of us is going to betray.
[9:09] And then we see one of us is going to deny Jesus. Jesus had just said to Peter in 1338, look there, Peter, before the cock crows, you, you're going to deny me three times.
[9:26] Can you imagine the other ten there? A fire alarm would have gone off in their brains. Peter, he had just boasted the rest of us would deny, maybe, he never would.
[9:39] Peter was their rock and Jesus says Peter's going to melt into a puddle. He's going to be a coward. They were troubled by this in the upper room. And then the worst stroke to them was Jesus was troubled.
[9:53] And that made them troubled. 1321, the Lord Jesus said that he was troubled. They had seen him troubled earlier when at Bethany alongside the tomb of Lazarus.
[10:06] Jesus, speaking with Mary and Martha, he was weeping, yes, thinking about Lazarus' death, but also meditating on his own soon coming. Death.
[10:18] And then in 1227, Jesus had said in prophesying about what would happen to him when he got to Jerusalem, he had said, my soul is deeply troubled. That same word again, terasso, troubled. And he was referring to his own crucifixion that was coming.
[10:33] So, in the upper room there, this isn't an upper room, it's maybe a level room, but we're in a room too. And that room, just like Jesus looks out at us in this room, he saw among them that they were troubled.
[10:48] And as they sat in their recliners around the table, the eleven sensed they were flying into a hurricane.
[10:59] And he thought, this just isn't going to end well on the basis of what we see. I was in Louisville, Kentucky, on the, oh, mid-April for the Together for the Gospel conference, and I had spoken with a young man there, counseled with him for about an hour and a half, and he was saying, I'm going back home to my church, and I'm facing a hurricane, and there is going to be trouble.
[11:26] You could see the lump in his throat as we talked. There are various reasons why you may, sitting in your green pews here, feel troubled.
[11:38] There was another man I know who was going back to his church, and there was an issue about an older pastor who had fallen into sin, and he needed to be publicly disciplined.
[11:49] He was facing that kind of trouble. Maybe there's a, I don't know what's happening here, maybe there's a young man who has a romantic relationship with a woman, and there's the lump in the throat feeling like this just isn't going to end well, and I had thought that this relationship was going to result in love and a home somewhere, but now it seems that everything is breaking up.
[12:14] We can be troubled for many reasons, and even while I was there in Louisville, Kentucky, together for the gospel conference in April, my wife texted me while I was sitting listening to a sermon, and she said, the hospice nurse said that dad may die today.
[12:31] This is her 90 year old dad. His name is Arnold. He is a very strong, capable man. I'm in Bremen, Indiana, right? This is German territory.
[12:43] He actually fought in the German army. He was a soldier, and he came to the U.S., a converted man, very successful. Even at age 80, he would windsurf out on Clear Lake, Iowa, strong, powerful man.
[12:57] But I was told by Diane, dad may die today as Parkinson's had taken over, and I just thought to myself at that point, there's a better sermon to be heard for me than at the Yum Center in Louisville, Kentucky, with all these guys like Mark Dever and Lincoln and John MacArthur.
[13:16] My father-in-law has a better sermon to preach to me at his bedside there, and I drove all through the night to get to Iowa to be with him and spend time with him, and there he was in a very, my strong father-in-law was in a very weakened state, and I went in there, my sister-in-law was in there, and we were both troubled to see our strong man, dad, in such a condition.
[13:42] He was crossing the river, and he was in pain, and there was difficulty, and we just looked at each other and gulped and thought, this isn't going to end well, and maybe for me, I was imposing my own experience on, I kind of viewed that as a rehearsal for myself, my own dying, my own crossing the river, and I wonder how well I will fare facing death.
[14:08] You read Pilgrim's Progress, and you read Faithful crossing the river, it's the water, it's ankle deep, but then you read Christian crossing over, and the waters are going over his head, and he's drowning in his doubts, and his concerns, and his fears, and as I sat alongside the bed of my dad-in-law, I was just thinking, what's it going to be like for me when I crossed that river, and I was troubled, and I gulped, and I wondered for myself, I fear this isn't going to end well, but look, Jesus says, Jesus says, to those who fear it's not going to end well, let not your hearts be troubled, a troubled heart, our first point.
