John 14:2

The Prepared Place

Joh 14:2

There are two remarkable things about this statement. First of all, that the master should prepare for the servant. This upsets the ordinary course of procedure. You are expecting to entertain some chosen friends. All your appointments are made; you have sent before your face servants in whom you have confidence, and have told them to do as you have commanded, that all things may be in readiness for the invited guests. This is customary; this is considered right. But Jesus Christ says to his servants such poor, incomplete, and blundering servants too "I, your Lord and Master, go to prepare a place for you." This is quite in keeping with the method which Jesus Christ adopted in his ministry. This is no exceptional instance of condescension, self-ignoring, self-humiliation. "He took a towel, girded himself, and began to wash his disciples' feet." And having finished this lowly exhibition, he said, "If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet. I have given you an example." So his whole life was a humiliation. Wherever he was on earth he was, so to speak, out of place; if his method be measured by his original and essential dignity, his whole life was a stoop, his whole ministry a Godlike condescension. So, why did we begin our discourse by saying it was a remarkable thing that the servant should be prepared for by the Master? Only remarkable when looked at in the light of our little standards and false relations; but quite in keeping, perfectly and purely in harmony, with that divine condescension which marked, ruled, and glorified our dear Christ's ministry.

The second remarkable thing about the text is, That the divine Being, God the Son, should ever have occasion to "prepare" anything. To prepare may signify to get ready, to put things in order, to look after arrangements, appointments, and the like, so as to have all things in due proportion and relation, that the eye may be pleased, that the ear may be satisfied, and that all our desires may be met and fulfilled. Why, Jesus Christ talks in the text as if there was a great deal of work for him to do somewhere, and he must make haste and get it done. Go to prepare? Can he who fills infinitude and breathes eternity have anything to do in the way of arranging and ordering and getting things ready for his servants? He accommodates himself to our modes of thinking. He does not always throw the infinite at us. He often steps out of his tabernacle of glory and talks our own speech, makes a child of himself that he may be understood in this little rickety nursery of a world. He knows we are all in the cradle still; that the mightiest speaker amongst us is only a lisping babbler, and that he must continually break up his words and turn himself downwards, in order that he may convey the very dimmest hint of his unutterable meaning!

There are some things which the Master only can do. Will you go and prepare summer for us? You might try. You have seen half a hundred summers: now you go, and try to make the fifty-first! Come! You are an artificer; you have the organ of form largely developed; you have an eye for beauty; you can buy oils and paints and colours and canvas and brushes of all kinds. Why do you not go and prepare summer for us? The great Master, looking down upon this little under-world of his this basement story of his great building says, "I am going to prepare the summer for you." And he makes no noise, he makes no mistake in his colours, never gets things into discord. He continually renews the face of the earth, and not a man in all the busy boastful world can do it! If the servant cannot prepare the summer, how could he prepare heaven? If the saint exhausts himself when he lights a candle, how could ho fill the great heavens with the morning that should never melt into sunset?

Observe, therefore, that always the servant has to wait for the master. He can only go as he has example set before him. The servant has no original ideas. The servant is not a voice, only an echo, muddled, indistinct. I would that we could reflect very deeply on that point, that every now and then in life we have to stand back, and let the Master go out before us. We can do a hundred and fifty little things, and multiply the hundred and fifty by ten, and double that number, and we actually get into the notion at last that we can do anything. When you have made one little rosebud, advertise it, and we will come and look at it. When you have made one new plant, let us hear where it is to be seen, and we shall examine it. "Canst thou command the morning?" "Canst loose the bands of Orion?" Art thou known by the Pleiades? Canst thou open the gate of the Milky Way? What art thou?

This text gives three intensely gratifying, comforting, and inspiring views of the Christian believer's position and destiny. The Christian believer is the object of Jesus Christ's zealous and tender care. When Jesus Christ was going away he said to his wondering disciples, "It is expedient for you that I go." When he addressed them on the occasion of the text he said, "I go to prepare a place for myself"? No! "For you." And the Apostle Paul, catching his Master's sublime tone, said, "All things are yours." And Peter, thunder-tongued, cried out, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you!" Yet we hang our heads, and moan and cry and fret and chafe as if we had nothing, not knowing that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

Wherever you find Jesus Christ you find him working for his people, doing something for those who believe in him and love him. "He ever liveth to make intercession for us." There is a beautiful necessity of love about this arrangement. For if he were to fail here, fail in training, educating, sanctifying the Church, he would fail altogether. What if he has made countless millions of stars: can the stars talk to him? Can he get back the idea which he gave? Can he have sympathy with form, substance, glory, majesty, as found in mere matter? If he does not get us poor, broken things right into his blue, glad heaven, he has failed! That is the one work which he set himself to do. If he drops one poor little child out of his great arms because he has not capacity and strength, he could never be happy in his heaven. Think of this: Christ always thinking for us, caring for us, going out in all the passion of his love after us, and then say whether the Church ought always to have tears in her eyes and never to have peace in her heart?

