John 14:1–3
Let not your hearts be troubled.
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 I will take you to myself.
That where I am you may be also.
Well, good
good evening.
Welcome to the weekend here at Christ Community Chapel.
My name is Zach,
I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm so glad we get to be part of your weekend.
Hey, if you're watching me on video on Sunday,
it's because I'm out in the parking lot in the tent
where hopefully the weather is nice.
But thanks for being here with us.
We are in week two of a four week sermon series
we're calling More Than Religion, and the basic idea is this,
we're learning that God wants relationship with us, that he's not interested
in religious formality or religious ritual.
He wants us.
He wants our hearts.
He wants relationship with us.
This is just one of those things that is worth saying
over and over again, even if you know it already, it's worth saying.
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
My son Graham is nine years old.
He plays football.
Last year it was his first year of tackle football and he had a great season.
I mean, this will give you a little window into who I am as a dad.
He played defensive end and I told him before the season I was going
to pay him $1 for a tackle, $2 for a tackle
behind the line of scrimmage and $3 for a sack.
And like 6 or 7 games, he made $98.
Okay.
He was dominant.
And what was hilarious is when he'd make a play on the field,
he would hold up how much I owed him so he would sack the quarterback.
And people are like, why is he holding up eight fingers?
I knew why.
It's because that's how much I owed him.
And he had a great season and he loved it, which was so exciting to me.
And you know, this year football's just started practices to start it.
And this week was the first week of hitting like full pads hitting with it.
If you played football, you know it means it's the first real week of football.
We're going to decide who really wants to play, right.
And so I'm driving Graham to practice on Monday and I'm giving him a pep talk.
I mean he's a good football player.
He's a he's a natural football guy.
He he's a hitter.
He loves it.
But things leak, you know, and you lose your confidence.
So I'm telling him on the way to practice, like Graham, everyone is nervous today.
It's the first day of hitting. Everybody's nervous.
Even if they say they're not nervous, they're nervous.
It's okay to be nervous.
But I want you to remember, you're a great football player.
You love to hit, like, just hit somebody and it'll feel it'll come back to you.
You'll remember football's a violent game played by violent men, Graham.
And you are a violent man, right?
I mean, I'm giving him this pep talk because here's what I know.
It doesn't matter if he already knows it.
He needs to hear it again. You know what I mean?
He needs to hear it. He needs to hear it again and again.
You know what encouragement means?
It means literally to put courage into someone.
That's what I was doing.
I was putting some courage in him so that he would
dominate the way he's capable of dominating.
Here's my point.
I don't care how many times you've heard this,
my goal all
month is to put some courage in you, to speak the truth to you,
to excite you over the idea that God wants relationship with you.
And if it's the first time you've heard this boy, I cannot wait.
I cannot wait for you to hear this.
So we're going to be looking at John chapter 14.
It was just read for us.
If you have a Bible, you can take it out and open it to John 14.
If not, don't worry about it. It's going to be on the screen behind me.
There are three points I want to use just to kind of guide our time together.
And it goes pretty simple.
It's like this I want to show you something about houses,
something about work and something about you.
Something about houses, something about work and something about you.
Let's just start with something about how says he does something you already know.
When you buy a house,
you're buying a house based on your values, right?
I mean, like one person is looking for in a house is entirely different
than what someone else is looking for.
In a house, you buy a house that accommodates who you are
and what you love.
I've bought three houses in my lifetime over the course of my marriage,
and I've learned something about my wife, Amy and I, and that is
that we're very different when it comes to home buying.
For me, buying a house is just a financial investment,
like all I'm interested in is,
you know, are the values going up in this neighborhood?
Are there some quick fixes that we can make that will raise the value?
Is anything going to break and cost me money?
I mean, it's not romantic. It's not idealistic.
It's just a financial decision.
Not Amy, not Amy.
When she walks in the house, she sees what she's going to do with it.
I mean, I remember one time we were looking at a house
and she said, on the way into me, she said, listen, don't worry about the paint.
Don't worry about the carpets. We can change all that.
We get in and she goes, what do you think? And I said, I hate it.
She said, why? I said, the paint and the carpets.
I don't know what's going on.
I just can't visualize it the way she does.
One of the things she always visualizes when we go into a home is, is what
it will look like when our grandkids visit us, and that's hilarious to me.
