I'm grateful for this opportunity to stand before you. I'm also grateful for this morning's exposition on the Third Commandment. It's a good reminder of what we're about to do in looking at God's word. So I'd ask you to join with me in prayer. Father God, this is your word. It is not simply ours, but it is your word that has been given to us. And because you have given to us, we are left as it were without breath. We are left without breath as we think about it, and we are left in a humbled state. And we ask, Father, that you would not only give us your word, but that you would grant us your spirit and that your spirit would be present in the words that I speak, and your spirit would be present in the hearts and minds of all of us as we listen. That would be your word and not mine. That would take root. That would nourish. That would strengthen. That would convict. and that would comfort. We pray, Father, that it would be your word that lead us to glorify you. In your son's name. Amen. Allow me to give a little introduction about myself. Up until six months ago, I was a web developer down in Philadelphia for my seminary. And since then, I've been an assistant pastor at the Church of Manchester in Connecticut. But I'm still the web developer for that seminary down in Philadelphia. I maintain two part-time jobs. And now that I'm also an assistant pastor, I'm also managing and helping with the youth group. And in a few weeks, we'll be heading down to Fairmont, West Virginia to do a missions trip. But even before that, I'll be heading down first to preach before them. And you are to preach before those who go down before us to preach down Fairmont. And as a result, you are receiving a bit of a foretaste of that sermon, one of the sermons I'm preaching, I'll be preaching today. Of course, in preparing for this and also doing my other jobs, I have been quite stressed out for the last week at least. And that's why I'm telling you this. I'm telling you this not to say that I'm boasting, to say that I've been finding myself in an experience of anxiety and stress and work overload to the point where I found myself earlier this week coming to a point of crisis. Coming to a point where I found myself saying, what am I doing? How am I going to get this done? What is going on here? And I bring that up because I've no doubt that each of you in different ways come to those points of crisis. those moments in your own life where you find yourself saying, what am I doing here? How will I get this all done? How will I accomplish this all? It might be in your work. It might be in your home. It might be anywhere in your life, in your friendships, in your church. You're asking yourself, what am I doing here? How can I get through this? And this anxiety builds. And I think it builds, and here's how it built for me. It built in the sense of senselessness. Does it mean anything? Or am I just on this giant treadmill going around in a circle over and over and over again? Is there any sense? And if I wanted to examine that more deeply, And if you have that same feeling, maybe you examine it more deeply. What does that mean? It means that fundamentally I'm asking this question. It's what on earth is Christ's plan for me right now? Or to put it another way, what is Christ doing? What is he doing right now? Because it sure feels like he's not here sometimes. What is he doing right now? To what end is he waiting? Why is he making us wait? These are the things that built within me, and of course these are the things our passage speaks to us today about. And the reason it does is there's no doubt the disciples here were feeling some of the same anxieties. This passage, John 14, is not, as it were, all by itself, but it sits within a context And the context that it sits within is one in which it has been the Lord suffered. It's the night of his betrayal. He has gathered his disciples together. He has feasted with them. He has shared the bread. He has shared the wine. He has even stripped off his outer garment and washed their feet. And then having accomplished that, he turns to them and proceeds to predict his own death. that he will depart from them and go where they cannot follow. And predictably, Peter responds and says, Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you. And his response to Peter, his response designed to just bring about the greatest anxiety in one's life, he responds and says, will you lay down your life for me? Truly Truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. And you can almost hear them thinking, what is going on? What is this all about? How can this be? If this means that Peter is going to deny him before the rooster crows, That means Peter's going to deny him within the evening. This means that everything is going to fall apart within the evening. This means that Christ is leaving soon. Very soon. What is this all about? You can feel the anxiety in themselves. And you can think about that. Just think about for a moment. We celebrate that day. How do we celebrate that day? We celebrate it as Good Friday. But there's a very real sense in which there's nothing good about it. It's the day in which our Savior leaves us. What can be good about that? That's anxiety they're feeling. They're feeling, why are you doing this? You're supposed to usher in the kingdom. You're supposed to be enthroned. You're supposed to set us up on our thrones. You're supposed to rule. Instead, you're leaving us. You're going somewhere where you can't follow him. And those are the thoughts that must be echoing in their mind. Because then we hear his words, Let not your hearts be troubled. Let not your hearts be troubled. He's answering their anxiety. He's answering their experience of abandonment. But I want