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‘In My father’s house are many mansions.’
Joh_14:2
I. It is a home of perfect light.—‘Now we see through a glass darkly’ (1Co_13:12). There are many mysteries: the mystery of sin, the mystery of suffering. We cannot at present unravel all the threads of God’s providence. We are able only to trace out parts of that vast piece of tapestry-work. Let us wait till the other side is shown. ‘What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.’
II. It is a home of perfect purity.—Every thought of every heart is holy. The old enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, are conquered and done with for ever.
III. It is a home of perfect rest.—In My Father’s house are many abiding-places—blessed contrast to this poor dying world, where ‘there is none abiding’—many resting-places. Perhaps Christ alluded to the many apartments in the Temple, and the vast number lodged there.
IV. It is a home of perfect love.—Robert Hall thought heaven was rest. To Wilberforce it was love. Both were right. There is rest that never ends, and love that never dies.
V. It is a home of perfect joy.—There is joy in homecoming after years of absence, joy in health after weary sickness. Jacob’s heart rejoiced when he saw the wagons his long-lost son sent to carry him; but there is more joy in heaven. ‘I will receive you unto Myself.’ That makes the joy. The gates of pearl, the streets of gold, the walls all bright with precious stones—these things do not make heaven. Without Christ it would be no heaven at all.
Rev. F. Harper.
Illustration‘The gentle and saintly Cowper was lying apparently in despair, but it is said that just before his last breath was drawn, the two physicians who were watching beside him saw a smile, so marvellous in its blending of astonishment, delight, and thankfulness, come over his face, that they said to one another, “He is telling us as plainly as if he could speak it, ‘I am getting into heaven after all!’ ” ’
COMMUNION WITH THE DEPARTED
The text which I have chosen seems to throw an important side-light on such thoughts as the present, and on our relations, while here on earth, with those who, in the faith and fear of God, have entered into another and higher sphere of individual existence.
I. It is confessedly difficult to trace the exact connection between the words of the text and what had preceded.—What immediately preceded was the self-confident declaration of St. Peter, and the solemn and prophetic warning as to the speedy test to which the Apostle’s declaration would be put. But between this and the words which immediately follow at the beginning of the next chapter, ‘Let not your heart be troubled,’ which were most certainly addressed to all the Apostles save Judas Iscariot, who had gone forth into the darkness, there is no connection that can be regarded as throwing the least explanatory light on the Lord’s exhortation or on the words of our text, which almost immediately follow it. The true connection must be looked for, not in the incident itself connected with St. Peter, but in the foregoing words of our Lord, in which He alluded to His approaching separation from His followers, and especially in His going whither they could not come. If this be so, all becomes plain.
II. The Apostles are not to be troubled in mind; they were to believe in Him as they believed in God. Though He was leaving them now, it was to return to His Father’s House, and, in the unnumbered abiding-places of that House, to prepare a place for them. And so will it be, in varying measure and degree, to all who have loved and served our dear Lord faithfully here below, and especially to those who have been His apostles of mercy and love.
III. All that we can venture safely to deduce from our text is that the life after death, in the case of the faithful departed, will be a life of blessed continuance, in a higher plane of existence, of the life lived, in Him and for Him, here below—every deed done for His dear sake, blest, purified, and developed, following with us into the abiding-place which His redeeming love had prepared for us and permitted us to enter.
IV. Between us and the faithful departed there may be, even now, far more actual communion than, as yet, we are able adequately to realise. It is the settled conviction of thousands of serious and faithful hearts that consciousness of this communion will increase greatly and continuously; and it well may be so. This at any rate seems year by year becoming clearer to all thoughtful and watchful observers of the spiritual movements of our own times, that the Holy Spirit is now vouchsafing to manifest His holy powers in the Church and in the world in a degree, and to an extent, to which no preceding age supplies any recorded parallel.
—
Bishop Ellicott.
MANY MANSIONS
II. Turn our attention now from the Father to the Father’s house.—We have responded to the hallowed attractions and the sunny memories which cluster around the paternal home. Transfer your thoughts from the earthly to the heavenly—take the purest, the fondest, the most poetic conception you can form of the one, and blend it with the other—and still you have but the faintest analogy of heaven!
III. The many mansions.—The solemn hour of death once passed, the spirit, upborne by angels, finds itself at once ushered into
(a) The reception-room of heaven, the first of the ‘many mansions.’ There we shall see Jesus, not seated, but standing—as when He rose to receive His first martyr—to welcome us home.
(b) The heavenly repast, which succeeds the reception, will introduce us into the banquet-hall (Son_2:4).
(c) The Father’s house has also its music-mansion. Adoration and praise would seem to constitute the principal employment of the redeemed in heaven.
(d) The throne-room of heaven is not one of the least appropriate and gorgeous mansions of the Father’s house (Rev_20:4).
Let us aim to model and to mould our earthly homes after the heavenly. There righteousness dwells, holiness sanctifies, love reigns, perfect confidence and sympathy and concord exist.
Rev. Dr. Octavius Winslow.
Illustration‘Let us cherish domestic thoughts and anticipations of heaven. This will make us long to be there. How confirmatory of this the dying testimony of some! Listen to their glowing language. “Almost well, and nearly at home,” said the dying Baxter, when asked by a friend how he was. A martyr, when approaching the stake, being questioned as to how he felt, answered, “Never better; for now I know that I am almost at home.” Then, looking over the meadows between him and the place where he was to be immediately burned, he said, “Only two more stiles to get over, and I am at my Father’s house.” “Dying,” said the Rev. S. Medely, “is sweet work, sweet work; home! home!” Another on his death-bed said, “I am going home as fast as I can, and I bless God that I have a good home to go to.” ’
‘If it were not so, I would have told you.’