[14:52] Come on to the second of five points, and that is a landing place, a landing place. Jesus says to them, and to us, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, now the word place is the Greek word tapon, place, that means a refuge, a shelter, an abode, a sanctuary, a home.
[15:21] I go there to prepare a home for you. The same word is used in Matthew 12, 43, when the demon is cast out of a man, Jesus says, the unclean spirit passes through waterless places.
[15:37] Ah, there it is, tapon, place again, place. I go to prepare a place for you, the unclean spirit passes through waterless places, seeking a rest. You see, a place is a place of rest.
[15:50] It's an abode. I go to prepare a refuge for you. I was listening to a Martin Luther King sermon from way back in the 60s, and he was in Memphis, and he used the word Negro.
[16:04] It's okay, I'm quoting Martin Luther King, he says, the Negro is a weary traveler, and he has nowhere to lodge at night. I was listening to it that night while I was traveling late, late, from Louisville to eye, and I just thought, I'm passing by hotel after hotel, I'm tired, I could stop anywhere I wanted to and find a place, a refuge, a bed, a shower, a pillow.
[16:28] But Martin Luther King was saying, the Negro would go to a hotel, and he and his family of one wife and four children might come to the lobby, and during Jim Crow days they would say, sorry, there's no place for people like you here, keep on driving, keep on driving.
[16:44] But Jesus says, no, I go to bear a place for you, there's going to be a place for you. In fact, the same word place is used in Luke 2, 7, where it says, and there was no room for them at the inn.
[17:00] They were in Bethlehem. No place. And so we see Jesus is saying, I'm going to prepare a place for you. Deuteronomy 33, 27, the eternal God is a dwelling place and underneath are his everlasting arms.
[17:16] He's going to prepare a place for us. Otherwise, we, as sinning men and women, are vagabond wanderers with no place, no place to lay our heads.
[17:30] You boil it all down as we sit here in our green pews. All of us have this sense of insecurity. We want a place, a place of permanence, a place of security, a place of safety.
[17:45] A little baby comes out of the womb crying for someone to hold, for arms to hold. And we get older and we realize, you think of Psalm 71, Lord, do not forsake me in my old age.
[17:58] We're not as strong as we used to. We can't take care of ourselves. Lord, we need a place. Where it can be safe for us. And so there's this longing in there, this aching for all of us.
[18:12] We want security. We want a home. Like Paul Tournier has written a book called A Place For You. And he refers to a counselee that he had, a man from a broken home and broken relationships.
[18:29] And he quotes the man. And the man's insecurity echoes our hearts. He says, basically, he says to his counselor, I'm always looking for a place.
[18:41] I'm always looking for somewhere to be. Instead of being alone and orphaned, I think of, it says in Genesis 2, it's not good for a man to be alone.
[18:52] And I remember when I was 21, 22 years old, and I wanted to find a dear woman who would be my wife, and I wanted a place, I wanted someone who would make a home for me.
[19:06] That's just part of us are not wanting to be alone because isn't aloneness the problem that we have? Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve were together in paradise and they communed with God in the cool of the day.
[19:21] They had a friendship with God. We were made not to be alone, not to be isolated, we were made to be at home with our God in paradise.
[19:33] But then this problem arose and that is that our father and our mother, Adam and Eve, defied God. They were expelled from the paradise garden home and they were thrown out.
[19:47] Wasn't there an angel there in the garden of Eden at the east? Gate, the flashing sword, denying entrance as Adam and Eve went out, isolated from God now with no home.
[20:05] And didn't Cain, who had been a murderer, and what is the sentence that was given to Cain? It was a nomadic homelessness. You shall be, God says to Cain, a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.
[20:20] In other words, you're going to have no home. There will be no place for you. And Cain complained, he says in Genesis 4, 12, my punishment is too much for me to bear. Isn't that true?
[20:32] Being alone? See, a young man here, didn't you used to not have a wife? And now you have a wife. Now you have a home. Isn't a glorious thing?
