John 14 1-14 Ascension Day 2006
Ascension Day
John 14:1–4
May 25, 2006
“A Place for You”
after J. Saleska
Introduction: In the field of psychology, it’s commonly understood that emotional health is often achieved when people discover where they belong in life. To belong, you need both a physical place to call home and close human relationships. People need psychological attachments to others. Without this sense of belonging, people suffer in the grip of emotional alienation and aloneness.
We are all aware of the security and comfort of having a place to come home to after a wearying journey. Even after a very restful vacation, most of the time we look forward to going home. Thoughts of a warm, happy welcome and a loving embrace by people who really care about us can rejuvenate our spirits. Remembering home, family, and friends after a lengthy absence, we’re apt to exclaim: “Oh, is it ever going to feel good to get there!” and “There’s no place like home.” Now, After What Christ Has Done, You Can Be Sure There’s a Place for You. We have a home in heaven, after our journey here is through.
I. Today is Ascension Day. Our text was spoken by our Lord before he completed his work here on earth. However, it’s evident that he’s looking forward to the time when he would return to be with his heavenly Father. He was undoubtedly anticipating his Father’s warm and loving embrace. He knew his Father would joyfully put the royal robe on him, crown him with glory and honor, and put all things under his feet, a joyful reunion, with all the hosts of heaven singing his praises. Who wouldn’t look forward to a reunion like that?
But before that, the work that he had begun would have to be completed. That would involve the restoration of the entire universe. It would involve rescuing people in bondage and slavery to sin. It would involve crushing the enemy’s head and defeating death—all of which required his own death on that accursed tree of the cross. As curious as it might seem, for life to reign everywhere again, he, the Prince of Life, would have to die. The writer to the Hebrews sums up the circle of his life, work, death, and ascension at the right hand of God this way: “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2 NKJV).
Acts describes the ascension like this: “Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9 NKJV). He is back home now preparing a place for us, as the text says, and if that place is for us, then it is really ours already, and we’re going to live in it. It’s our promised land. He bought it for us at a great price. And he intends to see to it that we get there. His work assures you that there is a place for you that you can call home always.
II. Christ’s work in bringing us out of the land of slavery and death and to the promised land is clearly pictured in the Old Testament. Exodus 15 contains Moses’ song of redemption, which he sang immediately after God’s remarkable rescue of the people from Egypt. Egypt was really a no-man’s-land. The people were forsaken there with no hope of deliverance. They were utterly alone, seemingly abandoned, even by God. There was no way of escape, no place to go, with the darkness of death the only prospect: escape was absolutely unthinkable.
But in the middle of those utterly hopeless circumstances, the miraculous deliverance occurred as if from heaven itself. In fact, the deliverer was heaven-sent. Even though Moses was the spokesman, it was the Lord himself, who through Moses told them that he had seen their affliction, heard their cry, knew their sorrow, and had come down to deliver them and lead them to a rich new land (Ex 3:8). He was in that cloud that led them out of the land of darkness and death to the light of a new day and a new life. God was their Savior. They came out with him from the land of death through the waters of the Red Sea, which washed away all their enemies. They were born again, entirely free from that old life under the rule of Pharaoh. God breathed his life into them and promised them a place in which they could live and where every need would be provided for.
As surely as he had rescued them, just so certainly he was going to see to it that they would get to the place safe and sound. With the Mighty One fighting their enemies, the promised land and home was as good as theirs already. In his song, Moses talks about the Promised Land as if the people are already living there: “You in Your mercy have led forth The people whom You have redeemed; You have guided them in Your strength To Your holy habitation” (Ex 15:13 NKJV). They were still in the wilderness, but the place they would call home was already theirs.
The bondage of Egypt was really a miniature illustration of the greater enslavement of all of mankind here on planet Earth, and a picture of a far greater rescue. When our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell, the entire universe was plunged into darkness. The garden became a graveyard, a place of the walking dead. People wandered aimlessly, alone, lost, and alienated from God and each other. Nonbelievers must ask themselves, “Who are we? Where are we? Why are we here?” In the darkness of unbelief, life has no meaning or purpose. We humans have no destiny. We do not know who we are. We do not know why we’re here. We do not know where we’re going. We have no idea of how to escape this place of death.
All people want to escape. For this reason mankind has set up religions and philosophies to deal with our predicament. All of them focus on what we can do to save ourselves. Sadly, on our own we neither look for or to the only one that can save us, the one true God and our savior Jesus Christ. God chose to deliver us from sin, death and the power of the devil. So God sent His only Son from His eternal home with the Father to be homless on earth with us to lead us to our eternal home. God the Son left everything behind and came into this land of aimless wandering as one of us. He said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere [no place] to lay His head” (Mt 8:20 NKJV).
His lonely pilgrimage in the wilderness of our world is much more than simply being without an earthly home. In our Egypt, he served people who deserved to be left alone in eternal darkness. He came to save those who did not want to be saved and rejected him. He came to be totally forsaken as he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46 KJV). On the cross he was totally abandoned even by God his Father.
III. The cross is where he bore the crushing burden of our sin. The cruelty, the blows, and the stripes that we deserved were laid on him. Remarkably, through it all, he never lost sight of “whence” he had come and “whither” he was to go (Jn 8:14 KJV). He knew who he was: the everlasting Son of the Father. He knew his purpose: reconciling the world to God. He knew his destiny: the right hand of the throne of God. In spite of being forsaken by God, he knew he would be vindicated and restored to his rightful place. And when the Father raised him from the dead, he put everything under his feet. He is again God over all. Death, hell, and Satan must all yield to him and declare him their Lord. In his death and resurrection, he has crushed the enemy’s head. And most remarkable of all, he did it for us.
So now we have come full circle. Today we celebrate his return on high to the place from whence he had come, the right hand of the majesty on high, where he now intercedes for us. For his sake the Father has fully and freely forgiven us everything. Our search for home is over. In him we know who we are and where we’re going. As a matter of fact, Paul says in Ephesians that God has made us alive with Christ, and has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (2:6 NKJV). In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes: “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (5:1 NKJV). And Peter says that we have an inheritance in heaven reserved for us (1 Pet 1:4). So, in him the place is already ours, even as we travel through this barren wilderness. In him we have returned to our Father’s house. “I’m going to prepare a place for you,” he says in the text (see v 2). He has gone ahead and prepared the place. It’s our place, which means we own it. We are like the prodigal, returning to our Father’s house, our home. There is going to be a great big homecoming celebration. The party is at his place (home, for us) and at his expense. Our Lord will be the One who joyfully welcomes us home with open arms. He’s waiting for us. In him, it’s certain that we’ll arrive safely.
Jesus’ ascension guarantees our ascension. No more aimless wandering. No more aloneness, lostness, or alienation. Our trust is in the One who became homeless so we would have a home. He is the One who, even now, “leads his children on To the place where he is gone” (LW 58:3). He makes it certain that we are going to “dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (Ps 23:6 KJV).