you to catch a glimpse of how he's doing it. And I want to give you an illustration by way of that. I want to describe something in my own life. Right now in my own life, I'm courting a wonderful woman. And I'm courting her and I regularly visit her house. And I join in fellowship with her parents and her siblings, her brothers and her sisters and her. We spend the evening, we spend it talking and watching movies together with the whole family and enjoying one another's fellowship. But then it comes time for me to leave. And she tells me that it's hard for me to leave. That she doesn't like it. That it is something that she really would rather I didn't. That it's hard for her to tell me when it's time to leave. But she has to. And it's hard for me to leave. But I have to. Because if I don't leave, what happens? Well, eventually her father will kick me out of the house. And he'll kick me out because I've become a deadbeat. I'm doing nothing. I'm particularly doing nothing to prepare a place for her. I'm doing nothing to prepare a place for her. In fact, I'm becoming a laughing stock. And I'm humiliating her by not leaving. Because if I do not leave, then we will never be united. If I do not leave, I will never be able to come and take her away to a place prepared for her. And that is a fitting illustration to our passage. Allow me to read it again and then we'll look much more closely. John 14 verses 1 through 3. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. But 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 I will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. That illustration was a fitting illustration because it was a true illustration of this passage. That is, that what Christ is presenting to his disciples, in this short passage is a larger picture than one would first expect. He is presenting a picture of marriage. This is a picture of marriage. These are words of hope and assurance that the groom, the bridegroom, gives to his beloved, his bride, in this case the church. and I will unpack this for you. For in the ancient times, what I want to describe for you, in the ancient times, this is how a marriage would work. Marriages in that day were not like they are today. Today, you see somebody and say, wow, I really like that person, so I'm going to go and I'm going to maybe date them or court them, and then eventually I will ask them to marry me, or if I'm more traditional, I'll ask their father for permission that I might ask her to marry me. And then once that's done, Then we go, we set up a date, we go to the church, we're married, and then we go on our honeymoon. That's what we see today, but in the ancient world, that was not the way of marriage. In the ancient world, it proceeded first from the father. The son would need to be married, he'd be of marriageable age, and therefore the father would go out and choose the bride for his son. And in choosing that bride, he would then speak to the bride's father and establish what the bride price should be, what price should be paid to the bride and her family for the ensuing marriage. Once this has been agreed upon, once this payment has taken place, then a son comes to the bride and gives the bride a token, a covenantal token, perhaps a ring. And it is a token of their betrothal, of their engagement. It is such a token that the only way to break it at this point is to be divorced. You cannot simply break it. It must require a divorce to break it. So it's a covenant. It's a contract. And in making this contract, in presenting this to her, he would then also in some cases leave a best man with her. In the traditional case, the reason for a best man was not that he would be chums with the groom. The reason for a best man was that he would protect the bride and her innocence and her status until the groom should come again. And so the best man would remain with her and stay with her and guard her for the groom's sake. And then the groom would return to his father's house. Why would he return to his father's house? Because that's where he would eventually bring her to be with him. But he must do something first. He must prepare a place for her. He must build rooms onto the house They would add rooms onto the house itself and he would work on this and he would construct this and he would lay down the materials and the money and the finances and all that was required for it. And he would do this until the father looked at his work and said, you are now done. You are now ready. The place is ready. You may go and bring your bride to your house. And so then the son, and this would usually be late at night, and the son would go out to the bride's house and actually whisk her away, almost like a thief in the night, and bring her to his house where it would be the feast and the festivities and the joining of hands and the marriage. And they would then be husband and wife. That was how marriage worked in the ancient world. And I want that picture in your mind, because then I want us to walk through that. And I want us to hear hints of that in Scripture. And no doubt you've already heard some hints, but I want to make them more plain. Let us begin. To begin with, we have the Father. What does the Father do? He chooses the Son's bride. And so we have in this case John 3, 16 and 17. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Or we have in John 6, verse 37, this morning's reading of the assurance of the Gospel, All that the Father gives me will come to me. All that the Father gives me will come to me. And so the father chooses his son's beloved. In this case, it is us, as we are part of the church. The church is the bride. We have been chosen by God. And having chosen that, the father then determines the bride price. What is the bride price in this case? In this case, we can read from scripture from Romans chapter 5, verses 6 through 8. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The bride price is the death of Christ. And we can see something of that in the illusion in the Old Testament, when on their way to Egypt, Zipporah and Moses are met by the angel of God in anger, and Zipporah circumcises their son. And in circumcising their son, what does she say? She says to Moses, she says, Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me. You are a bridegroom of blood to me, Christ. is a bridegroom of blood to us. His blood is the gift to us. The bride price is his blood. And so in giving us that gift and dying upon the cross, what does he then do? He leaves us. He goes somewhere else to prepare a place for us. But he does not leave us without a token. without a sign, because he leaves us with two things. He leaves us with baptism. He leaves us with baptism, a sign and seal of our being members of the covenant, covenant of marriage. And he leaves us with communion, a thing which as often as we partake of it, he calls us to remember again his death. Why does he call us to remember again his death? Because that is his bride price to us. And that is part of his covenant to us. And that is part of the promise that he's coming again. These are things which, as we look to them, ought to cause us to smile. When we see a new baby, a new child being baptized, that ought to cause us to remember back to our own baptism. Just as much as when we sit in a wedding service and see the rings presented, it reminds us of our own rings. And when we see a newly engaged couple and the woman is showing her ring off, that reminds us of our own engagement, of our own marriage. So also here, baptism and communion Remind us of these things. Call us back to the covenant. Call us with joy to remember that our husband will return for us one day. These are good things and so eagerly we can wait. But he doesn't just leave us tokens. He leaves us his best man. And we have that in John 14 verse 16. Just a few verses away. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper. to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you." And again, in John 14, verse 26, again he says, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things. and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you." In leaving us, He leaves us His Spirit. The Father does also. The Holy Spirit reminds us. And what I love about this is as He speaks to us, He says, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. What does the Holy Spirit do? The Holy Spirit drives our minds to Christ. He drives our minds to Christ. As we engage in His Word, as we engage with one another, as we live out our lives, the Holy Spirit dwells with us, not to turn our eyes to the Holy Spirit, but to turn our eyes to the Son. That our eyes would ever be lifted up to Him. That whenever we are fretful, whether we are fearful, whether we are sick, whether we are in an awful and awkward position, whether we are terrified. In all those situations, the Spirit is working within us to draw our eyes to the Son. He is the best man. He is the man left behind to keep us safe, to keep us secure, to keep us and make us spotless and pure for the day when the sun returns, to present us holy and blameless to the sun. That is what the Holy Spirit does for us, and so he leaves us the Holy Spirit. But still, and this is the nub of it, what is the sun doing right now? What is he doing right now? Because he is not doing nothing. And I want you to think about that because that is our fear. That is the fear that we probably return to again and again in our lives, particularly when we experience extreme suffering. When we see a beloved one die horribly, we ask, what is the son doing right now that is so important to ignore this? That's what we feel in our hearts. And catching this fear, I like the words of Rich Mullins when he wrote Do you remember when you lived down here, where we all scraped to find the faith to ask for daily bread? Did you forget about us after you flew away? Another writer wrote, and every day that we died just a little more, I was sure you were sovereignly watching us dangle. That is the fear that we are confronted with in our lives and the suffering that we experience. What Christ tells us here is that He is doing something. He says, 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? Now earlier, I believe you were reading from the Kings James, were you? In the Kings James it reads mansions and mansions is a direct translation straight from the Latin. But I want us to be careful that when we read that passage we don't immediately think mansions as in big buildings in the middle of nowhere. What it really means is dwelling places, rooms. And in the context of what Christ is speaking of here, in the context of marriage, again, as I said earlier, it's adding rooms onto houses. It's not separate houses. And why I want to draw that out for you is that the picture here isn't of wide open expansions, but of intimacy. It is intimacy with our Lord. It is that we will be in the presence of our husband of Christ. We will be in the presence of the Father. We will be near to them. We will not be far away from them. We will be near. We will be close. That is the picture. And therefore what he's doing right now is he's preparing a place for us. He's preparing a place for you. 