John 14:1-3 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

Jesus has prepared a place for us in the house of his Father. Some of you may remember the King James Bible saying, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” From this verse the phrase “mansions in the sky” has even worked its way into pop songs of the past. I know people who don’t like the translation “rooms.” It seems such a huge step down from having a whole mansion to yourself. They were dreaming of having their own estate in heaven, with all the luxuries and comforts we associate with multi-million dollar homes.

But rooms, places to stay, in our Father’s house (not a separate place a few miles down the road) are a more accurate way of translating what Jesus says in the Greek. And the idea itself is just better. There are many rooms, which is to say that our great, extended family of faith will all be together. A big, empty mansion down the road would be cold and lonely. A place with others in the greatest, most luxurious home there will ever be is the ultimate destination, a place we can feel at home in every way.

Jesus promises there’s a place for you. He has prepared a place for you. Your place in your Father’s house is going to fit. I have lived in six houses in my life, three apartments, and almost ten dorm rooms. Two of the houses, and two of the apartments, I had a say in choosing. The hunt can be sort of exciting, but there are always compromises you have to make–layout, style, number and size of rooms. Even billionaires have limits to their budgets and what’s possible.

But your home in your Father’s house is a perfect fit. It has been prepared for you. We don’t know all the details. What we think we want now changes with time and age. The heaven I envisioned in my childhood is outfitted quite differently than the heaven I imagine in my head today. This much we can say for certain: if you need it in heaven to be happy, you will have it there.

This much we know we will have: a place with Jesus. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Are you the kind of person who gets excited to meet famous people? If you shook hands with your hero or idol, would you decide not to wash it for a week? An old friend of mine has an uncanny ability to get his picture taken with celebrities. His house is littered with pictures of him and rock stars, athletes, and politicians. Another friend collects autographs. Though most of them come from face to face meetings with the signature’s owner, sometimes he will purchase a rare one. Both of these men practically collect encounters with famous people.

Meeting famous people is one thing. There is not a remote chance my friends will ever be invited to dinner at the homes of the famous people they have met. However, with the most influential person in all of world history, the man whose birth determines how we number our years, the founder of the biggest religion in the world, the Creator of the universe and Savior of mankind, we get more than an invitation to dinner. “You also may be where I am.”

He is taking us home. He is moving us in. “Mi casa es su casa.” Jesus is our way home to the ultimate destination, the house where he and his Father will live with us, face to face, forever and ever.

John 10:9 “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.”

The person who becomes part of God’s flock by going through Jesus is a person who is saved. Do you know what it means to be saved? Have you ever had someone ask you if you were?

There are those who put a big emphasis on the overpowering emotions they experience when they come to realize the love and forgiveness Jesus gives. I don’t deny that can be an emotional experience. But being saved has more to do with the condition of being safe than our reaction to it.

Matt Dyer went hiking and camping with friends in the Canadian Arctic in July of 2013. On the third night of their outing a polar bear tore through his tent, clamped its jaws around his head, and began to drag him away. By the time his companions managed to scare the animal off with a flare gun, it had crushed his jaw, lashed open his neck exposing his carotid artery, left a puncture wound into his esophagus, and broken a couple of vertebrae.

Matt was airlifted first to a base camp, then to a small town where a team of first responders could work on him, then to another town with a hospital, and finally to a major hospital in the city of Montreal. He was safe from the bear’s attack the moment his friends scared it away. He was safe from any further threat of the animal when he reached the base camp. He wasn’t really safe from the wounds he suffered until he reached the hospital in Montreal.

Jesus is our door to spiritual safety. He saved us when he died on the cross in our place. He dealt with our enemy the devil, and he paid the penalty for all our sins. Still, we weren’t personally in the safe place, where all of this could do us any good, until he gave us the gift of faith, and his death and resurrection became our own personal protection from the death and hell our sins deserved. Now we wait for the day when he will come again, and he will bring salvation with him, our final rescue to the safe place in heaven where all will be restored, and we will never see another danger to our souls.

Jesus makes us safe. And as we wait for the absolute safety of heaven, he feeds the faith that keeps us safe in his forgiveness and grace. “He will come in and go out, and find pasture.” Do you know what faith feeds on? Do you know what builds trust? Faith and trust feed on love.

That’s what builds human relationships. I grow closer to my wife, I trust her more and more, the more she tells me she loves me, and the more she shows me she loves me.