I'm 42.
I don't have any grandkids and I shouldn't have any anytime soon.
When we bought our first home in South Euclid, it was so small could barely fit
my family like grandkids.
It wasn't going to fit another human being. But.
But Amy can't help it.
She thinks about where the grandkids are going to sleep
and where they're going to play games,
where they're going to open presents on Christmas morning.
And the reason is pretty simple.
That's what Amy loves. She loves family.
So when she thinks about a home, she's asking,
Will this fit the vision of family that I have?
Homes tend to reveal your heart, and her heart is for a family now.
All the more when you build a house, right?
And when you buy a house, you know you're going to have to make concessions.
You're not getting everything you want, but the appeal of building a house
is that you really can build
all the rooms you want for all the stuff that matters to you.
You can start with a blank sheet of paper, a bare piece of property, and say,
all right, here's what I love.
Here's what matters.
I'm going to create a home that fits that.
All right.
You get all that.
All that was leading to one question.
If God built a house,
what kind of house would he build?
I mean, unlimited budget, right?
He can do whatever he wants.
If God were going to build a house, what kind of house would he build?
And what would the way he built the house, the kind of house that he built,
what would it teach us about his heart?
Well, here's what Jesus says about the house
God has built in John chapter 14, verse two.
Listen to what he says.
He says, in my father's house
are many rooms.
In my father's house are many rooms.
Now the context of the passage, which we'll see in a minute,
is Jesus saying what he's really saying to the people he's talking to is my dad.
My father built a house, and what mattered to him, what his heart
was, was to build a lot of rooms so that you would know
and you would know and you would know and you would know there's a room for you.
That's what he's saying, that God built a house.
And what mattered most to him is that it had a million rooms
so that he could fill those rooms with people.
Because what God values, what matters to God,
what he wants his home to make space for is you.
So let me just
ask you, is that what you think of when you think of God?
Do you think of a God who builds a home with you in mind?
Who builds a room with you in mind?
A God who, who,
who just wants a house full of rooms so that he can get a house full of people?
Is that the kind of loving God that you picture?
Because what Jesus saying, if that's not what you think of
when you think of God, you're wrong.
If you think about God as rigid or or stubborn or exclusive as a God who
who is wanting just distance, or to be left alone, or wanting space,
or only wanting a house with a certain kind of person.
You're wrong.
Jesus says, in my father's house there are many rooms.
If homes reveal your heart, then God's heart is for people.
Now that begs the question, doesn't it?
Okay. God's house has many rooms.
How do I get one?
How can I be sure that one of those rooms is for me?
It's a great, great question. And that's my second point.
Not just something about houses, but something about work.
Now, before I show you how Jesus says you get a room,
let me just acknowledge that if Jesus said, in
my father's house there are many rooms, if the very next thing he said was,
and here's how you earn one,
here's how you qualify for one.
Hey, in my father's house there are many rooms, and the reason
I'm telling you that is because I don't want you to miss out.
So here's who you need to become.
Here's what you need to do.
Here's what you need to avoid.
Here's how you need to live.
Wouldn't that make absolute sense?
Like it would still feel kind of kind.
Like, hey, man, thanks for thanks for telling me.
If you hadn't told me what the requirements were, I might not make it.
I mean, surely if God has a house, surely if there are many rooms,
then you have to do something, be something, achieve something to get one.
But you know that isn't what he says.
In fact, this is what he says.
This is the how he finishes the sentence.
In my father's house there are many rooms.
Then he goes on to say this.
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.
Now, if we can just leave that up for a second.
Guys, I just want you to notice something.
Go back to English class, okay?
Verbs and nouns. Right.
I want you to notice when you see a verb who is doing the thing.
Do you
see how many times Jesus says, I am going?
I will prepare a place.
I will come back. I will take you.
I want you with me.
Here's the point I want to make.
The way you get a room in God's house is Jesus
does it for you.
There is no you in here.
There are no verbs about you.
Jesus says, in my father's house there are many rooms,
and I am going to make sure you can come.
That's what he's saying. Here's what he's talking about.
Of course he's saying, that's why I'm going to the cross.
That's why I have lived the life.
I've lived a life of complete obedience.
That's why I'm going to go to the cross and become the embodiment of the sin
of all God's people.
Let the father pour out his anger on me.