Joh_14:2
I. It is the language of pure friendship and open-hearted confidence.—‘If things had been darker than they are, if your difficulties greater, if your future less glorious, be sure that I would have told you.’
II. Are you satisfied with the revelation that God has been pleased to give?—Dare not to doubt this word of Christ, that if it had been best for you He would have told you more. Shall man hand God a table of contents, and ask the Almighty to make a revelation thereto according to his own device?
‘I go to prepare a place for you.’
Joh_14:2
I. We live in Him.—‘Thou art a place to hide me in.’ It was the bitter gloom of separation from Him that cast this fluttering dismay upon the Apostles. His words were designed to reassure them. He was going before them to be ready to receive them on the other side, in the home which He had set apart for them, in the abode which He would get ready for them. The Jewish tradition had always made so much of God’s Presence here in their midst, that death seemed to them to be a going out from it into a region which had to them been only imperfectly explored, and of which they had no sure evidence. It was part of our Blessed Lord’s mission to bring life and immortality to light through the Gospel. And yet it is not for us contemptuously to despise the Jews for their scantier knowledge. At least they found God here, and that after all is the best beginning for finding Him hereafter. That ‘I may know Him and the power of His Resurrection.’ How much is contained in those words! There was a time when St. Paul had been constrained to say, ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ It is the outpouring of a great longing when He says, ‘Then shall I know.’ We can read in the history of the martyrs how very much this meant to them as a support in their trials. ‘I see Jesus standing at the right hand of God,’ seems to have lifted St. Stephen up out of his pains and humiliation into a region where it had become true. ‘Thou shalt hide them privily by Thine own Presence from the provoking of all men: Thou shalt keep them secretly in Thy tabernacle from the strife of tongues.’ We know, perhaps, in our own experience, what it is suddenly to come across a friend in strange and difficult surroundings, where we know neither the language nor the manners of the people, and we say, ‘It seems quite like home to see you here.’
II. So we ought to live that life of personal union with Christ, that we may be able to understand without an effort that heaven is a state rather than a place. And that whatever may be the environment to which our risen life corresponds, whatever may be the analogous counterpart of our ministering senses, we may be able to find our fullness and completeness in Him. ‘And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent.’ ‘We are complete in Him.’ He gathers up all our affection, He purifies all our works. Where He is, there is heaven and happiness. Where He is not there is hell and misery. The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us, that He might raise us up to sit with Him in heavenly places, in the special home which He has prepared for us, in the mansion where He vouchsafes to meet us.
—
Canon Newbolt.
Illustration‘There is a story which comes to us from the days of the martyrs, that a Christian condemned to die a cruel death for his allegiance to Christ was sleeping peacefully the night before his martyrdom when he was disturbed by a dream. He dreamed that he was in heaven, where everything around him was of pure transparent glass. The ground he trod, the streets and gardens, all clear and transparent, and the blessed spirits of the righteous as they swept by, were of glass also; but to his dismay, each, as they passed him, pointed at him in amazement and pain, as if wondering at his presence in such a pure abode. And, looking down, he saw on his breast a black spot at which all were pointing. He clasped his hands over the place, but being himself of glass his hands were transparent, the defilement shone through. In his agony he awoke and remembered some breach of charity of which he had been guilty. He sought pardon of God and man, and passed away through martyrdom, to the realisation of the country of his dream.’
THE LORD’S DEPARTURE
I. The necessity for our Lord’s departure.—If He had remained here below various great ends of His mission must have remained unfulfilled. The glorification of His manhood, and of us in Him could not have been. Again, it was God’s purpose to build up again that image which in our first parents had been ruined, and this could not be accomplished without His being taken from them. It was to be the special work of the Holy Spirit dwelling in and operating on men’s hearts, and the Comforter would not come unless our Lord first went to the Father. The Ascension was necessary also for the manifestation of Christ’s sovereignty (Rom_14:9), and for the work of His High Priesthood in heaven.
II. The manner of His departure was open and undoubted. The Ascension into heaven is an article of faith resting on irrefragable testimony of the whole apostolic body.
III. The results of His departure with a view to our own faith and practice.
(a) It is the token of our acceptance. He is preparing a place and He is coming again. Let us look on the world’s progress and our own as parts of great preparation to that end.
(b) Let His Ascension draw our thoughts upward.
(c) His merciful intercession should also be in our minds. He is the Way, and no man cometh to the Father but by Him.
Dean Alford.
Illustration‘The foreigner in some countries still is the subject of severe criticism, contempt, and sometimes danger. His appearance is strange, his dress is foreign, his customs are incongruous, he does not fit in with his surroundings; his presence is an insult. God forbid that we should attribute such feelings to the courts of heaven, where we read “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth”! But it may be true, for all that, that man as man would be a sorry occupant for the unsullied streets of the golden city. Man was created in the image and likeness of God, dowered with freewill and spiritual power, and so man was meant to be a kind of first-fruits of God’s creatures. But read the history of the Old Testament saints and their serious imperfections. Read the lives of the Christian saints and their manifold limitations. Look at the average man, and the almost grotesque incongruity between his life and the life of any heaven which our imagination can bring before us. Look at our conception of beatitude. If the end of man is to know God and enjoy Him for ever—if this indeed be life eternal to know God, and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent, how can it be, how can we wish it so to be—we who know so little of God in our daily lives, we before whose lives He spreads His beauty, on which we turn our backs in silent contempt?’