[20:44] I can echo your experience, but the reality is, because of our sin, we are bound for eternal loneliness, in outer darkness, isolated away from God as a nomad, with no place to rest our heads.
[21:04] And we will weep and wail and gnash our teeth for eternity with no place. You see, such are the troubled feelings in the souls of us and our exiled race, expelled from paradise with the flaming sword denying our entrance.
[21:25] We need a place! But Jesus says, I go to prepare a place for you. That's our inconsolable longing. We long for a place, a home to get back to.
[21:39] Have you ever watched Wizard of Oz or My Tool to relate to this generation? Doesn't Dorothy say, what does she say, there's no place like home?
[21:51] She, in all her adventures near the yellow brick road, she just wanted to get home. And that's really, we're made in the image of God. And we want to get home, back home, paradise lost.
[22:06] We want to get back into paradise to be at a home with our God. C.S. Lewis muses about this and discusses about this ache in the heart. I want to be home to that place where I'm with my God again.
[22:21] Lewis says, there have been times when I think we don't desire heaven, but more often I find myself wondering whether in our hearts we have ever desired anything else. it, that inconsolable longing, it is the signature secret of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desire before we met our wives or chose our work and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work.
[22:57] work. And that was basically the condition of my father-in-law, 90 years old, a few hours from slipping into eternity, couldn't remember his wife or his work.
[23:12] He was groaning there when I got to Iowa. He was longing, groaning for a place. He was kind of like Noah's dove that Noah had released out of the ark and the dove flew around and there was no place.
[23:28] For my father-in-law, I did come to the point where there was no place for him on the earth any longer in his tenth decade. His eternal soul is longing and groaning for a place.
[23:42] And we all want that place of security. I look at you, you're about 11 years old, 12, maybe 13. And you don't understand fully what maybe a grandpa or a great grandpa here might understand about the long, but it'll come soon enough.
[24:01] I just, I long for home. I want to be at a place where there is security because the reality is there comes a point for the wealthiest, most successful, most capable of men like my father-in-law that our health is spent and our strength abandons us and our bank accounts are exhausted.
[24:26] At least the bank funds don't mean anything to us anymore. The pension 401k may run dry. My father not a BMW, but the BMW keys had long ago been taken away from him.
[24:40] And now because of his inability to think clearly, all his relationships had gone belly up and cut off and he was left destitute. And so it is, even for you, you're 11, you're strong, your eyes are so bright, but you are dust and the dust will return.
[24:57] Naked you came from your mother's womb, naked you will depart and you need a place. You need a place, a place for your never dying soul for eternity.
[25:10] And left to ourselves, we can have a lump in our throat and say, this just isn't going to end well. This isn't going to end well because there's this sin problem I got on this flashing sword at the east gate of the garden where I want to get into.
[25:26] This isn't going to end well. So we've seen a troubled heart. We've seen a landing place. Come on with me thirdly. I promise five. Thirdly, a father's house.
[25:39] A father's house. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many.
[25:50] dwelling places. That's the place Jesus promises he's going to prepare for us. Remember the prodigal in Luke 15?
[26:01] He was off in the far country. He squandered all of his wealth and the thought came to his mind when he was staring at pig pots. And he thought to himself, oh, if I could again be in the shade of my father's house.
[26:18] Oh, to be home. With my father. Oh, to be under his cool care. I was driving down here.
[26:30] Bremen, Bremen, Bremen, some say Bremen. German country, isn't it? Think back of when German folks came from the old country into this area.
[26:43] Maybe they would get a 60-acre plot of land land and they would build a little house on the prairie. They would prepare a house for their own.
[26:55] They would prepare maybe a special detail because maybe there was the father who came across first, then mom and the four children stayed back in Germany.
[27:08] Dad is going to prepare a place for us. It's some place called Indiana. Indiana. And he's making it ready. And then eventually then the mom and the children get on the boat and the little daughter on the boat can't sleep at night.
[27:24] Why can't you sleep? I'm afraid. I'm afraid that I won't like it when we get there. Basically she's saying I'm afraid this trip won't end well.
