Jesus' Assurance for His Anxious Disciples

Jesus’ Assurance for His Anxious Disciples assurance. But instead, He offers comfort to His disciples and tells them of the John 14:1-14 future that He has planned for them. The anxiety level among Jesus’ disciples had just reached an all-time Decades had passed between this night when Jesus spoke and the time high. If we look to the verses that precede this passage, we see that Jesus had when John put His Gospel into its final form. John has had many years to just shared with them news that threatened the security they had found in Him in reflect on Jesus’ message. And he recognizes that while the words were the previous few years – “My children,” Jesus had said, “I will be with you only originally directed at him and his fellow disciples, they were also meant for a a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you wider audience. These words of Jesus also apply to you and me. And as I now: Where I am going, you cannot come” (John 13:34). The language Jesus studied these verses from John 14, it seemed that Jesus was telling us some very uses to address them is an indication of how unsettling these words must have important things. He tells us where we are going, how we get there and the life been. “My children . .” Imagine a parent telling a child that he or she is He intends for us in the meantime. leaving and that, where they are going, the child cannot come. The anxiety that I. First, where we are going. Jesus is talking to the disciples at a time child would feel is like the anxiety that the disciples felt when they heard these when they are facing a high degree of uncertainty. For at least three years, Jesus words from their Master. had shared His life with them. He had become the person in whom they placed Some doubt that John is recounting a real conversation here. They say their trust and their hope. Now He was telling them that things were about to that he is manufacturing Jesus’ words to advance his own arguments. But the change. He would no longer by available to them in the way that they had way in which the disciples respond is so true to human nature that it’s hard to experienced Him up to this point. imagine that John could have made this up. After Jesus drops that bombshell on Jesus even tells Peter that Peter does not know himself as well as he them, they are incapable of hearing anything else. Jesus goes on to say, “A new thinks he does. He may think that he can follow Jesus wherever He goes – even command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love if it means following Him to his own death. But Jesus says that he will not be one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love able to follow through. one another.” So, everything in the disciples’ world is being turned upside down. Peter’s response shows that he hadn’t heard a word Jesus had said Jesus understands this and, at the beginning of chapter 14, He turns a corner. He about loving one another. Everything had stopped for him when Jesus said, “I has been talking about the things that are about to change. Now He begins to will be with you only a little longer.” So Peter asks, “Lord, where are you talk about the things of which the disciples can be certain. “Do not let your going?” hearts be troubled,” He says. “Trust in God; trust also in me.” When we recognize the circumstances in which the words of chapter 14 Then He tells them, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were were spoken, we are amazed. Jesus is the one who is facing arrest and the not so, I would have told you.” “My Father’s house” is Jesus way of talking physical abuse and the humiliation that followed. Jesus is the one who is headed about heaven. Over the centuries, these verses have been sliced and diced to try for the suffering of the cross. He is the one who could have used comfort and to come up with a clear picture of what heaven is like. Many of us are familiar with the KJV that says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions .” Lots of 1 people’s images of heaven are based on that translation. But the original that one of them – Thomas – would pipe us and say, “Lord, we don’t know language here indicates that Jesus is not so much talking about the luxury of the where you are going, so how can we know the way?” accommodations as about the fact that there is room for every one of His That question prompted some of the best known and most debated disciples to join Him there. words from Jesus. In verse 6, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the Remember, Jesus’ disciples are confused and frightened at this point. life. No one come to the Father except through me.” Jesus clearly tells us how They aren’t concerned about the furniture or the square footage of heaven. They we get to the “Father’s house” where we can enjoy His presence along with our are worried about the separation that Jesus has been talking about. The words in brothers and sisters. But His response was not what Thomas and the other verse three assure them that the separation will not be permanent. “If I go and disciples expected. Clearly Thomas was looking for directions to a particular prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you place. If this conversation had happened today, he might have said, “Jesus, can also may be where I am.” you give me that address so that I can put in my GPS?” I think we tend to think of heaven in terms of comfort and reward. And Rather than offering a set of directions, however, Jesus offers Himself. certainly that is a part of the picture the Bible gives us. But here, in this final This is one of the primary things that makes the way of Jesus different from the conversation between Jesus and His disciples, the emphasis is on the way of religion in general. Most religion is about following a set of instructions relationship that Jesus has with His followers. Heaven is to be with Jesus in the that promise to lead us to God. The instruction can take the form of a legal code presence of God. He is the One who makes heaven what it is. But it isn’t only – a set of laws that a person is to follow that will bring them to God. Or the about our relationship with Him. There is room in the Father’s house for instructions can take the form of practices that promise to enable a person to everyone . So, heaven is also to be together with those who know Him. transcend the physical world and enter the spiritual. The path varies from That means that we do not have to be afraid of separation from those religion to religion, but they all have this in common. As a religion, Christianity we love. Yes, Jesus was about to go where His disciples could not follow. But has often fallen into the same pattern. that was a temporary situation. In fact, if they could see what He saw, they Jesus’ primary point here is not that Christianity is better than every would know that His purpose in going where He was going was to make other religion. He is saying that the way to God is through a Person – it is possible a situation in which they would never be separated again. through Him as the One who alone has bridged the chasm that separated us from And because that is true of our relationship with Him, Jesus implies God. If not for Jesus, we would not have a way to God. One great follower of that the separations we experience when we lose those we love are also Jesus by the name of Thomas a Kempis said it this way: “Without the way there temporary. Ultimately, where we are going is a place where we will be together is no going; without the truth there is no knowing; without the life there is no forever with Jesus in the presence of God. That was the assurance that Jesus living.” wanted to share with His disciples. Jesus is inviting the disciples to recognize this about Him. On one II. The disciples’ response to Jesus’ words is understandable. They had level, they truly do know Jesus. And in their relationship with Jesus, they have heard Jesus talk about “going where they could not come” and about their seen the Father. But they do not recognize this yet. As highly as they think of “knowing the way to the place where Jesus was going.” So it’s not surprising 2 Jesus, they don’t yet grasp that in Jesus God has made Himself known. We III. The way to the Father’s house is only through Jesus and through cannot get to God on our own. But in Jesus, God has opened the way.

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