SPEAKER_00: Well, welcome everyone to this family service on the first day of daylight savings time.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to those online.
SPEAKER_00: Our theme for today is the words that the Lord said to his disciples about preparing a place for them in the context of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to read those words from the Gospel of John, chapter 14.
SPEAKER_00: Let not your heart be troubled.
SPEAKER_00: You believe in God, believe also in me.
SPEAKER_00: In my father's house are many mansions.
SPEAKER_00: If it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: And where I go you know, and the way you know.
SPEAKER_00: Reading further from the book of Deuteronomy, the same message about a price prepared, but this time in the context of the promised land, a land that the Lord would give to the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So it shall be when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you a large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of good things which you did not fill, hew not wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant.
SPEAKER_00: When you have eaten to the full, then be aware lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
SPEAKER_00: You shall fear the Lord your God and serve him, and shall take oaths in his name.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted him in Massa, you will diligently keep the commandments of the Lord, his testimonies, his statutes which he has commanded you.
SPEAKER_00: And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with you, and that you may go in and possess the good land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to cast out all your enemies from before you as the Lord has spoken.
SPEAKER_00: Then reading further from the Word, from a couple of places in the heavenly doctrines, about the Lord's providence and what really a place prepared means.
SPEAKER_00: The human race throughout the whole world is under the guidance of the Lord, and everyone from infancy even to the end of his life in the world is led by him in the most individual things, and his or her place for seen and also provided.
SPEAKER_00: The words to bring you to the place which I have prepared means being brought into heaven by the Lord according to the goodness of life and of faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is clear from the meaning of bringing to the place, that is, into the land of Canaan, as bringing into heaven, for the land of Canaan means the church and also heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Preparing heaven means preparing those who are to be brought into heaven, for heaven is granted according to the degree of preparation, that is, of their reception of goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven exists within a person, and the place a person has in heaven is determined by the state of life of faith that is his or hers.
SPEAKER_00: For people's place there corresponds to their states of life.
SPEAKER_00: Here end our readings.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And what we're invited to think about is that that place is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's kingdom of heaven is likened by the Lord Himself to a house.
SPEAKER_00: So we heard at the very beginning of the service when I opened the Lord's word, one thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
SPEAKER_00: And that house is a picture of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And so also at the very end of a beautiful psalm that begins with the words, The Lord is my shepherd, it ends by saying, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
SPEAKER_00: And we heard earlier about the Lord leading the children of Israel into the land of Canaan to give them cities that they did not build, houses that they did not fill, wells that they did not dig, which is another way of saying that the Lord's going to bring them to a specific place for them in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come to the Lord's words to his disciples, where he was going to depart from them, or seemingly to depart from them, even though he had been teaching them and working with them all who is through his life, what would happen after he was resurrected and gone back up into heaven?
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: In my father's house are many mansions.
SPEAKER_00: I go to prepare a place for you.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it amazing to think about the Lord inviting us to consider not only that he wants us in heaven, but that he is going to lead us to a place perfectly suited for us, a home specially given for us in the kingdom of heaven that's the exact way that we would want it to be.
SPEAKER_00: Invite you to think for a moment the houses that you live in right now or houses that you might have lived in.
SPEAKER_00: And we have some houses here that maybe sometimes you've seen in a winter display, maybe around Christmas time.
SPEAKER_00: But today we're thinking about these as places where people might live.
SPEAKER_00: So this one is a big sort of house that might have some apartments in it, and maybe you live in a place where there are multiple houses or places to live for the same structure.
SPEAKER_00: And imagine that that's where you get to go home after a day, after church, after school, after a trip.
SPEAKER_00: And inside there, there's your things, your bed, your clothes, your toys and things that you love, the family that you get to live with, if that's your current place.
SPEAKER_00: And you have happy memories in there of Christmases, of birthdays, of times with friends.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you have a single family home where you have different rooms in that house that you can imagine going into, where you eat your breakfast or dinner, where you go to watch TV or relax, where you have as a game room downstairs and to play.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of things about the homes that we live in and the ways in which the Lord is using that to remind us of the comfort and blessing it is to have a place that we can be ourselves, surrounded by people that we love, a place we call home.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the Lord saying, Well, that's what I want for you in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants us to think about that in terms of what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: There's a place that he is preparing for us, a future home that we will move to one day if we're following the Lord, and we will get to live in it in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So let's focus for a little bit on the home that we might live in in heaven and what it might look like and how we might cooperate with the Lord, and we'll use these things that the Lord said to his disciples, let not your heart be troubled.
SPEAKER_00: In my Father's house, heaven, are many mansions, many houses, and one of them is yours.