[27:36] It's just not going to end well. And what does mom say? Oh, hush, honey. You know who's gone ahead to prepare a place for you. Who? Papa.
[27:48] Dad went ahead to prepare a place. And you know your father. You know your father. And because of that she's able to just fall right asleep because her dad has gone to prepare a place.
[28:00] Well for us, our Savior, the Lord Jesus, he says he's gone to prepare a place for us. And he says, in my father, in the King James anyway, you may be reading that, in my father's house are many mansions.
[28:18] My new American standard says, many dwelling places. The word for mansions or dwelling places is mané. In the Greek it means rooms. In my father's house are many rooms or apartments or places to stay.
[28:35] And I'll go back to ancient Palestine when Jesus was talking. What did this mean to them? Apartments? Was it like high-rise in New York City? Was that what they were thinking of? No, no, no, no. In ancient Palestine, a wealthy patriarch would often live in a large villa, sprawling country estate, Kustenberger says, with wings and rooms constantly being added to the estate for children who are added and then grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the families.
[29:08] So the image Jesus was speaking of, in my father's house are many rooms or apartments or places to stay. It's the image of a large compound centered around a communal courtyard for fellowship, a large banquet room hall for common shared meals.
[29:27] That's what it's like. You ever been to a retreat ground where there are the central area, then there are cabin satellites?
[29:37] lights? Maybe that's what it's like when I go to my father's house, many rooms. Or maybe like Jonathan Edwards speaks about it as if the father's house is a grand palace with guest rooms and there's the one grand dining room in the middle, sort of like a mega Downton Abbey.
[29:54] What a wonderful place to be. We can go off to our personal places, but we can gather together with the patriarch. There in the main hall.
[30:06] Jonathan Edwards talks about, he wonders if there are varying levels of accommodations, many rooms. In fact, he refers to Matthew 20, 23. Some sit at the right, some sit at the left.
[30:20] Or it speaks of the first will be last, the last shall be first. So Edwards speaks about, oh, in the father's house there's a place for the father, then the son, then children, then the chamberlain, and servants.
[30:34] Are there different levels of rooms? Different, class A room, class B, class C, I'm not exactly sure. Edwards seems to think so, but the reality is all of us, whatever room we get in the father's house will be ecstatic with the provisions of that room.
[30:50] Sometimes when we get a hotel, ever since the beginning when I first got married, Diana would want to go in and check it out and make sure it smelled right. Make sure, she gives we all give the thumbs up to the room that the father has for us, that the Lord Jesus has provided for us.
[31:10] J.C. Rouse says this, there shall be rooms for believers of all sorts, for little saints and great saints, for weak ones and strong ones, and none shall be shut out but impenitent sinners.
[31:23] It's a joyful thing when you think of eternity in the father's house, but there's a dark side. the dark side is in this room here in these green pews.
[31:34] Not everybody has a room in the father's house, but some will be in outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
[31:48] Some will come to the door and knock and depart from me. I never knew you. That's a really sobering thought. But Jesus says to his disciples, he says, I go to prepare a place for you.
[32:04] A place. Prepare. Preparing. It's a word that speaks as a custom designing. David Murray comments on this and speaks of a staking out and a designing like an architect.
[32:16] I prepare a place, design a place for you. Psalm 37 4 says, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
[32:27] The desires of your heart. What are the desires of your heart? Well, in Psalm 37, it's really referring to the land. He'll give you a place in the land. Really, the land, when you boil it all down, goes back to what Jason read about, which is the new heavens and the new earth, it says, but it's really the new heavens and the new land.
[32:45] There is a place in the new heavens and in the new earth that's been staked out, prepared by Jesus. You think of the German who comes over to northern Indiana and the 60 acres that he has.
[33:00] He's building a little house in the prairie. His family is going to come in a few months. He's preparing maybe I even saw those old houses when I came down south on US 31. And there it is, this house and downstairs there is a bedroom downstairs that he has crafted just for his wife because he knows that she just doesn't want a one-room house.
