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We found in a previous session that our Lord's exposure of Judas's sin taught us that the chief obstacle to developing holiness within any man is his tendency to accept the gifts of God, but to reject or have no time for the giver. And conversely, we found an explanation of what holiness really is. True holiness is at its very heart and essence a personal devotion to a person, and that person Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, if that is a true insight, it makes sense of the lesson that now follows in chapter fourteen. If the key to holiness is at its heart personal devotion to the person of God in Jesus Christ our Lord, then our Lord obviously makes a tremendous provision for the securing of that holiness by what he proceeds to tell us throughout chapter fourteen. The early verses announce a provision that will secure this. Verse three: I come again and will receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Peter had just said to the Lord Jesus, Lord, I would follow you anywhere. I'd go anywhere to be with you. And he meant it right. He didn't know, of course, what weakness in his heart would, in these next few hours, hold him back from following Christ and being with Christ wherever Christ was. Our Lord said to him, yes, you will deny me, Peter, but let not your heart be troubled. How, Lord? Why, because I am going to make provision so that what you now really wish, Peter, that you might be with me, and wherever I am, you might be with me and devoted to me. I'm going to make provision so eventually that shall be secured, that where I am, there you may be also, and permanently and eternally, never to go out again. So then the early part of, uh, chapter fourteen tells us of what we call technically the second coming, where our Lord says, in my Father's house there are many abiding places. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again and will receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Then later on in the chapter, he talks again of an abiding place, only this time a different abiding place. Shall we look in verse twenty three? If a man love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode, or if you like, our abiding place with him. So just as we found when it came to the question of our being cleansed, the washing of water, there were two things, really. There was the bigger thing, the once and for all washing of regeneration, and then there was the other thing, the constant rinsing of the hands and feet. So in this provision too, there is first the bigger thing. Object to secure that the believer shall always be with Christ and never again be separated in the sense that Peter was separated and stood apart from him. How shall that be? Well, now this is the tremendous thing. This is the big thing. This is the foundation thing, and it is done not in the strength of Peter's devotion. It is a something that Christ does, and only Christ could do, by going away and preparing a place for us, an abiding place, a mansion, if you like, the old English word, in the Father's house, and then he's coming again to take us to be with him, that where he is, there we might be also permanently with him. But there is the other side to the coin. If true holiness is devotion to the person, is being with the person of Christ, then it is necessary that we, on our part as believers, make Christ a mansion, an abiding place, in our hearts, here in this life. And it stands to reason, doesn't it, that anybody who has any hope or claim that one day he shall rise to inhabit an abiding place in the Father's home, will want to, will be keen to, will he not, to make the Father and Christ an abiding place in his heart now. Sometimes I think, uh, we might deceive ourselves with all sorts of sentimental untruths. We tell ourselves that we would be, well, of course, at the end of the show here in life, we'd be very pleased if we could get a ticket into heaven. But sometimes we don't show much eagerness to make Christ a home in our hearts here. We're afraid he'd be a bit of a bore. You know, you can't always, I mean to say, man, you can't always be talking religion, goodness me. You've got to enjoy yourself, haven't you? Well, don't go to heaven then. For if you find Christ a bore on earth, what a lurid mistake to go off to heaven. And if we suppose to ourselves that we're going to enjoy heaven, we better apply the test now. Do we enjoy the company of Christ now? We keen to make him a dwelling place in our heart now? So then these two lessons go together, don't they? Of course, the first one is the bigger one. What he is doing to prepare a place for us that we might be with him. But the second is important, that we should prepare him a dwelling place in our hearts. This, I repeat, is the key to holiness. It's not just keeping some external rules, going to church and saying one's prayers. It is not even maintaining a very strict ethic, though that is important. The heart of holiness is personal devotion to the Savior, a being with him, and he being with us. So let us consider now this first and tremendous provision. What is technically called the second coming? You will not find the words in scripture anywhere exactly so put, the second coming, but they are implied here, aren't they? Says our Lord, let not your heart be