Some say, “Home is where the heart is.” What is home? John Ed Pearce, long-time writer for the Courier-Journal, stated, “Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.” I’ve entitled our message this morning, “Searching for Home,” and I’m addressing this topic because in today’s society it appears that many people are searching for home, or searching for some sense of belonging. You hear people say, “I’m trying to find myself,” but I believe they’re trying to find something greater than themselves; they’re trying to find home.
Listen as I share some dictionary definitions of “home.” Home is “where one lives or where one’s roots are; where you live at a particular time; the place where you are stationed and from which missions start and end; a place where something began and flourished; an environment offering affection and security; and an institution where people are cared for.”(1) I am sure a few of these definitions resonated deeply with some of you, especially the ones that relate to belonging, flourishing, and being cared for.
“During World War II, housing was in short supply. A lady with good intentions expressed sympathy to a little girl whose family did not live in a house. She said, ‘It’s too bad your family doesn’t have a home.’ The five-year-old replied, ‘We have a home. We just don’t have a house to put it in’.”(2) It’s been said, “A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.” I believe that people are tired of houses, the ones built by the world’s empty promises, and the ones we build for ourselves; all houses of cards, waiting to tumble down around us. We don’t want any more houses, we want a home; and today, from God’s Word, we will discover our true home.
This World Is Not Our Home (Hebrews 11:8-10, 13-16)
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; 10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God . . .
13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. 15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
It’s been said that today’s writers – songwriters, play writers, etc. – are the bards of our time. If we’ll just listen closely we can hear in their words the concerns of our own society. I’m going to share with you today some of their words. For example, in the movie “Patch Adams,” Hunter Adams said, “All of life is a coming home – salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us – all the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home.”(3) He continued to say, “I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place.”(4)
For many of us, we can feel lost, heading down a never-ending path to nowhere. We can feel the darkness of loneliness, isolation, and emptiness, and all we want is a place of rest and security; we want a home. Patch Adams declared, “All of life is a coming home,” but he also confessed how he felt lost. How many of us are searching for home, but we don’t know the way? Some of us are lost and we need a Guide; or rather, we need a Savior to lead us there. Others know the Guide and have caught a glimpse of home, but they’ve taken their eyes off Him because of the world’s empty distractions. The bottom line is that many people in this world are searching for home.
In Hebrews 11:8, we read how Abraham journeyed toward his promised inheritance, not knowing exactly where he was going; he just got up and went. He was headed to a Promised Land, or a promised home. In Genesis 12:1, we discover that when Abraham journeyed he left something behind. The Lord said, “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.” Abraham left behind his country, his family, and his father’s house. In other words, he left all that he’d grown up with and all he’d ever known. He had a home and he abandoned it at God’s command! Why? Because God promised him a better home!
In verse 15, we read, “Truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.” Abraham left behind the only home he ever knew, and if he’d thought back on it he might have been tempted to return? Why? Because he desired a home just as we do! He desired a place to belong, and to fit in. Abraham was not alone in this feeling, for in verse 14, we read that all the fathers of faith declared that they too sought a homeland. If Abraham had allowed memories of his childhood home to lure him back there, he would’ve missed something greater. God wanted to give his family a greater legacy, a spiritual and godly inheritance, but he had to leave the influence of his father’s house to receive it.
I believe that when a person has had a real and life-altering encounter with God, that they’re going to be so different afterwards, that they really don’t fit in with the world anymore. They feel alienated and begin hungering for something more; more of God, and more of His kingdom, and less of the world.
In verse 9, we read that Abraham “dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob.” How many people today feel as though they’re living in a tent? You feel like you live in a temporary structure that is always being packed up and moving from place to place, while you’re searching for where you really belong. We must realize that this world is not our home. The reason why we feel out of place, like we don’t fit, and why we find ourselves searching for home, is because we will never be truly at home on this earth. Our church family is about as close as we can get.
We’re told in verse 13, that all the great fathers of faith realized that the promise of home was far off, and not in this present life; and they “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” They were looking for a heavenly country, or a heavenly home. Patch Adams said that while searching for home he would eventually find the right path, but in the most unlikely place. Some of you here today will discover home in what the world sees as an unlikely place; in Jesus Christ. And those who already know Him need to understand that, until we reach our home in heaven, Jesus is to be our home.