SPEAKER_00: How do we prepare for that home?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing is we're invited by the Lord to live with an eternal perspective in mind.
SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to remember that heaven is our goal.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it might come to us by the fact that we have the passing of each year.
SPEAKER_00: A birthday comes and we get older or we go into a different grade.
SPEAKER_00: But there are other things that might call to mind this idea of we get to live for heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we have a knowledge of somebody who is in heaven right now, who's a part of our family, or one of those people that we love who's made that big transition to the next life.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe we could keep that reality in mind when we say the Lord's Prayer, our Father who art in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: There are so many ways that the Lord would like us to keep in mind that heaven is our goal and that we are here to prepare for it.
SPEAKER_00: And as we heard in our readings, it's his constant goal in his providence to lead us toward that eternal place, to remind us by coming to church, by calling on his name as our heavenly Father, that there is this place in heaven to which he wants us to go.
SPEAKER_00: But another two things that come to us in this very saying of the Lord to his disciples helps us to really understand what heaven is like and how we can prepare.
SPEAKER_00: The first is that I invite you to think about heaven as more than a place, it is a relationship with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said, I go to prepare a place for you.
SPEAKER_00: And if I go and prepare a place, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also.
SPEAKER_00: One of the visions of heaven, and it's a beautiful vision, is to live surrounded with a deep sense of the Lord's providential care.
SPEAKER_00: He is a God to whom we can turn anytime in our prayers.
SPEAKER_00: We can be reminded of the life that he gives us, the blessings of family or friends or a useful way of living.
SPEAKER_00: And all those things come to us when we have a practiced way of including the Lord in our lives every single day.
SPEAKER_00: By praying to him, by asking him for the things that he might give to us, guidance on ways that we to live, or by trying to think about and talk about him in our day-to-day life.
SPEAKER_00: And if we can do that as a lifelong habit, then we're going to be having a relationship with the Lord, and that relationship is going to be one of the things that allows us to follow Him to our home in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, I'd like you to think about some of the things that we might know about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a book given for the world that's called Heaven and Hell, and it has all kinds of wonderful things that are revealed in it about this place that gets us to think more than just a home, but a way of living.
SPEAKER_00: The way you know is what the Lord said.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just think about a couple of those things that were taught and maybe ways that that might lead us to act right now to follow the Lord, to prepare for our place in heaven right now.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that you learned or that you love the idea that heaven is a place of safety and friendly interactions, because everybody there has the best interests of others at heart.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have to worry about locking their doors at night.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have to worry about being absorbing or absorbing somebody else's selfishness because everybody has the best interests of others at heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's actually one of the things that makes heaven to be heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that we can do right now is to try to live with the best interests of others at heart.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're doing that, then we're preparing for our home in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: What about the vision, if this is one of the things that you love about heaven, that you get to share it with one special person, a husband or wife, in a marriage relationship that can last to eternity?
SPEAKER_00: A beautiful vision given in the new church of marriage continuing.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if that's something that you focus on, what could we do right now to honor marriage if you happen to be married, to love the person that you're married to, or to prepare yourself to be the best version of yourself so that you can accept that gift from the Lord in heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Or what about the fact that we know that children who sadly die in this life are raised by people, parents in the next life, and eventually become angels in their own right?
SPEAKER_00: Would that not help us to think about our call from the Lord to care about those who are younger, our friends, or, if we're older, our children, and to raise them with the Lord and the things of heaven in mind?
SPEAKER_00: And we could go on and on.
SPEAKER_00: We could think about heaven as a place of useful service and think about what it means for us to be caring and source of blessing to other people, or one particular job that angels get to do, which is to be guardians of people on earth, guardian angels, and how that might inspire us to protect and look out for other people and help them.
SPEAKER_00: There are so many things that the Lord has given us in his word that give us the sense about our particular home in heaven that he is preparing for us.
SPEAKER_00: And he's asking us to walk in the way with him as we go there, which means to prepare.
SPEAKER_00: In this book, Heaven and Hell, there's some people who the Lord shows us who are at the end of that journey.
SPEAKER_00: They've entered the next life, and they're going from pathway to pathway on their way to their particular home, their particular place that the Lord has provided for them in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And it says when they get there, they know because of the way that they are and the way that the people are, that they have found their place.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the invitation that the Lord keeps before each one of us.
SPEAKER_00: If we will keep the reality of spiritual life, of eternal life in mind, if we'll think about our relationship with the Lord as being a foundation for how we receive heaven, and if we will try to live the life of heaven right now, then the prophecy of the Lord to his disciples will come true.
SPEAKER_00: In my Father's house are many mansions.
SPEAKER_00: If it were not so, I would have told you.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.