If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, you may be also. John 14:3.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Today we continue considering what Jesus repeated twice the night of the Passover supper when Judas betrayed Jesus and handed Him over, Jesus told you that “these things” He had spoken to you were said by Him so that you could have His joy made full in you.
First, in His teaching on the Vine and the branches, He stated:
These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. John 15:11.
And second in His prayer to Me that the Holy Spirit has revealed to you:
But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. . . I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word.” John 17:13-14;20.
So the question we are considering is what are “these things” to which He is referring. And I am showing you what they are by bringing before you the things recorded that He said that night leading up to those statements. And that would be chapters 13, 14, 15, and 16 of John’s Gospel, supplemented by the things you find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke spoken at that meal the same night. Yesterday we went through My and your dwelling places. So now we will go forward to the His next words that are for all the generations to the present day.
We will begin again with one sentence that ushers in a host of promises and blessed assurance of your position and security now and forever.
“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, you may be also.” John 14:3.
What is Jesus revealing to you? His substitutionary sacrificial work and your participation by faith. He is opening to you what it means to be “in Christ.”
In His life, death, resurrection, and ascension to My right hand to the throne of the Son of Man, My Son was preparing a place for you with Me in Him. If He had not come and paid your judgment and satisfied your sentence, you would die in your sins and never have seen My face. But that was never My Will. You were always to be with Me as My family in close fellowship and partnership.
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:1-6.
You rejected Me by rejecting My Word, for I am My Word, by the choice of the first man and woman, who separated the human race from Me and brought death and corruption into the world by exchanging the imperishable seed of My Word for the perishable seed of a lie, and since then each person is offered that choice, that is, life or death, the blessing or the curse, truth or falsehood, light or darkness, and whether to open your life to Me in the joining of Covenant or to separate from Me, but I desire that no one perish in separation but to have eternal life, abundant, blessed, beautiful life, in union with Me. All life flows from, originates, and is sustained by Me and I am love and light. Life is meant to be flowing with Love and Light.
My solution was to send My Word to you to heal you, deliver you from destruction, testify to the truth, and undo the work done by the devil. I sent you the ultimate kinsman redeemer to pay the price of redemption to free you from the slavery of sin and death. He had to be flesh and blood like you, close as a brother, but with an eternal life to give for the one you lost in Adam and all his perishable seed. He had to be born again of the incorruptible Word from above. Thus the seed of the woman, the virgin with child, that was to be God with you according to the Spirit but Man according to the flesh. My Son came clothed in flesh, yet He is One God with Me, humbling Himself and limiting Himself to human powers in order to receive all your sins into His own eternal flesh to receive the punishment due you and pay to release you from your sins by His eternal blood, for the life is in the blood. And He took your sentence to go down to the dust of death, to taste death for you all so you would not have to do so, but just pass from this window of time to eternity in His joining of humanity and divinity in one seamless life. He opened the way back to Me with His blood.
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:19-22.
But when Christ appeared as high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. Hebrews 9:11-12.
And that was how He would go and prepare a place for you, but before I continue about that, let Me say that you will notice My Son said “If” He went to prepare a place for you, He would return and receive you and you would be raised with Him. Why “If?”
My Son had a choice in the Garden of Gethsemane to make with Me that night the hour before Judas betrayed Him, remember He could have called on twelve legions of angels and left you all in your sins. He was faced with three days of separation from Me when He had done no sin, it is not in the divine nature for there is no affinity to sin in Me, I am love and light, and that is where I live, think, speak, and act, evil has no place in Me, as Jesus told you about Himself. My eyes are to pure to even look upon sin. But that night He came to the hour that He had prayed would pass.
“Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, “An angel has spoken to Him.” Jesus answered and said, “This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes. Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die. John 12:27-33.
Would He accept every sin, the smallest to the most horrendous into His own flesh and take the separation (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”) (“into Your hands I commend My Spirit”) to pay your judgment and satisfy your sentence to shield you from the wrath to come upon the earth in judgment or would He just return to Me and let ungrateful, ungodly humanity die justly in their own sins and trespasses? You know His decision.
“No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” John 3:13-17.
He knew My Will was that none should perish but have eternal life and only He could purchase it for you because none of Adam’s descendants had an eternal life to give. He made Him sweat blood and was the hardest decision for time and eternity, but I was in Him reconciling the world to Myself not counting you trespasses against you but putting them all on Him and we are One.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:17-21.
And being of One mind and one purpose, plan, and power, He stated that My Will would be done and not His.
When He arrived at the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. When He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow, and said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Luke 22:40-46.
Once He had set His mind and face like flint it was sealed. For the joy that lay before Him of having you all who would choose Him by faith with Him forever and the delight of doing My Will, for My delight also is in the children of men (My family in My image and according to My likeness), He committed Himself and then never looked back to the Garden decision again.
The Lord LORD has opened My ear; and I was not disobedient nor did I turn back. I gave My back to those who strike Me, and My cheeks to those who pluck out the beard; I did not cover My face from humiliation and spitting. For the Lord LORD helps Me, therefore, I am not disgraced; therefore, I have set My face like flint, and I know that I will not be ashamed. Isaiah 50:5-7.
Then I said, “Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart.” Psalm 40:7-8.
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1-2.
It was not easy for Jesus to save you, but He did. Do you ever take the communion meal and remember what He did and continues to do for you even now? He just asked one thing: “Do this in remembrance of Me.”
If we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another [and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ], and the blood of Jesus His Son continually cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:7-9.
Let us not go on to communion yet but let us finish our current sentence of “these things” He told you that give you His joy so your joy is complete: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, you may be also.” John 14:3.
You know that He did go all the way to the Cross, the grave, hell, and that I raised Him up on the third day in glory and after being with you again for forty days, I raised Him all the way to My throne of grace to the throne of the Son of Man, but He did not die alone nor did I raise Him alone. You died with Him and I raised you with Him by His substitutionary sacrifice in your place to give you grace upon grace. My divine life came into you as you were born again from above in Him by the infilling of My Spirit. When you believed in the good news of your salvation I sealed you in Him by the Holy Spirit as a pledge of your possession of total redemption, spirit, soul, and body complete and I seated you in Heaven with and in Him in your redeemed spirit. He prayed for that the same night before He went into the Garden of Gethsemane, for I speak the end from the beginning and so does He. We are One. Never forget that. You cannot reject the Son and have Me. And you cannot reject Me and have My Son.
The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” John 17:22-24.
At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” Luke 10:21-22.
When I raised Him from the dead, He came back to His own and received them with love and peace, and they received Him as Lord, and their joy was great, a joy no man could take from them as Jesus had foretold to them that night at the Last Supper:
A little while, and you will no longer see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me.” Some of His disciples then said to one another, “What is this thing He is telling us, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’; and, ‘because I go to the Father’?” So they were saying, “What is this that He says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what He is talking about.” Jesus knew that they wished to question Him, and He said to them, “Are you deliberating together about this, that I said, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me, and again a little while, and you will see Me’? Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy. Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.” John 16:16-22.
Do you know the joy of the resurrection? Jesus is the resurrection and the life. I have already raised you up with Him. Even though you are still in the world as My ambassadors of reconciliation, you are not of the world. You belong to another Kingdom. When you received Him as Lord you were raised up and sealed in Him by the Holy Spirit. Blessed assurance is yours.
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:13-14.
I love you. It is finished and everything I have is yours. Do you know that? Do you know where you are seated and what My Son and I had to do to get you there?
“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, you may be also.” John 14:3.