Preparing a Place - Part 1

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 will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:1-6).

Jesus said He would ‘prepare’ a place for them. The word is hetoimazo, which means to ‘make ready’ or ‘provide’. John the Baptizer was sent ahead of Jesus to prepare Israel for the coming Messiah (Matthew 3:1-3; Luke 1:76). Jesus had sent Peter and John ahead of Him to prepare for the Passover meal (Matthew 26:17; Mark 14:12). Here Jesus is telling the disciples that He is going to heaven to prepare a place for them. How are we to understand this? In what way does heaven need to be prepared for the saints?

Albert Barnes said, “It . . . means that he, by the work he was yet to perform in heaven, would secure their admission there, and obtain for them the blessings of eternal life. That work would consist mainly in his intercession” (Hebrews 4:14,16; 7:25-27; 10:12-13,19-22). John Gill states, “Christ, who is gone before, and is as a forerunner entered into it, and has took possession of it in the name of his people; and by his own appearance there for them with his blood, righteousness, and sacrifice, he is, as it were, fitting up these mansions for their reception, whilst they are by his Spirit and grace fitting and preparing for the enjoyment of them.”

Heaven is the initial destiny of the saints. It already exists. When the saints of the Lord die, their bodies remain in the earth, but they go to be with the Lord in heaven while awaiting the time when, in the resurrection, they receive their glorified, eternal and physical bodies. That’s the promise of the Lord, that where I am you may be also. So, what is left to ‘prepare’? Jesus does not tell the disciples, nor us, how our place in the Father’s house should be prepared. But the Book of Hebrews does. (Hebrews 9:23), Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. The Apostle Paul wrote (Colossians 1:20), . . . and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. 

Heaven was a perfect place until Lucifer (Satan) sinned by challenging the authority of God. He and his angels were kicked out of heaven. But Satan does return to accuse the saints before the throne of God (Job 1 & 2). He does so today. Jesus is our advocate and intercessor before God, countering the accusations of Satan. But there will come a day when Christ will completely abolish the presence of Satan in heaven (1 Corinthians 15:25-28). Then the old heavens and earth will pass away and God will create a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem that has no vestige or remembrance of Satan or sin - forever. That is the preparation that Jesus is making, and will ultimately complete, for the saints in heaven. Amen.

Pastor