I'm going to die under the weight of that.
Then I'm going to raise from the dead.
I'm going to ascend into heaven.
I'm going to sit on the throne of heaven, and I am going to make sure
that one of those rooms is for you.
See, it makes
sense to us that if God has a house with a lot of rooms, you have to earn one.
It makes sense to us that if God is a house
with a lot of rooms, you have to qualify for one.
But Jesus says, no,
I've come to do all that is necessary
to make sure you get in the house.
Let me put it to you this way.
When I was a kid and we would have people over,
my mom would become a sociopath with cleaning, okay?
Especially if my grandma, her mom, was coming over then.
I mean, I loved my grandma.
I didn't really want her to come visit because the 72 hours before
that were going to be awful.
I mean, my mom would get crazy.
She would be like, all right, Zach, I want you to go into all the bedrooms,
take everything out from under the bed and vacuum.
And I'm like, what's going to happen, mom? Is grandma going to come in?
And I'm going to be like, grandma.
She's like, wait, before I hug you, I need to inspect underneath your bed.
Zach, did you dust that baseball trophy from four years ago?
You know, let me check under these couch cushions.
Is the under the kitchen sink.
Is it still a mess, or did you organize the bottles alphabetically?
I mean, my mom was crazy.
I could never understand it.
It's like, why does this matter? Why is this important?
Of course. Now, as an adult, I mean, I'm not.
She probably was still a little over the top,
but now as an adult would, I know my mom was wanting to say
to someone who came over was, hey, we're glad you're here.
We've been excited about you coming.
She wanted the house to scream, especially to her mother.
We have been so excited for you to be here that we have made sure
that everything is perfect.
She knew that grandma would come visit us either way, but if grandma walked
into a messy house, what we were saying to grandma was we haven't.
Oh yeah. Shoot, we forgot your coming.
But a clean house said to her were so excited.
We have been working on getting the house ready.
Can I tell you that's
exactly what Jesus is saying
when he says I go to prepare a place for you.
What he's saying, this is what Jesus is saying metaphorically.
He's saying, listen, in my father's house, there are many rooms
I've already paid for yours.
In my father's house there are many rooms.
I've already put your name on one of them.
Like I fluff the pillow
I cleaned under the bed, and now Jesus says, I'm standing
on the front porch and I'm waiting because I want to walk you in myself.
You see my point?
Jesus says that that in my father's house
there are many rooms and you can have one.
I'll do it for you.
But of course, that's the rub, isn't it?
See, what Jesus is really saying?
Is that the only way you miss out on a room
in the father's house is if you try to pay for it yourself.
You can't earn it.
You can't qualify for it.
You have to let Jesus do it.
That's what the Bible calls grace. Getting.
Not what you deserve, but what you don't.
And that's hard.
We want to earn it. But here's the problem.
And you know this already.
Whatever you earn,
you can lose.
You see, if moral character earns you a room in the father's house,
then what happens when your character dips?
If character is what earns you a spot, what happens when you have a bad week?
Listen, I mean, just say this.
I don't want to disrespect anybody or disrespect your upbringing,
but some of you I knew, I know, grew up Roman Catholic, and you need to hear this
because Roman Catholicism teaches you a scoreboard
if you go to mass enough,
if you take communion enough,
if you keep the sacraments.
They even invented a place called purgatory, which is,
hey, you might not make it to the father's house,
you might be on the wait list
and all of that when you grow up with it, teaches you a version of God
that is a little less like the one being described here, and a little
more like a God who has a house but has a bouncer at the door.
And you show up and you say, I think maybe I have a room there.
I mean, I went to mass, I did confession, I was married in the church.
I mean, I think I have a room.
And the bouncer looks and he goes, man, looks like 12th grade was tough.
You're going to have to wait.
And, friends, I don't mean to disrespect anyone, but you need to hear me.
That is the opposite of what Jesus is describing here.
What he says is in my father's house there are many rooms.
I will pay for it.
I will put your name on the door.
I will get it ready.
I will walk you in.
There's nothing conditional about it.
He doesn't say, of course, if you go to mass, of course,
if you take communion, of course, if you give to the church.
He doesn't say any of that. He just says, I'm going to do it.
What Jesus is offering, what the Bible is telling us, is that God
built a big house with a lot of rooms, because that's who he is.