[33:24] She wants a place for privacy. So he made a bedroom in the lower there. He makes a loft up above. And the loft up above, oh, he's got three beds for the boys and they may fall off, but they like that kind of risk because it's built according to their desires to express their bravery.
[33:45] But then maybe in that same loft he's got a little section that is all walled off for his one daughter because she likes security.
[33:58] So every portion of the house is perfectly crafted and designed, prepared as what Jesus would say, prepared for you, a perfect accommodating.
[34:09] So you, you, God is a place for you if you be a child of God, a place for you. I think of my father-in-law. He was actually in the German Navy and he was actually stationed on a boat called the Horse Wessel, which is a big sail ship in the German Navy.
[34:26] He loved water and even when he came across in the 1950s to the USA, he came to Iowa. There's no water in Iowa. Oh, yeah, there was one lake. It's Clear Lake, Iowa.
[34:37] And up until he was 80 years old, he would be out windsurfing on Clear Lake. He loved the water. He would sit at the dock even when he was too old to windsurfing. He'd sit at the dock and stare at the water.
[34:48] He loved staring at the water. And even at his home in Waterloo, Iowa, there's a pond and a golf course. He stares at the water. I don't know exactly what Arnold's accommodations are.
[34:59] He's gone. He's home now. Maybe it's his apartment in the heavenly house of the New Jerusalem. A big deck, I am thinking. Jason read, it says, there is no sea in the heavens and the earth.
[35:11] There may be a river and a big lake, though. And Arnold able to look out at the waters. Whatever it is, it is a place that is perfectly suited to him and his desires. Delightful, matching all of the appetites and the yearnings.
[35:29] So, even though I was there in Iowa, when Arnold was groaning and it just maybe seemed like it just wasn't going to end well. Christ assures us, it's going to end well for you.
[35:40] It's going to end really well. I go to prepare a place for you. So, we've seen a troubled heart, a landing place, a father's house.
[35:54] Now, come on with me to a thorough preparation. A thorough preparation. It says in 2C, then to 3A, I go to prepare a place for you.
[36:07] I go. See, Jesus wasn't just going to fashion a new creation, a new Jerusalem, but Jesus had some work to do.
[36:18] He had to do some repairing work because Milton spoke about paradise lost. That's what was lost in Genesis 1 and 2. Eden. And then paradise what?
[36:30] Restored. And that is the grand picture of history. Paradise lost, paradise restored. See, the fallen creation and the fallen man, the wreckage of sin, needed to be repaired.
[36:51] And that's what Jesus is going to do when he leaves the upper room. Even fallen sinners were condemned to burn forever and the furnace of hell. That's us.
[37:02] Left to ourselves. We should have a big lump in our throat. It's just not going to end well. But Christ is going to go off and he is going to engage in preparation.
[37:14] See, something's got to be done about our sin problem. You want to get to the Father's house? You want to get back to Eden? You want to be able to walk with God in the cool of the day for eternity?
[37:26] Something's got to be done about that flashing sword. The threat was if you eat the forbidden fruit, you will die. You will surely die. And God doesn't kid. God tells the truth. And you read Genesis 5, all those men, Adam died and Seth died and Methuselah, I know he lived to be 967 years old, but he still died.
[37:47] We all have this death problem that we face. But you see, the Lord Jesus is going to deal with this death problem. He says, I go, I go to prepare a place.
[38:02] for you. He's going to go out of the upper room and he's going to go to Gethsemane and then he is going to appear in the morning at Pilate's porch and they're going to say, crucify him.
[38:17] And he's going to appear at the pillar and they're going to scourge him. He's going to go to do some work to prepare a place. that's because if he doesn't go from that upper room to prepare and do that work, then we will weep and nail and wail and gnash our teeth forever.
[38:36] There is no home for us but wander in outer darkness forever because of our sin. But bless God, the Lord Jesus Christ went to Gethsemane.
[38:48] He went to Pilate's porch. He went to that pillar. He took up that cross beam. He absorbed the nails.
[38:59] He hung. And he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? What does that idea of forsaken mean? It means he was destitute. He was left alone in outer darkness.