That’s what keeps me close to my Savior. The more I see his unconditional love–yes, he forgives this sin, too; yes, he has a place for someone just like me–the more I trust the one who loved me and gave himself for me. It keeps my faith fed and growing. It keeps me safe, and saved.

John 10:7-8 “Therefore Jesus said again, ‘I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.”

Thieves and robbers use a different way to get in than the people who belong in some place. The first year we were married, my wife and I came home one afternoon to find three men walking out of our neighbor’s home with the TV and a bag full of goodies. In that case they used the door, but they didn’t unlock it and turn the knob. They kicked it in, splintering the door itself and forcing the deadbolt right through the door frame.

In Jesus’ picture of the sheep pen, the thieves and robbers avoid the door altogether. They climb over the wall. They don’t come to the sheep through the door, through the gate, which is Jesus himself in his picture.

Here is what Jesus is trying to show us: The only legitimate way to God’s people–to lead them, to teach them–goes through him. That’s what all the Old Testament prophets did. It is what Jesus’ apostles did. It is what every true and faithful Christian pastor or teacher still does today. They go through the gate, which is Jesus.

That means they come with the kind of message of God’s law that exposes our sin and convicts us and shows us our need for Jesus. Then they follow with the message of God’s grace that shows us the cross of Christ, and forgives our sin, and relieves our guilt.

The people who climb over the wall come with do-it-yourself religion. They may even come with the Bible. They just don’t come with Jesus. That’s what the Pharisees did. They developed a system of principles for living, a sort of instructional manual for every facet of life. Most of it was drawn from the Old Testament Scriptures. If you followed the system, they claimed, you became good enough for God. He would accept you on your own terms. You didn’t have to mess around with repentance, admitting your sins, or saying you were sorry.

In that system, there was really no need for a Savior to deliver you from your sins. There was no price for sin that needed to be paid, no justice to be served, and no forgiveness to be received. You could just feel good about yourself for the life you were living. Of course, it was all built on self-deception. No one does everything God wants, and many of the things in their system weren’t things God cared about, anyway.

Every world religion outside of Christianity is a repackaged version of this do-it-yourself religion. They have teachers. They have prophets. But they have no one to save them, to deliver them from their guilt.

This kind of faith even spooks around in certain corners of Christianity. It may present itself as “conservative.” It makes much of the Bible. It just doesn’t make much of Jesus, at least not as Savior. In some cases, it takes the religion of the Pharisees even further. It not only gives you the system to live by. If you work the system well enough, you can practically achieve heaven on earth. God will heal your disease. You will never have problems with money. You can climb your career ladder to the top with supernatural help. All your relationships will be wonderful.

If this is all the preacher, teacher, or prophet brings, he isn’t coming to the sheep through the gate. He is climbing in over the wall.

Here is the problem with the one who climbs in over the wall: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” When the message isn’t about sinners redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, saved by the grace of God, we end up with dead sheep.

And let’s be honest. The thief’s message is easy to listen to because it is positive. It makes me feel good about myself. It tastes good. I once had a cat who thought that antifreeze tasted good. It almost died of kidney failure when it found some that had spilled in the garage.

Jesus wants to spare us of the poison to our souls. Listen to the teacher who always goes through the gate. The sheep are safe when listening to that familiar voice.

Luke 24:27 “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

This is Luke’s summary of the sermon Jesus preached on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus the first Easter afternoon. I have often wished that Luke preserved this for us.

But then, he didn’t have to, because Jesus was simply walking these men through words that actually are preserved for us in the pages of the Old Testament. He began with Moses. No doubt that means he began with the very first gospel promise in Genesis 3:15. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Jesus is the offspring of the woman. He would suffer when Satan struck him. It would be painful–heel pain can be crippling. But Jesus is the one who would do the crushing.

From there he likely went on to the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Moses’ promise of a future prophet like himself (Deuteronomy 18); the many Psalms of David that describe Jesus’ person and work; the suffering servant in Isaiah 53; the many descriptions of Holy Week in the Prophet Zechariah.