Not only are Christian believers constant objects of Jesus Christ's most zealous and tender care, but they are to be eternally his joy. "I go to prepare a place for you." The plain meaning of that is, Fellowship, residence together in common. He said afterwards, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" giving us the idea of permanence, continuity of residence, and fellowship. We do some things for the moment. It is enough for God if he limits April to thirty days; he does not want it on the thirty-first day; it ceases, and goes back into his great heaven, and May begins. He does not bring back any one year that has passed, and say, "There, I have brushed it up for you, and made the best of it I can: you must try it again." No. He takes the years, blows them away; creates new ones; never gives you an old leaf, or tells you to put a faded flower into water and try to restore its colours and its fragrance again. "He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." "He fainteth not, neither is weary." As for these heavens, he will one day dismiss them. He will create a new heaven and a new earth. He will burn up and utterly destroy what he has made. He makes some things for the time being; but wherever we read of the place prepared for Christian believers, we have the idea of continuous, enduring time never-ending fellowship. All true life is in the heart. Love alone is immortal. "God is love." We shall drop argument, logic, controversy, letters, technicalities, pedantries of all sorts, tongues, prophecies, hope, faith itself, and only Love shall live for ever!

The world is made poor whenever it loses pathos. Whenever the emotional goes down, man goes down. Logic is but intermediate help; it is but a poor ladder compared to heart, love, pathos, sensibility. Love must endure as God endureth. This is it which binds Christ and Christians love. Love is knowledge. Love hath the key of interpretation. Love can explain what learning can never fathom. Love knoweth the Lord afar off, beyond the stormy deep, in the far-away desert, in the night-time dark and cold. Love can see the invisible, and touch the distant. Do we love Christ, or are we still in the beggarly region of mere controversy and cold intellectual inquiry? If we love him we shall be with him for ever.

Seeing that Christ makes the Christian believer the object of his constant and zealous care, and that the Christian believer shall be for ever with his Lord, the Christian is entitled to look at the present through the medium of the future. The more we can bring the power of this love to bear upon the passing moments, we can look into the things which are seen and at the things which are not seen, and step out of eternity morning by morning, do our little paltry day's work, and go back again into God's pavilion. If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Moses endured as seeing the invisible. Jesus Christ teaches this most beautiful doctrine: That the Christian heart is not to be troubled, because in his Father's house are many mansions. So he brings down heaven to help up earth. He says, "When you are weary of the present, look forward to the future; when the road is steep and difficult and tortuous, think of the end and be thankful and glad." It is by this power we draw ourselves onward. We lay the hands of our expectant love on the golden bars of heaven and draw ourselves forward thereby. Some will know what I mean by that expression. You who have been in sickness and sorrow and loss you who have been tired of looking downwards, and feel the very heart dying within you, when you saw nothing but this earth's narrow circumference, and then have had sudden visions of God's eternity and Christ's blessed immortality, you draw on yourself through all the care and sorrow and bitterness and unrest of time by loving, intelligent anticipation of eternity.

Now, if Christ has gone to prepare a place for the Christian believer what then? The place will be worthy of himself. Send a poor creature to prepare a place for you against to-morrow, and the place will be prepared according to the capacity and resources of the messenger. It is a poor person who has gone to prepare a place for you, therefore you will not see gold and silver, you will not have a sumptuous reception; but if the poor person has done all that she could, it is enough. You will see the intent of the preparation everywhere; every speck of dust that has been removed means, "I would put down gold there if I could." Every little thing, even a wild flower out of the hedgerow, put into a little glass that can hardly stand, means, "I would give you paradise, if I could." Every little deed that is done ought to be amplified by your grateful love, because it means so much more than it looks. But Jesus Christ says, '"I go to prepare a place for you. I have made worlds, stars, planets, comets; I have sent forth the lightning and uttered the thunder. Now I am going to do my greatest deed of all. I am going to get a place ready for those whom I have bought with my blood and glorified by my Spirit." What kind of place will he get ready for us, who has all things at command, when the silver and the gold are his, when he can speak light and command worlds to fashion themselves and shine upon his children? What kind of place will he get ready? You like to be prepared for. If the person preparing for you is poor, you take every little deed as a great deed. If the person preparing for you has ample resources and receives you as if "Really, well, you have come after all; but, at the same time, it would have been quite as well if you had lost your way," you naturally feel indignant, dissatisfied, resentful, because it might have been done nobly. Jesus Christ has gone to prepare a place. We judge men by the capacity of their resources. We have seen what he has done. If he has loved us with unutterable love, he will enrich us with inconceivable glory. The riches which he has are called "the unsearchable riches of Christ." "Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, what God hath prepared." "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you."

Preparation implies an interest in us, an expectation of us. He is waiting for his guests; he will open the door presently, and we shall go straight in. God has prepared nothing for the bad man. There is a place, the pit of damnation, the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched! But it was not prepared for him. It was prepared, Christ says, for "the devil and his angels." That is the only place he has for the bad man! He made no preparation for him, thought, perhaps, that at the very last moment he might turn and say, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" Christ did not get anything ready for you! All that there is is the devil's pit never, never got ready for man man who was redeemed by the precious blood of Christ!