[39:11] What was he doing in outer darkness there? He was abandoned by the Father. The Father would have nothing to do with him because he who knew no sin became sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
[39:25] He was taking our eternal isolation for us there on the cross for a moment in eternity. There was eternity in a moment. He was drinking down the cup of our forever wrath in those hours on the cross and he hung until it was finished.
[39:45] We deserve that electric chair punishment of the wrath. of God and Jesus on the cross took the full voltage of the wrath of God for us so that there is no electric chair that we face anymore.
[40:01] But there is a place in the Father's house that Jesus deserves. He took our place so that we get his place. And because of that the Lord Jesus having taken the sword of justice that was thrust into him and he bled in our behalf.
[40:21] So now don't we have a hymn that we sing in our blue hymnal? It doesn't say justice smiles and asks no more. The sword of God's justice was sheathed in the person of his son and justice is satisfied so that Jesus is able to appear now at the east gate of paradise at the east gate of the house of his father and is able to bear his bleeding wounds in our behalf and what does the angel with the flashing sword do?
[40:56] He sheathes his sword and now there is access and the gates into paradise which have been closed for millennia are now opened and we are able to enter because of the work of the Lord Jesus in our behalf.
[41:11] He goes to prepare a place for us. That's the only hope. It's the only hope that we have.
[41:22] You're 11 years old, 12 years old, 13 years old, or you're 73, 74, 75 years old, everyone in between. The only hope we have is Jesus, our friend, going to prepare a place for us.
[41:44] Do you know him? Are you a disciple of his? Among the 12, there was one traitor in Judas. Are you a Christian here?
[41:57] Are you the real deal? It's a good thing to ask. When it was said that one of you will betray me, what was the response of these spiritually minded disciples? What did they say?
[42:08] Is it I, Lord? Is it me? That's a good thing to ask right now. Now is the day to ask. We're still in the land of the living. This is still the day of salvation. What a terrible time to have it dawn on us when we've died and gone and knocked on the door and said depart from me.
[42:22] You were fake. I never knew you. Now, what a glorious time to think about it. It is August 19, 2018. What a glorious place to be alive.
[42:35] We can examine our hearts to see whether or not we be in the faith. The day could come and you look back on August 9, 2018. Oh, to have been sitting even now in one of those green pews and have the opportunity to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus.
[42:55] It will be too late before you know it. What a glorious thing to sit here and have heart dealings with God, with the Lord Jesus Christ. I just say, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.
[43:08] He says to me, come you who are heavy laden, I'll give you rest. Anyone who comes to me, I'll not cast out. Repent of you. What sin must you repent of?
[43:18] Turn away from. Take the dagger of repentance to it. Believe in the Lord Jesus. I just leave this lastly then. Lastly, having seen a troubled heart in a landing place, a father's house and a thorough preparation, come on with me to a hoped for reunion.
[43:39] A hoped for reunion. It says in 2B and 3B, if it were not so, I would have told you.
[43:51] I go to prepare a place for you. If it were not so, I would have told you. While I was still in Louisville, Diane had texted me, she said, Dad seems fearful.
[44:08] And again, I'm projecting my own experience on and I thinking of myself crossing over and wondering regarding this Christianity thing, is it all true?
[44:23] Is Christianity true? You ever wonder that? Is it just something my dad and mom taught me? Philosophers call Christianity the opiate of the masses, the drug of the naive, who aren't bold enough to face the reality, so the philosophers say, that we die and we fall into a forever dark annihilation.
[44:50] And the masses can't face that hard fact, and so there's a fairy tale called Christianity and religion, and the idea that there is a heaven and a Jesus who can save. Is that all Christianity is?
[45:01] Is it just a fairy tale I'm believing in? You ever wonder about that? Scriptures speak about these flaming darts of the enemy who attempt. Yeah, I find myself at times struggling with that, and even as I looked at my father-in-law and put myself in his bed with his groans, wondering, wondering, is it really true, or is it just something pretend?
[45:30] But Jesus says, I go to prepare a place for you. In my father's house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you.
