John 14:2

THE FATHER’S HOUSE

‘In My father’s house are many mansions.’

John 14:2

‘In My Father’s house’—the Greek rather means household, or home—‘are many mansions.’ And indeed the single word ‘home’ possesses magic power.

I. It is a home of perfect light.—‘Now we see through a glass darkly’ (1 Corinthians 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!’ ” ’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

COMMUNION WITH THE DEPARTED

At the present time the desire on the part of serious and religious persons more fully to realise the nature of our communion with the departed is steadily increasing.

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.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

MANY MANSIONS

I. The Fatherhood of God is the first truth our Lord propounds in connection with this picture of heaven.

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 (Song of Solomon 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 (Revelation 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.” ’