The truthfulness of Jesus Christ
I. These words were an appeal to the disciples' knowledge of Christ. Had He ever painted His discipleship in false colours? Had He kept back any hard terms? Had He softened down any harsh conditions, that He might parade among His followers as One whom it was policy to conciliate? "One thing thou lackest," He had said to the rich young ruler, and that one thing was the sacrifice of his all. It was so in everything. The same voice which said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation," would have said, if it was the truth: I have no revelation and no promise, of another "life." I can but speak of truth and of duty. I can but share with you the sorrows of time, and leave you at the gate of that mystery which none can solve what, or whether anything, shall be hereafter.
II. "If it were not so, I would have told you" and in the telling there would have lain for Me no defeat and no discomfiture. I might still have come into the life; I might still have been the Comforter, the Sympathiser, and the Friend. If, then, He does nottell us that there is no life beyond this life shall we not believe that He speaks that He doth know? I will insult the intelligence of no man by supposing that he will accuse Jesus Christ whose character (I speak as a man) he knows perfectly well by biography and by history of wilfully fabricating revelations of the truth of which He Himself was not persuaded. Either he must say, if he is a man of sense and honesty, "We have not His real words," or he must say, "He was Himself deluded." The third thing he durst not say durst not, I mean, for his intellectual character's sake "Though He knew that it was so, yet He said it." The hearing ear is from above; but prayer will draw down the gift. If we believe in the home above; if we believe that Jesus lives; if we believe that He will come again to receive us unto Himself let us look now at the things not seen but eternal, let us live the life now which alone can survive death.
C. J. Vaughan, Temple Sermons,p. 361.
Man's hope of immortality uncontradicted by God
I. Our position with God is similar to that in which the disciples stood to Christ we are looking to Him for the fulfilment of hopes which reach beyond our present life.
II. The same considerations which would have led Christ to undeceive His disciples, had they been in error, apply to God in His position to us. These reasons fall under a twofold division those which lie in God's own character, and those which lie in the relation between Him and us. Whatever could press on Christ as a moral obligation to speak out to His disciples, would lead us to expect that, if we were deceiving ourselves, God would speak out to us.
J. Ker, Sermons,p. 245.
References: John 14:2. Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 72; Homilist,vol. v., p. 87; T. S. Berry, Expositor,2nd series, vol. iii., p. 397; Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 363; A. Blomfield, Sermons in Town and Country,p. 124; R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons,p. 1; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year,p. 97. John 14:2-3. Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 127; vol. ix., p. 90.
I. Had the Lord Jesus remained with us here below, various great ends of His mission must have rested unfulfilled. (1) Both His crucifixion and His resurrection were but steps in the way of the greatest event of His whole appointed course the glorification of His manhood and of us in Him. Had He remained below, we may not say that this couldnot have been; because it is not for us to limit God to any defined place in His workings; but according to His own declaration, it wouldnot have been. (2) Again, it was not the purpose of God in redemption merely to clear us from guilt, nor merely to place us in acceptance, but to renew us after the Divine likeness to build up again, infinitely more glorious for the conflict with sin and suffering, that image which in our first parents had been ruined. And this, our Lord again and again taught His disciples, could not be accomplished without His being taken from them. It was to be the especial work of the Holy Spirit, and this Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Builder-up and Strengthener of Mankind, would not come unless our Lord first went to the Father. (3) Moreover, the Ascension was necessary for the manifestation of Christ's sovereignty. No manifestation of majesty here below could ever have been equivalent to the resumption by Him of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was still less to the accession of glory with which Redemption has crowned Him. (4) Another great necessity for our Lord's removal from us, is the work of His High Priesthood in heaven.
II. Consider the results of the Ascension with a view to our own faith and practice. (1) It is the token to us of the entire acceptance of the Saviour's finished work in our nature. (2) The Ascension of our Lord should draw our present thoughts and affections to the place whither He is gone before. If we really love our Saviour, if His glorified humanity is to us the spring of our joys, and the centre of our interests, the world may catch our fleeting thoughts and employ our less earnest attentions, but He will have all our serious determinations, all our deepest affections; the world may be our tabernacle, but the place where He is will be our home.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. i., p. 366.
I. Our Lord teaches us to connect with heaven the thought of permanence. It is a place of mansions.
II. Our Lord teaches us to connect with heaven the thought of extent and variety. It has manymansions.
III. Our Lord further teaches us to connect with the heavenly world the thought of unity. It is a houseof many mansions.
IV. Our Lord teaches us to carry to the thought of heaven a filial heart. It is the Father's house, a paternal home.
V. Our Lord has taught us to connect heaven with the thought of Himself "My" Father's house. "No man cometh into the Father but by Me."
J. Ker, Sermons,2nd series, p. 247.
References: John 14:2. J. S. Davies, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 321; J. H. Hitchens, Ibid.,vol. xxix., p. 6; J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension Day to Trinity,p. 72; J. Vaughan, Sermons,6th series, p. 141. Joh 14:2, John 14:3. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiii., p. 228; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 87. John 14:2-4. Homilist,vol. ii., p. 583.