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? Think about that. Think about how it is this amazing thing that is the backdrop against which all of our lives are lived. Why are you living your life today? Why do you suffer the things you have to suffer? Why do you have to wait for Christ to return? Why? Because He is preparing a place for you. Think about that. Think about the beauty of that. That since His death, since His resurrection, since His ascension, He has been preparing a place for you, for the Bride of Christ, for His Church, that He may then take us and bring us to be with Himself. Or to put it another way, and I want to keep harping on this, I want to keep going back to this because I want you to find a comfort. So to put it another way, when I'm caught in the thickness of my day, When I'm caught in the details of my day, and I love, a professor of mine once said, there's a truth to this statement that the devil is in the details. And that's true. When we get caught up in the details of life, in the small things, in the things that go wrong, when your car breaks down in the morning, when you spill coffee on your shirt, all those little things, plus the big things, when you're sick, when a loved one is dying, when When your word has just laid you off, when you're experiencing arguments and frustrations with your fellow church members, all these things, lift your eyes from them and consider that at this moment, what is the Son doing? He's preparing a place for you. And he's doing it under the watchful eye of our Father. Because it is not until the Father who loves us, for he so loved us that he sent his Son, it is not until the Father who loves us tells him that the place is prepared that he returns to us. Because we have these words from Christ himself when he says, Then if I go, not those words, but concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. only the Father knows. See, this is the preparation for the marriage of the Church, of the Bride, and her Savior, her Husband, the Bridegroom of Christ. This is what is going on in all of history now, as Christ is preparing a place for us. But in that day, He will come again, and He will take us to be with Himself. He will take us to Himself, and the great marriage feast will be given, the great marriage feast of the Lamb, and the angels in the great multitude will cry out, Hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready, has granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, right and pure." That is from Revelation chapter 19. we shall dwell with God." Think about those things. Consider the comfort of those words. Consider what they are meant to be to us, to comfort us in the fearful places in which we dwell, particularly as we struggle with the words of Christ saying, I am going somewhere where you cannot follow me. He has left us, but he has not abandoned us because the setbacks of our lives, sufferings of our lives are all temporary in the grand story, the grand story, the wedding feast of the land of Christ with his bride, the church, us. That is the grand story. And so, whether it be in our work, whether it be in our families, whether it be in our love, whether it be in our health, whether it be in any of those things, how we suffer and experience anxiety in those things, let us lift up our eyes. By the power of the Spirit, let us lift up our eyes and say, He is preparing the place for us. And Christ calls us to lift up our eyes. He calls us and says, right at the beginning, Believe in God. Believe also in me. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In other words, He asks us, when our souls are downcast, to ask our own souls, why are you downcast? Why are you full of fear? Why are you full of anxiety? see your Savior, He will come and He will take you home. Have faith. Have belief. Believe in Me. Look for it. Believe and proclaim. Indeed, that's what we will be doing as we partake in the Lord's Supper. Again, that is that token He leaves us, that engagement ring on the he calls us to proclaim his death until he comes again. Another way of saying that he calls us to remember that he has paid the bride price. The bride price has been paid. There can be no separation. We cannot be separated. The bride price has been paid. He will come and bring us home. And then as we think about that, as we think about the fact that he brings us home, Then it also becomes a foretaste. It becomes a foretaste of the wedding feast that we will experience, the marriage feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb. So it's two things. It reminds us of what's already been paid, but it causes us to look forward to what will be. And so we have these comforts to look and to trust in the gift of his blood, to trust in what he has given us, to trust in his judge. to trust in His Holy Spirit, His best man, to trust in the love of His Father, to trust in the room that He's preparing for us, and to trust that one day He will return and bring us home. And surely, as the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, Revelations, tells us, surely the bridegroom is coming soon. Think and believe on those things. They are true. Father God, when we are anxious, lift up our eyes to remember the blessings that you have given us, the price that you have given us of your Son, his blood. Remind us that he has given us his sacraments to remember him by, to remember the blessings and the promises that he has given us. Remind us that you've given us your spirit to comfort us, to guide us, to protect us, to lift up our eyes, to look for your son for the day that he will return. Ever remind us in our anxieties what your son is doing right now, that he is not just sitting up there sovereignly watching us linger, but that he is ever, even now, preparing a place for us. But, O Father, we pray Lord Jesus, come, come quickly, that we might be taken to be with you, to be with your son, to be the bride of Christ at the marriage and wedding feast of the Lamb and to rejoice. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.