So Jesus opened the eyes of these men. He turned their lives upside down. All their old hopes and dreams were crushed. But in their place they found a God and Savior who loved them almost beyond belief or imagination. Every sin was forgiven. Every demand and requirement of God was fulfilled. Their relationship with God was fully reconciled. The journey back to God’s good graces was complete. Life would never end. Heaven was guaranteed. No wonder they asked each other after they recognized Jesus at the end of the evening and he disappeared, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Do you know what happens when God opens our eyes and we see our risen Lord in his word? We trade the garbage we have created with our lives, and the garbage we have planned for our lives, for real treasure. We see that an impressive education, perfect family, successful career, healthy life, and happy retirement aren’t all that important. Whether I travel the world, or develop a stellar reputation, or build great wealth doesn’t really matter.

To borrow a phrase from Paul, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” To borrow a picture from C.S. Lewis, we stop acting like the little children at the beach playing in the trash fascinated by the broken pieces of glass, when God has placed before us the golden sands and magnificent ocean of his grace in the kingdom of the Son he loves.

This is worth seeing. This is worth having. Jesus still makes it possible for us to see it, and own it, in his word.

Luke 24:25-26 “How foolish you are, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

Foolish, slow–these aren’t compliments or terms of endearment. The Greek behind the first term, “Foolish,” suggests mostly empty space between their ears. “Hello! Any brain cells in there?” It is a little different than the fool described in other parts of the Bible. He has a moral issue as much as an intelligence issue. Jesus is suggesting that they suffer from a lack of knowledge. He had given them plenty of instruction. They had real experience with his teaching and life. “Why don’t you guys get it?”

Is Jesus’ being unreasonable in expecting them to know better? Is his way of addressing them mean? No, sometimes you have to let a person see his fault in plain words, without pulling any punches. You can’t worry about wounding their fragile self-esteem. Admittedly, some people don’t understand because they just haven’t been taught, or a concept is too difficult to grasp. These two disciples, however, were underachieving. They were capable of grasping more.

As exhibit A, Jesus exposes the blind eye they were turning to all the prophets had written about his sufferings and resurrection. For three years he often referred to these prophecies himself. Why hadn’t they paid attention?

As exhibit B were the many times he told them directly he would suffer, die, and rise. He gave them pictures: he would destroy and rebuild the temple in three days; he would be like Jonah in the belly of the great fish for three days.

His enemies got it. They asked for a guard at his tomb because they remembered him saying he would rise in three days. Was it asking too much for the men who loved and trusted him to take his words seriously?

Sometimes we don’t see, because we don’t want to. If we see what we don’t want to see, we will have to change our beliefs or behavior. During my college years I sometimes tutored high school students in Algebra and Latin. I believe that some didn’t understand because they didn’t want to. Algebra and Latin can be hard, I know. But not everything is hard to get. For some of them, “getting” the concepts would mean doing the work themselves going forward. They would have to do the assignments without someone walking them through it. As long as they could say, “I don’t get it,” they could lean on someone else to do the thinking for them.

Jesus’ disciples didn’t get that the Christ first had to suffer, and then enter his glory, in part, because they didn’t want to. This made him a different kind of Savior than the one they were hoping for. The grand future of success, riches, and power they were planning for themselves wasn’t going to happen. To follow Jesus means to go where he goes: first suffering, then glory. I am sorry if that is a disappointing conclusion, but it is why we need the risen Lord to overcome our foolish hearts, so slow to believe.

Sometimes we come to a passage in the Bible, and we say that it is hard to understand, because we don’t want to believe it. The words are simple. A five-year-old could tell you what they are saying. But if we believe them, then we are going to have to change. We are going to have to give up some behavior. We are going to have to sacrifice some grand plan. We are going to have to admit something unpleasant.

So we say these words don’t make sense to us. Or we say that that is just someone’s interpretation. We would like to keep our eyes closed, as though somehow it will hurt us if we see the truth about ourselves and our God. It is why we need Jesus to open our eyes, so that we can see there is nothing greater than the grace that led him to suffer for our sins, and rise to glory for our assurance.

Psalm 67:1 “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.”

There is a whole world view in the words with which the psalmist begins this prayer. In Christianity, everything begins with grace. Asking God to be gracious to us is more than a request for him to be kind, to do something nice for us. If you ever listen to radio personality Dave Ramsey greet his callers, when they ask him “how are you?” his stock answer is “better than I deserve.” Better than I deserve. That’s God being gracious.

A Christian doesn’t approach God and say, “Just give me what I’ve got coming to me.” That would be insane. What I’ve got coming to me is really, really hot, and really, really uncomfortable, and lasts forever and ever. I have offended God with my life, and my attitudes, not the least of which is the idea that somehow I deserve better than I’ve been getting.