troubled. In my father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again. It is a second coming. May I point out at once that the doctrine of the Second Coming is not some kind of fringe benefit, or as some would have it, a kind of a freakish decoration on the real wholesome cake of Christianity, that I can safely afford to leave on one side as being something a little bit mysterious or apocalyptic or any other such mysterious affair. Um, the Second Coming of Christ is an integral part of the gospel message. It is that which will achieve my final sanctification. Notice its basic, uh, purpose, as here expressed. In my Father's house are many abiding places, and I'm coming to take you there. Won't it be nice? Walking on streets of gold instead of the tarmac of Ulster, and coming in through gates of pearls instead of old common green wood that they use nowadays, and all the doors buckle. Um, wouldn't that be lovely to be in heaven like that? Well, I suppose it would. Drafts are uncomfortable things, but, uh, to be sure, it's not the absence of drafts that is going to make heaven so comfortable. The point of going to heaven first and foremost is, as Christ put it, that where I am, there you may be also. What use a stately home, be it never so stately, if I had to live my life out in its august rooms in loneliness. It's people that are going to make heaven, and predominantly the delightful personages, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's heaven. How could I possibly go there? Well, notice our Lord here says, I go to prepare a place for you. Not now you for the place. Certainly he does that. His death at Calvary prepares us for the place. So much so that if we have our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, already here on earth, we are un- encouraged to know that we have right to enter the very holiest of all. That we can in spirit, though here on earth, raise our hearts to the very throne of God in the most intimate of all his heaven, and know ourselves accepted there. For we have been prepared for the place by the blood and sacrifice of Christ and by the regeneration of his Holy Spirit. But now here is something extra and additional, not merely preparing us for the place, but preparing the place for us. Oh, how wonderful. God so wants us in his presence. He is prepared to adapt that spiritual realm to make it possible for humans to dwell there with him. The second coming of Christ, of course, is a thing that the apostles preach constantly throughout all their, uh, letters. Let me just take one example so that we may be sure that we understand clearly what is meant by this second coming. The classical place, I suppose, is Paul's letter to the Thessalonians and chapter four of that first letter, where he describes what is going to happen. He says, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. You will notice, incidentally, that this is not a description of the general resurrection of the dead, is it? It is only the dead in Christ that on this occasion rise. The dead in Christ then shall rise first. Then we, that is we Christians, not all men generally, we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And oh, how wonderful it will be to be away from this horrible old earth. Yes, but that isn't what is predominant in Paul's thinking just here. What is it going to mean to him? Yes, he's learned his lesson, hasn't he? And so shall we ever be with the Lord. As the old hymn put it, where Jesus is, 'tis heaven there. Of course, this isn't just Pauline doctrine, is it? That there is to be this second coming of Christ for his people as distinct from the resurrection. For our Lord taught that very same thing to Martha. And to complete this little bit of our study, we may care to look at that in John chapter eleven, where our Lord presented himself to Martha and Mary, indeed Lazarus, as not only the life, but the resurrection and the life. In John chapter eleven verse twenty three, we break in on the conversation that went on between our Lord and Martha. Martha was distressed and troubled that our Lord hadn't come to stop Lazarus dying. And our Lord said that, uh, he would rise again. Verse twenty three, Jesus saith unto her, thy brother shall rise again. Yes, I know, said Martha, I know he's going to rise again. I know that. I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. I know all that, says Martha. You don't tell me anything new there. But, uh, the unspoken implication, the last day is a long way off, ain't it? And you might at least have come a few days early and saved Lazarus from dying so I could have had him here a little bit longer, as well as having him at the resurrection at the last day. So what new thing is our Lord going to tell Martha? She already knows about the general resurrection at the last day. Well, the new thing is going to be his second coming. She didn't know that, did she? For the Old Testament had never said it explicitly that there were to be two comings of the Messiah. He's got to tell her now about his second coming, and he tells her that in terms that Paul himself surely has copied in his one Thessalonians chapter four that we have just read. Jesus saith unto her, I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth on me, even though he die, that is die physically, yet shall he live. Yes, indeed, when the Lord