Many Are Longing for Home (2 Corinthians 5:1-8)
1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, 3 if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. 4 For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6 So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. 7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
In the movie “Garden State,” the character Andrew Largeman observed, “You know that point in your life when you realize that the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you can put your stuff, that idea of home is gone . . . When you move out it just sort of happens one day . . . and you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist.”(5) I don’t know how many of you have had the experience of leaving home to go off to college or get married; and when you return to visit, whether it be your parents’ house or your hometown, it just doesn’t feel the same anymore. Perhaps when you return home you are treated more like a guest than a son or daughter. Many of us have had to face the hard reality that the house we grew up in is no longer our home.
In the Christian life we discover that the house of sin is no longer our home. In verse 1, we read how our body is just an earthly house or tent; just a temporary dwelling place, and not our real home. Verse 6 speaks of being “at home in the body,” but our body is not really our home. Our real home, according to verse 2, is our “habitation which is from heaven.” It’s the place where, according to Revelation 21:4, there will be “no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying . . . [and] no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” If we have accepted Jesus into our heart, then we are keenly aware that something doesn’t feel the same anymore; things have changed.
Verse 4 states, “For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened.” So, in what way are we burdened in this physical body other than having a longing for home? We are burdened by sin. Paul said in Romans 7:23-24, “I see . . . the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” This mortal body, and the sin which is present within our members, no longer feels like home. Sin is the main thing keeping us from feeling at home in this world and this life. Our former life before Christ of living in sin, and serving the lusts of the flesh, feels foreign when Jesus does a work in our heart.
This world is full of sin, corrupted by the ruler of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), or Satan, who has deceived people into exchanging the truth of God for the lie (Romans 1:25). God’s truth and love are tainted in this life. Even though the love of Jesus Christ breaks forth into this sinful world as the kingdom of God advances, His kingdom is not yet fully realized. It is not yet fully here, and so we cannot feel totally at home. We feel displaced, wandering and searching; that is, unless we allow Jesus to create a new home for us when He invades our heart!
We may not be present in heaven just yet, but we’re already present in Christ, if we know Him as Savior! In John 14:23, Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” Many of us have found a new home in Jesus Christ! Contemporary Christian singer Michael Card, expressing the great love of our Savior, sang, “Though you are homeless, though you’re alone, I will be your home. Whatever’s the matter, whatever’s been done, I will be your home.”(6) Jesus is our home in this present life! Poet Maya Angelou said, “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” We can feel at home wherever we find ourselves if Jesus is our home!
If you are longing for home, and you desire this sense of home and peace in your life, then you must receive Jesus as your home by making Him your Savior and Lord. Verse 5 speaks about having the Spirit as a guarantee. 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 says, “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” When we receive Jesus as Savior, God establishes us, or makes us, firmly grounded in Christ through the Holy Spirit, given as a “guarantee.” What is a guarantee? The American Heritage Dictionary says that a guarantee is “a formal assurance that something is represented or that a specific act will be performed; [and it is] to assume responsibility for the debt or default.”(7) If we know Christ, we can be assured that our salvation was completed on the cross, and the Holy Spirit is a testimony that Christ has indeed “assumed the responsibility for our debt” of sin.
What we’re given through the Spirit when we receive Jesus is not a home buyer “warranty.” In the dictionary we are told that a “warranty” is “given to the purchaser . . . usually specifying that the manufacturer will make any repairs or replace defective parts free of charge for a stated period of time.”(8) So, a warranty expires! However, if you have a guarantee on a house, then if that house should go bad then you get it replaced, meaning you won’t lose that house. There’s no such thing in the world as a guarantee on a house, and the closest thing you can get is home owner’s insurance. With Jesus, though, a guarantee is for real! The Manufacturer has made all repairs to our life, guaranteed to never fail! We will never lose our home in Jesus Christ! If you’re searching for a home with true security, then it’s found in Jesus!
