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Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain John 14:1:
John 14:1-6
Excerpted from: Jesus in the Feasts (Part Two): FirstfruitsLet us remember when He said this, what the context of this is: The evening of the Passover just before His arrest and His trial and his crucifixion. Once resurrected, which He had told them several times would happen, He was going to heaven and to sit at the Father's right hand. And here He says His job, then, would be to prepare places of authority and service for His disciples, all of them. There are many mansions, there are many offices, there are many rooms. We can fill the place up. But I am going, He says, to make sure that the people are prepared for the rooms, If you will.
In other words, it would be His job to prepare for the harvest of the firstfruits. As Herbert Armstrong said, He would be putting together His team to govern the world once He once he set up His Kingdom after His return. So He tells them, at least from our vantage point here, what He was going to do. It is pretty plain. That He was going to go where the Father is in heaven, to His house, and He was going to take up the job, take up the responsibility of preparing a people for God.
Now we get to Thomas' questions. Notice them. "Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?" He asked basically two questions. Where are You going? It is the first one. Let me just stop on the first one. I find it very odd that he said, "Where are You going?" Because He had just told them! That is why I said as we are going through there, Thomas must not have been listening. But really the rest of the disciples were not listening either in this sense. They were confused, they did not know what He was talking about. It is almost like they had no conception of the Father being in heaven. I am sure they did, maybe they intellectually knew it, but they could not put it together that Jesus Christ would end up going to the Father in heaven. You know, their understanding may not have been quite as developed as obviously it later was; they were having trouble putting things together. But I have always, since I was a young man, have looked at that and said, "Thomas, why didn't you know what He meant?" He just said, "I go to prepare a place for you." And He just said that it was His Father's house He was going to. I do not know; the disciples just baffle me sometimes. But I guess that is typical of human nature.
But his second question is: "How can we follow You if we do not know the way?" How can we know the way? I think it is really interesting that Jesus completely ignores the first question. "Thomas, you should know." Of course, He was going to expand on it shortly, so He was really just putting Thomas off a bit on the answer to that first question, even though He had made a pretty good description of where He was going. But if you go through this whole evening's worth of discussion between them, they do not get where He is going until chapter 16, verse 29. "Oh, now You're speaking plainly." I mean, He really had to spell it out to them over a very long discourse and finally, you know, the light comes on.
But it is the second one that He answers here. The second question, "How can we follow You if we do not know the way?" And He answers it with one of His "I am" statements. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
Now remember the second part, "No one comes to the Father except through Me," is referring back to "I go to prepare a place for you." I am going to My Father's house. He is saying essentially, "I am the way. You can't get to the Father's house except through Me." Now we do not need to go through the technical arguments about whether this is properly translated or not. It could be, and it seems like it might very well be better translated as "I am the true and living way." Fine, but we do not need to argue that right now. For our purposes, it does not matter.
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