Asking God to be gracious is a way of saying, “I get it. I haven’t been banking all kinds of favors that you owe me, and now I am calling some of them in. It’s a blessing that you haven’t decided to squish me yet, because every day I am giving you more reasons to.”

But there is a more important part of this world view behind our prayer for God to be gracious. It is our complete confidence that he is! We don’t approach him in utter terror. We don’t come to him as a last resort because we are just that desperate. This is the God whose every dealing with us is always, only love. He doesn’t just send us a Savior. He comes here himself to rescue us. He doesn’t just put up a stiff fight to deliver us from our sins, and dig deep into his pockets to finance the operation. He dies in our place. He lays down his life as the payment that sets us free from all our sins deserved.

Maybe you remember a campaign for evangelical Christians to text “God is not dead” to all their friends at Easter several years ago. It was inspired by the movie of the same title. It’s true that he is not dead. But at the cross he was dead when Jesus breathed his last. He was dead until Easter morning, because God is gracious.

God is so intent on loving me and saving me that there is no price too high for him to pay. In Christianity, everything begins with grace, like this prayer, which understands from the very first words exactly where we stand with God. It starts and ends with grace.

John 11:25 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

Email and social media allow people to see pictures of amazing, unbelievable, miraculous things. Sometimes they turn out not to be true, like the pictures of 15-foot-tall human skeletons I once received in my inbox.

Sometimes they are truly amazing, like the picture of an X-ray of a large kitchen knife plunged through the left temple of a Chinese teenager and crossing the entire width of his skull. The young man walked into the hospital himself and doctors were able to surgically remove it with no serious damage to his brain or nerves.

These things are interesting to look at for a minute or two. But they are just curiosities. After I look at them I can go back to my work and forget about them and it won’t make any difference at all.

Jesus’ dead friend Lazarus left his tomb alive again. Jesus himself left his tomb alive again. That is no hoax. But it is not a mere curiosity either, a story that amazes us for a minute or two, and then we can go back to what we are doing and forget the whole thing happened. It is a promise of life after death for us as well.

You know the story from which these words are taken. It is a few months before the first Easter. Jesus’ friend Lazarus has just died. Jesus has come to comfort his sisters Mary and Martha. Shortly before raising Lazarus back to life, Jesus gives Martha this promise. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

“Even though he dies…” One of my professors used to complain about preaching that identified sins, but failed to mention the consequences. “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” “Your iniquities have separated you from your God.” “Depart from my, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink…”

This is what makes Jesus’ promise so relevant, and so reassuring. The resurrection was not merely something Jesus taught. He wasn’t just the best place to go for information about it. Jesus IS the resurrection and the life. He is the source.

Other religions talk about an afterlife, but where is their proof? What foundation do they have for their hope? Jesus himself is ours. His sinless life provides all of us with every good work, all the loving service that we need to please God and make him smile on us. His innocent death cancels the guilt of every sin, and if the wages of sin is death, then no more sin means that God’s death penalty over us has been lifted, too.

As proof that all of this is not just theological theory, fine-sounding philosophy, Jesus himself rose from the dead. It’s all based on a real life person and real life events in real human history. Jesus’ own resurrection backs up his promise, and that promise gives us comfort.

Galatians 3:1 “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.”

What was wrong? These people whom Paul had once led to trust Jesus for everything necessary for their salvation were now basing their heavenly hope in part on their own good works. They thought they had something to contribute of their own.

Missionaries of a false Christianity known as the Judaizers had come to them and convinced them that Jesus was good and necessary. He just wasn’t enough. They needed to be circumcised. They needed to follow Old Testament ceremonies and food laws. But once you let this camel’s head into the tent, the camel’s head of keeping a few rules in addition to the work of Jesus, pretty soon the whole camel of salvation by works gets in.  The introduction of such ideas couldn’t help but turn their attention away from Jesus to the quality of their own performance. Paul writes just a few verses later, “After beginning with the Spirit, are you trying to attain your goal by human effort?” They were adopting a self-righteous salvation.

