Sermon Central
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In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions Series
Contributed by Ps Trevor Bartley on Nov 28, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: Many people think and have been taught that when Jesus is talking in John 14:2-3 that they are going to get a great home of brick and mortar, or a mansion. I am investigating this view...
Now we know that the only way to the Father’s house is through Christ! Or we could say the only way to be a partaker of the divine nature is through Christ.
With those thoughts in mind let’s have a look at the rest of John 14 to see what else it tells us about revealing this truth of having what no one else has ever had available to them before. ‘A personal relationship with the Father.'
In John 14:7-11 Jesus is revealing the truth about the dwelling of the Father in a person, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father, who dwells in Me does the works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me…” Now we know, Jesus received the Spirit of God at His baptism, and this was the moment that Jesus and the Father were one on earth (Matthew 3:16).
This was not a concept even considered as possible at this point in time (God dwelling in man), so you can understand their confusion with this statement. The mistake we make sometimes is we read these scriptures thinking that the disciples knew what we know now as New Testament born again believers. What Jesus was telling them was very foreign to them, it was a new truth. The other mistake we fall into is reading the scripture in our western mindset.
Now Jesus is about to reveal what the advantages are because He is going to the cross to secure the ability for anyone who chooses to believe to obtain a personal relationship with the Father.
John 14:12-14, NKJV
“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. 13 And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.
It is because of what Jesus has done and where He has gone that we are told that as new created beings. Beings with God living within us that we will do the works that Jesus did and because He paid the price for our sin and made us righteous we can do greater works than these. We now have an advocate with the Father, glory to Jesus.
In John 14:17 we are told of the next endowment of promise available to us because Jesus has gone to the cross, and the Father has set up residence in our hearts. The promise of the Holy Spirit, we are told in Romans 8:23 that the Holy Spirit was the first fruits offering from Jesus to us. Notice the vernacular found in John chapter fourteen verse seventeen and especially the words ‘He dwells with you and WILL be in you.’
John 14:17, NKJV
The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
Notice what Jesus was saying, ‘He dwells with you.' How was the Spirit of truth dwelling with them? Because Jesus was with them, the Spirit of truth was dwelling with them. And because of the journey Jesus was about to take, that they could not take, there was going to come a time when the ‘Spirit of truth will be in them’.
