IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE

John 14:2-3

“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. ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” John 14:2-3

The scripture is some of the favorite verses of the rapture waiting believers worldwide. They have been told that Jesus is building some mansions for them and when they reach heaven Peter is going to allocate each one their specific mansion. They have been singing and waiting patiently for it.

The above verse confused me for many years because nowhere else in the Bible we read that Jesus is doing any construction projects in heaven. As far as I know all the works Jesus had to do were already accomplished or finished.

 

There are two phrases in the above verses. They are “in My Father’s house are many mansions” and “I go to prepare a place for you.”

• The first phrase says there are and not there will be.
  • That means whatever mansions Jesus was talking about ARE ALREADY in existence when Jesus was talking this.
  • Then the next phrase says He is going to prepare a place for us.

• What do those phrases really mean and what did Jesus mean by them.

 

Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions”

• The first question is where and what is His Father’s house?
  • Are there any other references to the Father’s house in NT?
    • Another verse that says “My (Father is saying) House shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Matthew 21:13: Isaiah 56:7).
    • Father’s house is the place where He dwells.
      • In the Old Testament it began with Adam.
        • Adam was the dwelling place of God.
        • When he sinned God couldn’t dwell in man anymore.
        • So He dwelt in a tent called tabernacle, and then in the temple.

In the New Testament we are His dwelling place or the temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19-20).

Heaven is not referred in the Bible as “My Father’s house”

• Heaven is God’s throne (Isaiah 66:1).

The first rule of interpreting the Bible is we need to interpret scriptures with other scriptures.

If we remove or take one verse independently from others, we will not receive the whole picture, or the meaning Holy Spirit wants. Instead we will go into error.

So let’s examine John 14 and see where Jesus said He was going and what He was going to do when He went and how long He was going to be gone?

The Greek word used for mansions in John 14:2 is Mone.  Which means abide, dwell or abode (in KJV) and not like the mansions we think of by a lake side!!

The Greek word used for place in the same verse is topos, which means a place or a portion of space marked and separated from others.

When Jesus said He was going, the disciples became curious and wanted to know where He was going and they wanted to go with Him. So the discourse goes on between them.

I don’t have the time here to mention all the verses. But I mention a few

10  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.

We thought Jesus was going to the Father, but in above verses He says the Father dwells in Him and He is in the Father and the Father is in Him.

• So, the question becomes – where did He go then?

Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus. He who has seen the Son has seen the Father.

• Please keep this thought in your heart (even if it sounds confusing for a minute).
• They are not my words but Jesus’ own.

18  I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

• This is the coming He is talking about in verse 3,
  • Once the place He is going to prepare is ready He will come again and receive them to Himself.
  • So that He can be where we are and we can be where He is.
    • We are in Him and He is in us.

19 “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. 20 At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.

Above verses are talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit that Jesus talked about it in vs 16-17.

• Through the Holy Spirit the Father and the Son comes and make us their dwelling place.

Then verse 23 is key in understanding the Father’s house. “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.’”

The Greek word for home in the above verse is the same one used in verse 2 for mansions.

• In one verse it is translated mansions to mislead the readers and in verse 23 it is translated as home.
  • Mone is the same Greek word used in both occasions.

Those are the only two places the Greek word Mone is used in the entire New Testament.

• It doesn’t mean a house or a mansion as we think of, because the Greek word for house used in verse 2 is oikia.
  • The word Mone simply means a dwelling place or staying. (abide/dwell/abode)

When Jesus said in My Father’s house there are many mansions it actually means, in My Father’s house there are many dwelling places.

• Humans are His Father’s house and each of us provide Him a dwelling place or a place to abode.

Jesus is saying He and the Father and the Holy Spirit (vs 16-17) will come and make their abode or dwell with us and in us and we become the dwelling place or the mansion for them on the earth.

As a born again believer, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit is in us.

• Then Jesus also said, the kingdom of God is within us (Luk3 17:21).
  • I hope this makes us understand the value of a human being of who we really are and what we carry inside us.

Verse 28 says, “You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’

• If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.”

Right now we are seated in Him in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6), so that fulfills what He said, “Where I am, there you may be also” in verse 3.

“And raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

• Right now we are seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
• We are in heaven and on the earth at the same time.
• We have dual citizenship.
• We have access to heaven and on earth.
• We are spiritual and natural at the same time.

Nowhere else in the Bible do we read that Jesus is building mansions for us in heaven.

• But the Bible is very clear on where He is and what He has been doing, since He ascended to heaven.

There are SEVEN verses in the New Testament that says the Father told the Son to be seated at His right hand until He makes all His enemies His footstool.

• Until that happens Jesus is not going to get up and do anything.

Below are one of those verses.

“But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. ¹⁴ For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.” Hebrews 10:12-14

Now let us examine the phrase “I go to prepare a place for you.”