This was no small problem. Paul warns, “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law’” (Galatians 3:10). How much of God’s law do you have to keep if you are going to avoid the curse of death based solely on your own efforts? The whole thing! There is no margin of error here. A “99″ is a failing grade. It’s not like a video game in which you have additional “lives” based upon how many points you have scored, and even if you use them all up, you can turn the power off and on and start the game over from the beginning. Relying on our own righteousness, a self-produced righteousness, always ends the same way: the curse of death.

How much explanation does the cross really require? What do we need to know to recognize that this isn’t just the lynching of a man who defied some cultural taboo or crossed some societal boundary? How much information is necessary to realize that this is more than martyrdom, like the death of so many of the prophets before Jesus and most of the apostles after him?

Is it enough to know that this man was God’s Son, the promised Messiah; to hear John the Baptist declare “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”; to hear Jesus’ own words from the cross offering forgiveness to his executioners, promising paradise to a man hanging next to him, crying out in agony as God the Father forsakes him there, finally declaring that all is finished; to see the unnatural darkness that covers the land that afternoon, feel the earthquake that follows, witness the hand of God tearing the temple curtain separating the Creator from his creatures in two?

The cross is God’s tool for removing the curse of dying for our sins from us and transferring it to Jesus instead. Here our death sentence has been served. Here the Law’s demands for our blood, and for our souls, have been satisfied.

As a result, we have been redeemed, set free. There is nothing more for us to do. The Law can make no more demands on us. We live in God’s forgiveness. In place of a self-righteousness, a counterfeit and inadequate righteousness based on our own unsteady performance, the cross brings us a real righteousness, the perfection of Jesus and the cleansing of his blood provided to you and me.

This portrayal of Jesus Christ as crucified before your very eyes, then, lays this real righteousness upon your heart and soul. Thirty years ago a former missionary wrote in Christianity Today about a Muslim student in a North African university who heard a simple explanation of Jesus’ saving, substitutionary work on the cross for the first time. “If that is true,” he blurted out, “then Jesus is my Lord.” When Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified before his very eyes, God’s power laid claim on his heart and made him his own by faith.

But this is no surprise to you. The preaching of Christ crucified has been the power of God in your life. It has laid real righteousness, the freedom of forgiveness and grace, on your heart and soul. It still gives life to your faith and keeps you his child today.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isn’t your own life clear evidence that your thoughts are not the same as God’s? Who of us would ever have come up with this plan? Not a single one of us would have chosen everything we have experienced and endured so far. 

But God’s thoughts are not only different. Isaiah tells us that they are higher. They are better. If we had to come up with a way to heaven on our own, we would think that you had to work your way up. You had to earn your place. That is how it works with everything else we know. There is no free lunch. When you get an email offering you some expensive item, or some great treasure, for free, you assume it must be a scam. When some store or business is offering something for “free,” you wonder “What’s the catch.” There must be strings attached. If something is worth having, you have to work for it. You certainly have to pay for it.

If God worked that way, then every funeral would truly be a sad day, because those who have died may have been dear to us, but not one could be so good or perfect to earn a place in heaven. Neither could any of us. All would be lost, and life would always end in fear and sadness.

But God’s ways are higher than our ways. He gives away the unbelievable gift. Forgiveness is free, and that means that heaven is free as well. Would you think of asking him for that? Would you even dare make the request, if he did not reveal it to us? “Lord, I know that I can’t do everything you demand, so could you just give me heaven instead? In fact, could you just crucify the only Son you have, could you let him suffer the agony of hell I can’t imagine, so that I don’t have to?”

Isn’t it better to have his heavenly gift sooner rather than later? A popular hymn at Lutheran funerals claims “…earth’s but a desert drear–heaven is my home.” That’s not to say we should depart from God’s plan for us in this “desert drear” and take it upon ourselves to try to get to heaven before he is ready to take us. Nor is it to say that God doesn’t give us some pleasant stops along our way through this desert, times filled with joy and fun, and plenty of blessings. But compared to heaven? There the hard work and the hard life are over. The holidays have begun, to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis. All of our existence above God describes as “rest,” not because we do nothing but sleep or sit, but because there is no such thing as hard and difficult anymore.

This same wise and gracious God has good things in mind for each of us while we are here as well. Many years ago I heard a wise old pastor describe his answers to our prayers this way: “God always gives us what we ask, or he gives us something better.” The only kind of gifts he knows how to give are good ones. That may not be easy to believe when life his hard, but God promises. Trust his grace, and trust his wisdom, and know that his “higher” thoughts and ways are better for all of us.