A Place In The Son Series

A young boy would often go home from his friend’s house at night and - because it was the shortest route – he’d always walk thru the cemetery. When he was asked if he was ever afraid of going thru the graveyard at night he responded “No. My home is just on the other side.”

He wasn’t afraid because he knew where his home was!

Our passage today is interesting because it starts out with Jesus saying: “Let not your hearts be troubled.” (John 14:1) It’s another way of saying: “Don’t be afraid.” And Jesus said we don’t need to be troubled/afraid because we have a promise: “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

Jesus was saying – you don’t have to be afraid because I’m preparing a place for you. A place that will be a home for you … a place in heaven.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about THE COLORS of our faith which are represented by something called a “witness bracelet”. The black bead stands for the deep darkness and hopelessness of our sin. It’s this dark sin in our lives that makes it so we don’t deserve to go to heaven. The red bead stands for the blood of Jesus that was shed to forgive us those sins. White represents the purity that God creates in us when our sins are forgiven. The Blue bead is representing the point at which we obtain forgiveness (faith, repentance, confession and immersion into Christ. Green stands the growth we should be experiencing as Christians. And now we come to the GOLDEN (yellow) BEAD which represents our home heaven.

When we get to this GOLDEN bead, even non-Christians know what we’re talking about… when we speak about Heaven. Non-Christians might not fully understand what heaven’s all about but they know – THEY WANT TO GO THERE!

ILLUS: USA Today once surveyed a number of Wealthy Americans, and asked them what they would be willing pay the most for (and they gave them several options to choose from). USA Today found that the wealthiest 1% of American families said that their number one desire was NOT beauty, intellect, power or even love. The one thing they desired above everything else, was a place in heaven. The article said the rich would pay - on average – $640,000 for the assurance of a place in heaven. That was more than they’d pay for anything else on the list.

Now I realize $640,000 probably isn’t a lot of money to a multi-millionaire, but the point is… if they were going to buy anything, the most important thing these wealthy people would want to buy was the assurance of heaven.

WHY? Well, partly because of what WON’T be there: “(God) will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." Revelation 21:4-5

This world is NOT my home. This world is a place where we face tears, sorrow, rejection, pain. Everything we have either gets lost, stolen or rusts away. And of course there’s illness… and disease… and death.

Now I like living in this world… kinda. But Jesus tells us there’s a better place than this one.

ILLUS: I read the story of a little girl who was out on the farm with her dad. It was night time, and the only lights were the dazzling stars in the sky. She turned to her father and (with her voice full of awe) said “If this the wrong side of heaven, and it’s so beautiful, what do you think the right side of heaven will look like?”

Now the book of Revelation TRIES to paint a picture of heaven’s beauty, and it speaks of streets paved with gold, and gates and walls that look like precious jewels. But I’m not sure if that’s exactly what heaven’s going to look like.

But I can tell you this – I think heaven will be one of the coolest places… you’ve ever seen.

I think explaining heaven to us is a lot like me telling my grandson that I’m going to take him to King’s Island or Cedar Point. And he’d ask… what’s it like? And I might say “Do you remember going to that street fair at Peru, IN - and it had all those rides? It’s kinda like that. (PAUSE)

NO IT’S NOT! It’s not even close. But it’s the closest I could get because he’ll not know what massive amusement park looks like until he actually goes to one. And heaven’s the same way. There’s nothing on this earth that even compares to heaven.