In verse 2, we’re told, “In this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven.” Even when we make Jesus our home away from home, we still have a hunger for our home in heaven. MercyMe, in their song entitled “Homesick,” expressed their desire for heaven, saying, “I close my eyes and I see your face. If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place. Lord, won’t you give me strength to make it through somehow. I’ve never been more homesick than now.” It’s important that Jesus be our true joy and peace; but it’s only natural for a Christian to hunger for home.
Our cry for heaven reveals our heart and the extent of our relationship with the Lord. So, what does your heart reveal? Where is your heart and where is your home? What do you devote yourself to; your time and your resources? Is your heart seated in this world or resting in Jesus Christ? In Matthew 6:19-21, Jesus told us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” If you search your heart this morning and find that your heart has made its home in something of this world, then perhaps you have not received Jesus Christ as your Savior.
Jesus Is the Only Way Home (John 14:1-6)
1 “‘Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And where I go you know, and the way you know.’ 5 Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?’ 6 Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me’.”
In his book Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote, “Not all who wander are lost.”(9) If you know Jesus you are not lost, just sojourning. Our inner yearning for heaven causes many of us to feel as though we are wandering, when in reality we are on a “quest” to see Jesus. We are “pilgrims on the earth,” as Hebrews 11:13 states. 1 Peter 2:11 says that we are “sojourners and pilgrims.” We are not wandering aimlessly, and we are not lost. We are on a journey, just passing through this life, and we have a Guide for the journey, which is Jesus the bright and morning star (2 Peter 1:19; Revelation 22:16).
Jesus is our North Star and guiding light; however, if we don’t know the Guide, or we cannot find Him, then we really are lost. Jesus knows the way home, for He’s the one who has prepared the way (v. 2). He has already made the long journey. He has been there and seen it. He knows the road very well, and has it memorized. In fact, He tells us that we too should know the way (v. 4). If you find that confusing then you’re not alone, for Thomas asked, “How can we know the way?” (v. 5). The answer is, we can’t know the way in and of ourselves, but we can come to know the One who does know the way, which is Jesus.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (v. 6). He is not only our Guide, but He is the “way,” the “road,” the “path,” the “gate” (Matthew 7:14), and the “door” (John 10:9). Jesus is “THE WAY.” Perhaps that’s why the first followers of Jesus were called “followers of the way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 24:14). He is the “only” road to our homeland in heaven. There is no other way, and no other religion, and no other work that will get us there. Jesus said, “No one comes to the father except through Me” (v. 6). If you do not know the Guide, Jesus Christ, you are lost. If you’re lost then you need to trust the Guide to help you home, and the Guide is Jesus Christ!
Time of Reflection
Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket, said, “One’s home is like a delicious piece of pie you order in a restaurant on a country road one cozy evening – the best piece of pie you have ever eaten in your life – and can never find again.” This is how many of us feel right now; like we’ve had a taste of home, but can never find it again. I’m here to tell you that you can have a piece of the pie! You can have a home, and it’s found in Jesus Christ! Remember what Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me . . . My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). We have a home in Jesus, when He makes His home in our heart.
In Revelations 3:20 Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” Do you hear Jesus knocking on the door to your heart today, asking to have dinner and commune with you? If so, let Him in! When He comes into your heart, you will find in Him a new sense of home; and then one day you will gain a heavenly home with the Lord when you pass from this life to the next.
NOTES
(1) “Home,” WordNet 3.0, Princeton University, on Dictionary.com; taken from the Internet in April of 2008 at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/home.
(2) “Christian Reader,” Nov./Dec. 1994, p. 47.
(3) “Patch Adams,” (1998).
(4) Ibid.
(5) “Garden State” (2004).
(6) Michael Card, “I Will Bring You Home.”
(7) Mark Boyer, ed. et al., The American Heritage Dictionary (Boston: Dell, 1983), p. 309.
(8) “Warranty,” Dictionary.com Unabridged, version 1.1; taken from the Internet in April of 2008 at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/warranty.
(9) J. R. R. Tolkien, taken from the Internet in April of 2008 at http://thinkexist.com/ quotation/not_all_who_wander_are_lost/152185.html.
