His Return, There's No Place Like Home Series

His Return

There’s No Place Like Home

Back To Christmas (1)

QUESTION – who here has seen the Wizard Of Oz? Who here has seen it more than once? YEAH – I think most of us probably have. THIS - 1939 classic is pretty timeless… I MEAN – it’s a movie we watched as kids and that we watched with our kids.

NOW - the Wizard of Oz is basically the story of a girl named Dorothy who is trying to find her way back home… YOU SEE – after a powerful tornado lifted and carried her house (You know, I’ve always wondered that if this tornado was so strong that it could lift her house into the air how come mean old Miss Gulch was able to ride her bike in it outside of Dorothy’s window)… WELL ANYWAY – after the tornado carried her house and her dog to a new and strange land… (a land full of witches, color and munchkins… DOROTHY - knew that she was no longer where? She knew that she was no longer in Kansas… NOW – at the time Dorothy didn’t know exactly where she was… BUT – one thing she did know was that this new place on which her feet were now walking was not her home…

THE – Wizard of Oz, is a story about Dorothy’s quest, her journey down a Yellow Brick Road to meet The Great & Powerful OZ, so that she can get back to Kansas... UNDERSTAND – Dorothy is driven by one unrelenting reality, that there is no place like home…

2,000 years ago… A MAN – who was sitting in an upper room having a meal with His guys, was driven by that very same reality… UNDERSTAND – the moment that God put on flesh and arrived in this world of ours… HE – knew that He was not in Kansas anymore… AND JESUS – just like Dorothy was driven (those 33 years that His feet walk the sand of Palestine) by one unrelenting reality, that there is no place like home…

AND – on that Thursday night in Jerusalem, Jesus knew that as soon as He had walked the road that had been laid out for Him since before the dawn of time, he was going home…

It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him – John 13:1-5

• Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father.

• Jesus knew that he had come from God and was returning to God;

Jesus knew that there was no place like home…

AND – deep down so does every other man and woman who has ever walked the face of this earth… UNDERSTAND – deep down we know that this world is not enough and never will be… DEEP DOWN – we know that life here is not and never will be fully satisfying… “All of our lives we take hold of the wrong thing, go to the wrong places, eat the wrong food. We drink too much, sleep too much, work too long, take too many vacations or to few – all in the faint hope that this will finally satisfy us and silence the hunger within. We go from relationship to relationship; job to job, house to house even church to church… convinced that this one is the right one. It’s not. And it won’t ever be. Better figure it out now. The world is booby-trapped. It’s rigged for disappointment. On earth everything falls short of some hoped for ideal. Everything good down here has a tragic brevity and a funny after taste to it. It all falls short and shortly falls apart. None of it possess any ultimacy.

DEEP DOWN – we know that there we have a desire for something that the things of this earth can only make us thirsty for but can never quench… DEEP DOWN – (because God has placed eternity within our hearts) we know that we are not home yet that we are from and destined for someplace else.…