Imagine the ironical scenario when Jesus said this cheerful notes, full of positive expectation and encouragement.
TLB There are many homes up there where my Father lives, and I am going to prepare them for your coming. When everything is ready, then I will come and get you, so that you can always be with me where I am. If this weren’t so, I would tell you plainly. KJV In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2)
Jesus spoke these words at a time when He was preparing His disciples what to expect in the future. He knew His future. Because of His relationship with God the Father and He knew He was from heaven, He was certain of His victory at the cross and after the cross. He knew the disciples were not that prepared.
But what was the relevance to talk about heaven to His disciples? Their immediate response would be grief, anger, fear and a deep sense of rejection/abandonment and loss. Peter even told off Jesus, it should never happen to you!
AMPC Then Peter took Him aside to speak to Him privately and began to reprove and charge Him sharply, saying, God forbid, Lord! This must never happen to You! (Matthew 16:22) NCB Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord. Such a fate must never happen to you.” (boldness and highlight added by this blogger)
Peter was a normal person. It was normal for him to think that nothing bad should ever happen to Jesus, their master and teacher and the Messiah for Israel. But Jesus immediately rebuked the spirit behind Peter’s very human thought. Peter thought, bad things could happen to anyone but not to Jesus, who was such a good and perfect man.
Good men and women from churches have been dying in younger ages than expected. Many Christians are asking, why do good Christians-ministers, preachers, and Bible teachers- die before a full age? Coming back to Peter’s thought, why should Jesus go through the horrific and humiliating suffering and death process? Surely He deserved a better “fate”. Surely Jesus should live a full age right into a century or more. He is not just anybody. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God! (Matthew 16:16)
Jesus knew peter’s thoughts, said and unsaid. He knew the other disciples (apostles and disciples) would think the same too. In John 14 Jesus first spoke of what heaven has for them. The first thing He told them was the many mansions. Imagine the vast expanse of heaven, the home of God the Father and Jesus the Son.
Imagine the ironical scenario when Jesus said this cheerful notes, full of positive expectation and encouragement. In fact He was soon going to be betrayed into the hands of the enemies who would humiliate, torture and then killed Him that same night. He would have to go through the agony in His soul praying alone in the Garden of Gethsemane to the point that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. (Luke 22:44) (Meanwhile the disciples, even the three closest friends Peter, James and John were sleeping) How can anyone remain cheerful and talk about heaven instead in such an evil night like that with the spirit of death looming overhead?
Jesus can. He knows heaven. He is from heaven. And heaven is as real if not more real to Him always, all the days of His earth life. At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus told Nathanael who was brought to him by another disciple Philip, PHILLIPS “Do you believe in me,” replied Jesus, “because I said I had seen you underneath that fig-tree? You are going to see something greater than that! Believe me,” he added, “I tell you all that you will see Heaven wide open and God’s angels ascending and descending around the Son of Man!” (John 1:51)
It is a normal life for Jesus to be living in the spiritual realm. And He expected His disciples to do so. He had made it easier for them and for us by giving us the Holy Spirit. History after the cross and resurrection have proven this truth after the first pouring out of the Holy Spirit, filling all the apostles/disciples of Jesus Christ on the Pentecost Day, just as Jesus had promised. A change to Jesus’ heaven-ward perspective transformed man’s life. Thus, The apostle Paul boldly declared,
1 Corinthians 15:55-58
55 “O[a] Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
2024-03-24
AAA watchman 
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