Homeward Bound

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:1–3, ESV)

Clearly, the disciples have many reasons to feel more than a little troubled. Jesus has just dropped four bombshells on them: Judas is going to betray Him; Peter is going to deny Him; they are all going to forsake Him, and Jesus Himself is going to leave them.  They have just had the theological rug, so to speak, quite literally, pulled out from under them. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know where to go. They are at a complete loss.

Do you know what to do at such times? 

I remember reading a newspaper article detailing the amazing things people write on insurance claim forms. One individual wrote, “There was a man standing in the middle of the road. He didn’t know which way to run. So I ran over him!” What do you do when life has you by the throat, when you feel trapped in the teeth of some impending catastrophe like a deer in the headlights?

Jesus cautions that you might not always be able to trust yourself (I am not sure that I can ever trust myself), but you can always trust God, and you can always trust His Son, Jesus Christ. This would have been a profoundly blasphemous pronouncement for Jesus to have made were He not the Son of God. To mention His own trustworthiness in the same sentence as God’s trustworthiness would have betrayed enormous arrogance were Jesus a mere man just like the rest of us. But He is not. He is worthy of all the trust and confidence that your soul has to give. Trusting Jesus, casting yourself into His all-sufficient, always available, and eternally capable arms is always the right thing to do. When friends fail you, you have Someone to trust who will never let you down. When your dreams are dashed to pieces, you have Someone to trust whose plan is far better than any which you could possibly ask for or ever hope to imagine. When your health fails, you have Someone to trust whose love is stronger than death. When even your integrity fails, you have Someone to trust whose skillful hand can weave the brightest colors out of the darkest threads.

In particular, Jesus says that there are three things about Him that you can trust. First of all, you can trust His word, for He assures us, “If it were not so, I would have told you.” Jesus will always be straight up with you. He who is the Truth will never bend the truth. His Word is His bond, and His bond cannot be broken. Secondly, you can trust His work, for He has told you what He is making ready: “I go to prepare a place for you.” In John’s gospel, when Jesus describes Himself as going, He means that it is always to the Father, and the cross is His way of getting there ( John 16:28. cf. John 7:33; 13:1, 3; 16:5, 10, 17; 17:11, 13; 20:17). It is through the cross, do you see, that Jesus prepares a place for us in heaven. The work is finished; it was all His to do. As it was with the Israelites at the Red Sea, we need only sit still and watch, for “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Exodus 14:14, ESV). Thirdly, you can trust Jesus to come again and take you to Himself. For most of us, this coming and taking will happen in two stages: Jesus will come to us in our death, and then at the end of time, He will come back again to reunite us, body and soul forever. Isn’t that a wonderful way to think of death? The date is set in indelible grace. But it’s not the Grim Reaper coming to take you to the grave. Jesus is coming to take you home to God, the Father. Like parents eagerly waiting to have their children home for Christmas, our Heavenly Father looks forward to that day. Do you? How readily we should go when He calls, with all the gladness and anticipation of a little boy skipping home from school for the holidays.