comes, for the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout. And suppose a w- a person that has believed on Christ, is in Christ, but he has died. Well, says one Thessalonians four, the dead in Christ shall rise first. And says our Lord here, he that believeth on me, even though he die, yet shall he live. And then what about the others that haven't died by the time the Lord comes? Well, he that liveth and believeth on me. Notice the two qualifications, not just he that liveth, for it isn't comprising all people living on the earth at that hour. It's he that liveth and believeth on me. The believers that, uh, survive physically until the coming of the Lord, says Paul. We which are alive and remain, what shall happen to us when the Lord comes? We shall be caught up to meet him without dying. We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed in a twinkling, in the, uh, uh, uh, in the movement of an eye. The trumpet shall sound, the dead shall be raised, the living changed. And so we dwell rightly with great emphasis on this first part of the provision. Obviously, it is the bigger part, isn't it? That in order to secure our final sanctification, our being with Christ, without any chance thereafter of ever departing or wandering from him, Christ is going to come again and receive us unto himself, that where he is, there we might be also. The certainty of his coming, the prospect of being with him to go out no more forever, surely will prompt in us the very natural longing that if it were possible, even in this life, for us to make him an abiding place in our hearts, that is the thing that above all others we should wish. And of course, this is the way God's salvation works. This is going to be the key to our day-to-day holiness, our ongoing sanctification. For you will notice that this is what Paul speaks of constantly to his converts, doesn't he? And indeed of his own experience. I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me. Christ in you, the hope of glory, says Saint Paul to his converts. Or again, writing to some Christians at Ephesus, he says, you know, since I heard that you got converted, I haven't ceased to pray for you, and one of the things I pray for you is this, that God would grant you according to the riches of his glory, that you might be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inward man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. There is a sense, of course, and a very real and basic sense in which Christ is in the heart, in the life of everyone that has trusted him. Christ in me. There is another sense in which, as I go on in Christian life, I need to submit to the Holy Spirit working in my heart to strengthen me, that Christ might be able more and more and more to take up and extend his residence within me. Christ in me. The secret of my ongoing sanctification. You will notice at once how different this is from all other systems of ethics you have ever heard of. The ideals that Socrates and Plato put before them were marvelous. But no Platonist, as he struggled to get to know the truth and to conform himself to the truth, ever talked about having Socrates in him. That just wouldn't have made sense, would it? And the Buddhist, however closely he tries to follow the teaching of the Buddha, he doesn't talk in terms of having the Buddha in him. Wouldn't make sense, would it? This is the difference of Christianity. It talks about having Christ living in you. A Christ that not merely says, love people like I love them. Go on, do your best. You love people like I love them. But says, yes, you are to love people like I love them, but do you know the way to do that? To let me dwell in your heart, and you and I together will love them, and I will love them through you. Now, perhaps you say, ah, well, now this is where I, I begin to lose you or you lose me, because, um, this is becoming rather mystical now, and I'm one of those, you know, very down to earth people. Uh, I, I don't like mysticism very much, um, uh, do you see? I, I, I can understand, uh, washing your neighbor's floor as a kind act of Christian charity, but all this business about Christ in you and things, isn't that, uh, something to do with visions and, and, uh, well, is it really practical, I mean, or isn't it a lot of words? What on earth does it mean? Well, if that's how you feel, you'll have chance to ask your questions, surely. Or maybe you might find that the apostles have, uh, anticipated your questions. For in our next session, we shall have to study what our Lord taught about this matter, about our making the Godhead an abiding place in our hearts, and how it's done. And the apostles were very much like us. They were hard-headed men. It was no use standing there and speaking to them a lot of wonderful sounding words that meant practically nothing at all. They wanted to know exactly what Christ meant when he said this and that and the other. And in his kindness, our Lord allowed them to interrupt him as he taught them, to answer their down to earth questions, and to show them and to show us that this business of having Christ dwelling in your heart is not a kind of an exalted mysticism that is confined to the rarest of saints that happen once in two or three centuries, but a real practical thing that is meant to be the experience of every believer every day of the week.