He loves people.
He wants you there.
And he said Jesus to make it happen.
Jesus.
Plus, anything means you don't get a room.
But only Jesus
guarantees you a
now, I know when I say that,
that some of us are just so steeped
in that kind of thinking about God that will really struggle with it.
We don't struggle, maybe even with the idea
that God has a house with a lot of rooms.
We just struggle that one of those rooms is for us.
Well, that's my third point.
Something about houses, something about work.
And hear something about you.
You know, Jesus knew you would struggle with this.
It's actually why he said this.
Look at what he says at the very beginning of this passage in John 14 verse one.
Here's what he says let not your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God.
Believe also in me.
You see, he he he knows will doubt.
He knows we'll struggle.
He knows we'll think we're disqualified, that we've lost it.
That's why he starts with don't be troubled.
Don't worry.
Don't be anxious.
Don't be afraid.
You know, he says, believe in God.
Believe also in me.
He's not saying he and God aren't the aren't one.
He's not.
He's not shedding himself of deity.
What he's using is a category they have.
He's saying, listen, you believe in the God of the Bible.
Watch me also because
I've come to keep that God's promises.
You see, Jesus knows you're going to doubt.
He knows you're going to think you lost it.
He knows you're going to struggle.
And he's saying, don't worry.
In my father's house there are many rooms.
I am going to make sure one of them has your name on it.
And even as I say that, I know you're thinking, man, I just don't think so.
Maybe some people, but.
But not me.
I'll tell you this.
You're only saying that because you don't know what comes
right before these verses.
Because when I show you in just a second what comes right
before these verses are going to blow your mind.
So let me show you John 14 one.
Look at what comes right before that.
John 1336 through 38. Here's what it says.
Simon Peter said to him,
Lord, where are you going?
And Jesus answered him, where I am going, you cannot follow me now,
but you will follow afterward
that Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you.
And Jesus answered, Will you lay down your life for me?
Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow
until you have denied me three times.
Jesus says to the cocky, arrogant Peter.
Jesus says, Where I'm going, you can't come.
Peter goes, listen, Jesus, I get that for all these other losers, but not me.
I'm right or die, Jesus, I will go with you all the way to the end.
And Jesus tells him, Peter, you are hours away from the worst
moment of your entire life.
You are hours away from betraying me, from lying to me
for proving to be a coward, a fraud, a phony like Peter.
You're hours away from the crucial moment of your life,
and you are going to blow it.
And the very next thing he says is,
let not your heart be troubled.
In my father's house there are many rooms.
Ones for you, Peter.
I'm going to make sure you get it.
Don't you see?
It's one thing if Jesus says this to a guy at the highest moment of his life,
it's one thing.
If Jesus comes along, somebody who's crushing it and goes, hey, hey,
buddy, hey.
In my father's house, there are many rooms.
One is definitely for you.
That would be one passage.
He says this to a man.
He is telling him you are a fraud and a phony and a coward.
And in ours, everyone's going to know it.
You're going to make a fool of yourself.
Don't be troubled.
There's a room for you.
I've paid for it.
I'll walk you in myself.
You see, if Jesus can make this promise to Peter hours
before he betrays Jesus, he denies Jesus.
You don't think he can make it to you?
You're too far gone.
You're too disqualified.
You're not welcome.
Friends.
God put this story right after that one so that people who feel
they are the lowest, people who feel
they are at their worst.
People who are certain if there's a house with rooms, they are not welcome.
Jesus says, let not your heart be troubled.
My father has a house.
He has a lot of rooms, and I'm going to make sure you get one.
The question is whether or not you'll
stop trying to earn it.
Stop trying to deserve it
and simply let Jesus take you there.
Let me pray for you.
Father God, I pray for all those who come in
at their lowest moment.
The worst version of themselves,
and they hear about your heart
in the home with many rooms and Jesus taking people in,
and they want it so badly to be for them, but they just can't believe it.
God, that they would see not just them and Peter,
but they would see your heart in the arrangement
of these verses.
This story is their story.
It's there for them.
You're not talking just to Peter, you're talking to them.
And my prayer is that right now there would be people saying, God,
I never thought there was a room for me.
But Jesus, if you through your life, death
and resurrection want to take me in, I want to go.
And Jesus name we pray.
Amen.