• It is God’s desire to dwell in humans from the beginning of time.
• He created us and gave us a body so that He can receive a legal right to operate in the physical world.
• God is Spirit and any spirit without a body is illegal on earth.
• For any spirit to do anything legally someone with a physical body needs to give permission.

That is why God created us with a physical body.

• We are not our body, we are spirit beings living in a body.
• When we lose our body we become illegal and have to leave the earth.
• When man sinned God lost that privilege, which means He could not dwell in us anymore.
• Our sin had to be remitted before God could dwell in us again.

That is why Jesus came.

• He paid the price and shed His blood on the cross and the price of our redemption was paid in full.
• But it has to be remitted in heaven.
• When Jesus spoke those words in John 14, He was on the earth.
  • He had not returned to heaven yet.

Once He died and rose again He had to ascend to heaven to present His blood and offer it in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle that is in heaven.

We read about it in the book of Hebrews

“But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. ¹² Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”  Hebrews 9:11-12

At some point Jesus entered the most Holy Place in heaven and obtained eternal redemption.

• Until that was done the Father’s requirement was not fully met.
• That is why Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you.”
  • Means He is going to heaven (the heavenly realm) and tell the Father everything is accomplished and now it is okay to make rooms in (Him) His heart for His children and for Him to come and dwell in them.

That place Jesus mentioned that He was going to prepare was the place in our Father’s heart.

• Each of us has a specific place (room) in the (heart of the) Father.
  • As His sons, each of us are created to reveal a unique attributes, quality or the nature (image and likeness) of the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit to the world.
  • That is why He said He and Father will come and make their home in us in the above verse.
  • The broken relationship between the Father and children is reconciled through the blood of Jesus.

“Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. ²⁴ For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” Hebrews 9:23-24

The Real Building Project

The Bible says there is a building project that is going on the on the earth today.

• That project is going on inside every believer worldwide.
• This project is of a temple that is being built for God.
• Even though God dwells in each believer, one person cannot carry or contain or manifest the fullness of God.
• It takes the entire human species to manifest the fullness of God.
  • His creativity, love, wisdom, power, wealth are unfathomable.

“May be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— ¹⁹ to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:18-20).

“Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13)

The above mentioned task is the responsibility of a five-fold ministry gift.

• Now the Body of Christ has been divided into millions of pieces.
• Because of the self-appointed and selfish ambitious shepherds.
  • The church is supposed to be built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, but the current church system has been hijacked or kidnapped by pastors.

• Pastors are not equipped to train a believer to fulfil their purpose and calling, they can only maintain, they don’t have the right tools to release a person’s kingdom destiny.
  • Neither can they bring unity in the body of Christ.

It is when the entire believers come together as ONE BODY of Jesus Christ, the fullness of God, Christ and His kingdom will manifest on the earth and will be made visible to everyone.

• Just like the Israelites lived as one nation under God though they were twelve distinct tribes.
• We are supposed to live as one nation (church is a nation 1 Peter 2:9; Matthew 21:43) under God.

Church – Temple – Nation

This building project has not been completed yet.

• It is still going on,

We read about it again in Ephesians 2: 19-22 “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

God is busy building this temple for Him, which is the body of Christ worldwide, but we have been fragmented into millions of pieces.

• God’s eternal plan is to dwell in humans and make them His holy temple.
• I believe the only message that will unify the body of Christ is the message of the kingdom of God.
• We have tried everything else and did not work.

Each one of us are living stones that God uses to build this temple (scp).

• Jesus Christ is the Corner Stone. (scp)

Then Finally we read in Revelation 21:3 “And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.”

“But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” (Revelation 21:22)

That is the conclusion of the mystery of God. “But in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.” Revelation 10:7

Part 2

Second rule of interpreting the Bible is, whenever we interpret a verse we need to interpret it in the light of God’s eternal purposes.

• If a verse doesn’t support one of God’s eternal purpose (there are seven), that means there is something missing from it.
• May be what is missing in it, is mentioned somewhere else in the Bible.
• We need to search and find it.

Hope you remember the three eternal purposes we learned in the Kingdom School course

1. One of them is, “It is God’s eternal purpose for mankind to rule this earth with Him and on behalf of Him.”

Nothing will change that purpose.

Genesis 1:26 and Revelation 22:5 says the same thing about our purpose.

As I say, God did not create Adam to die, death came because of sin.

• If Adam did not sin and die where would he be today?

Revelation 1:6; 5:10; 11:15 all talks about our eternal purpose and position in Christ Jesus and on the earth.

Sorry if I spoiled your dream of having a mansion in heaven. That was not my intention. If rapture happens today we will go to heaven for a short break, to wait until we can come back to earth with Jesus to rule and reign here.

Our purpose is connected to planet earth in this life and in the next.

Let’s learn everything we can on how to fulfill that purpose here on earth before we leave.

That’s my mission and that’s the goal. To equip the body of Christ to discover their kingdom assignment and fulfill it before they depart.