[45:43] When Jesus tells us something, we can believe it. It was back in April when this happened. Let me imagine if you got a in the mail, you ever get a mail, a check, pay to the order of, there's your name.
[45:59] I get it. Pay to the order of Mark Chansky. I look up to the payer up in the corner and it says, if it says they're Clearinghouse Weepstakes Company, you know I do that?
[46:11] I take that to the trash. But if it's somewhere in April and I get something, maybe $9,000 and it says, pay to the order of Mark Chansky, and I examine the check and it's green and yellow tinted on cardstock, it's a check.
[46:30] I look up at the payer in the corner and it says, United States Treasury. I don't take that one to the trash, I take that one to the bank, because I know that's the real deal, it's the seal of integrity.
[46:47] And so too, when we have these doubts and wonderings about eternity, is this real? Is this a fairy tale? Listen, the Lord Jesus' words are yea and amen, and everything he says, we can take to the bank.
[47:01] We can take it to our deathbed. And I have resolved that I am going to believe in my Lord Jesus Christ, and not in the whispering serpent who was a liar.
[47:12] He lied to my father and my mother in the garden of Eden, and I will not swallow his lies. Matthew Henry says this, Jesus has shown himself true to his friends who's given up everything for him, and in turn he died for them.
[47:29] He loved them too much to raise their expectations and then disappoint them by making them, as it says in 1 Corinthians 15, most miserable among all men, if we believe only for this life.
[47:43] Jesus is a faithful friend. Listen to me, you who experience flaming arrows of doubts, and you wonder, is this just, you may go off to the University of Indiana and some biology teacher or some philosopher may tell you this is just a myth that your mommy and daddy taught you.
[48:04] He's a liar if he says that. Believe in the Lord Jesus. He made every word is yea and amen. He even promised that if he would die, he would rise again on the third day. Did he keep his word?
[48:15] He showed up. He also says he's coming back soon. He's coming back. He'll show up. He's going to have the room in the father's house for you. Believe upon him. You won't be disappointed.
[48:29] He is worthy. He is worthy. And I even think of this, the phrase there where it says that where I am, you may also be. This friend, this Jesus, this Jesus who left the upper room and he went to Gethsemane and though every fiber in his being didn't want to go to the cross.
[48:51] Father, would this cup pass from me? But not your will, but my will be done. Why? Because he had you in mind, child of God. He would love you. Greater love Beth Noman and this he laid down his life for his friend.
[49:04] Our friend Jesus died for us. And even for me when I went off to Iowa and I saw my father-in-law in that condition and I vicariously experienced my own coming death and just sealing in my own mind that it will be well with my soul.
[49:20] He's going to prepare a place for my father-in-law Arnold. He's going to prepare a place for me. I got back to Louisville, Kentucky to the Together for the Gospel or 12,000 men at the Yum Center there.
[49:33] When I got back I came back to section 14 and I was sitting next to my friend Dave who 24 hours earlier had saved the place for me and we just began to sing songs like worthy is the lamb who is the praised what a glorious thing to praise the lamb whose every promise is yea and amen yea and amen considered our never dying souls and prepared a place for us I can only imagine I can only imagine what it will be like to walk by his side I can only imagine what our eyes will see when his face is before us I can only imagine seeing him who went to my hell compartment and built for me a paradise apartment beloved let not your heart be troubled you got this lump in your throat you feel about the future this isn't going to end well it's not true it's going to end really well he's gone to prepare a place for you so let's leave the fellowship let not our hearts be troubled leave here
[50:52] Jesus says in this world you shall have much tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the world let's leave with good cheer believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and even while the post loot is praying playing let's us be praying having heart dealings with God it's August 19 2018 it's the day of salvation don't play around believe in the Lord Jesus Christ the first time the 10,000th and first time believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved let's pray together our father we thank you that you've sent your son we thank you that he has made provision that he's prepared a place for us and we ask Lord that we would all have heart dealings with you would you take away the lumps in our throats our guilt and our fears and our anxieties and may we rest in the promises of a savior who died for our sins bless your word we ask may the spirit be the after preacher in
[52:05] Jesus name Amen Man