Jesus, tell us about heaven...

“Where Are You Going?”

(John 16:4b-7, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, December 6, 2009)

I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. ⁵ But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, 'Where are you going?' ⁶ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. ⁷ Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

I was with you (4b)

Jesus is on His way to the cross. Judas is off meeting up with the group that he will lead to Jesus in his act of betrayal. Our Lord is speaking to the remaining eleven disciples. His farewell discourse continues from John 14 through John 17. At the end of John 16:4, which is in the middle of this final talk with His disciples, we are told that Jesus is speaking to them about some things that He did not say to them, at least with the same clarity, from the beginning of His time with them. He says that He did not speak of these things because He was with them.

What has Jesus been talking about so far in this farewell discourse that He did not speak about before this time? He is speaking in greater detail and with greater force and clarity about what the disciples will do after He is gone. They will do greater works (14:12). They will have a divine Helper, the Holy Spirit (14:16), and Jesus Himself and the Father will make their home with them (14:23). Especially He has told them that the fruitfulness of the kingdom will involve suffering on their part (15:2), and that this pruning work of God will include their being hated by the world on account of their close association with Him (15:20). He has made it clear that they will be in danger of losing their lives (16:2), but that it will be in the midst of this kind of violent religious environment that they will have the privilege of bearing witness concerning Him (15:27).

There was a time when Jesus was with them in a way that everyone could see. They could hear His voice all the time. They were witnesses of His many miraculous signs. There was increasing opposition against Jesus during the years that He was with them, but He was the focal point of the hatred of enemies. The plans of violence were against Him. All of that was about to change. They would be witnesses of Christ to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The way that people would express their hatred of Jesus would now be against them and their followers. Jesus would be at the right hand of the Father. His disciples would be the new focal point for the wrath of the dragon. One day these specific men would finish their earthly race. Others would take the baton from generation to generation. It can be a costly race for us to run. The Old Testament prophets ran with that baton in the days of preparation. It was eventually passed to John the Baptist. Then Jesus came, but after the cross there was nothing that men could do to Him. It was the apostles who were given the baton, and it has now been passed to us.

What were the benefits of Jesus being with His disciples in His earthly ministry? We were created to be with the people we love and to enjoy the pleasure of their company. The disciples were able to love their Master and to be loved by Him in a way that fits who we are as creatures created in the image of God. They were able to hear His words with their own ears, and to see the results of His signs with their own eyes. We cannot do this today. What we do enjoy are all the eternal benefits of the Lord’s time on earth. It was during the lives of these men that Jesus accomplished all of the obedience required by the Father. His suffering and his death were the crowning achievements of His own race. We have the amazing benefit of all that Christ did as the propitiatory sacrifice that turned God’s wrath aside for us. He did this in His body. Even His resurrection was a bodily fact that was accomplished and witnessed during the time about which Jesus spoke when He said, “I was with you.”

I am going to Him (5-6)

But now as He is going to the cross, the three years of His disciples being with Jesus in that special way is coming to a very abrupt end. It would be easy to assume that His leaving was entirely bad news, but the Lord wants His disciples not to think of this new time just in terms of what they will lack. Their eyes will generally not see Him and their ears will generally not hear Him. Yet this next phase of the life of our Lord can be referred to very positively.

Jesus says to His disciples, “I am going to Him who sent Me.” The Son's going to the Father is a return to the place from which He came. The disciples have not been to this place, and naturally, there is a tendency for them not to be able to understand it, not to be able to talk about or think about the place where Jesus says that He is going. The Son of God is going home to heaven. Though there have been some conversations earlier about where Jesus was going, at this very moment, the disciples are not asking any questions about this place where they have never been, a place that Jesus entirely knows. Why don't they ask Him the obvious questions? When we had visitors from a far-off land, when we became comfortable with them we eventually asked them many questions about their home town. Is it just that the disciples are overwhelmed by the things that Jesus has said to them? Why don't we ask God questions about heaven? Why don’t people regularly seek answers in the Scriptures to their questions concerning the life to come? Could it be that we are so familiar with life here, and so unfamiliar with life there, that we do not even know where to begin? Is it healthy for us to wait till we get there to learn about heaven?

Sorrow has filled the hearts of the disciples. The fullness of their expectations concerning what is real is heavily weighted toward their only experience. This is the same for all of us. We are like those people who have spent all of our lives in one place. We begin to think that maybe no other place really exists. We live on earth, and earth has a problem. It has a problem of decay, of sin, and of misery, but it is all we know. The disciples have known three years of earth with Jesus in the flesh on this earth. Now Jesus is going to the Father, and they do not know what to say and what to think. Of course they are sad about these events. They are being told that Jesus will be gone from them physically, and that they will become the chief targets of those who are angry with God. They are being told that some people will consider it their religious duty to kill them, and that Jesus will be beyond their sight.

There is a connection between our thoughts about heaven and our present experience of the sorrows of earth. The more that we are able to listen to the Word of God with faith concerning the place where Jesus now reigns, the more we will be able to enjoy the moments of life that we have in our remaining years here below. Let this fact sink into your heart: After Jesus ascended to heaven, the church continued to have some very significant Jesus experiences, experiences that made the reality of heaven obvious. These men saw Jesus ascend bodily to another place. Peter was completely convinced that He was performing miracles in the Name of Jesus. The apostles had angelic visitors that had things to say about the continued existence of Jesus. Someone spoke to the apostle Paul and said to Him, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” The apostle John received messages through an angel that were letters from Jesus in heaven to seven churches in Asia Minor. They had no doubt that Jesus was yet alive, and they knew where He was. The more that we can be aware of the truth about heaven from the Bible, the more we will be able to live with joy, though our joy will be rightly mingled with the remaining grief of this age of our earthly existence.

I will send Him to you (7)

Jesus is going to heaven, and He is going there by way of the cross and the resurrection. Everything about this is so full of good news that the significant bad news of what is about to take place in the life of Christ and in the lives of the apostles over the next few decades is not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed from heaven at just the right time. That future glory is a great truth, but even now we have been given a present gift.

Yes, we who live now are to suffer here as the bearers of the baton of Jesus passed down to us through the apostles and through the centuries of the history of the Christian church, but we have the greatest gift of heaven in us: the Holy Spirit. As our Lord excites the imagination of His friends concerning the benefits of His leaving, He tells His disciples why it is so good for them (and for us) that He went away. The pathway of Jesus to heaven was of great advantage to these eleven men and it is also to our advantage. It is only after suffering the death that we deserved for us on the cross, it is only after vindicating His own righteousness through His resurrection, that Jesus, now ascended into the heavenly sanctuary of God, would then send forth to His church the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Considering the wonder and blessing of this gift of a new land and a new era somehow placed within our souls, how can we be satisfied with anything less than this gift of God? Jesus has sent forth to us the Holy Spirit. This could not have happened if He had refused to suffer the death of the cross. The cross was necessary if we were to receive the promise of the Spirit. It was necessary that Jesus would leave, and that He would leave through the one way that would clear our debt to God.

The disciples needed this divine Helper from heaven in order to make them more heavenly minded. They needed to believe that heaven was real, and that Jesus would be going to prepare a place for them there. They needed to be able to rightly value the gift that God would give them after Jesus had gone above. They needed to see the kingdom of heaven as a pearl of great price. The only way for them to see these truths in the suffering work of the church before them was to send forth this gift of the new land and the new era in a person, the eternal Holy Spirit.

It is only by the work of the Holy Spirit that we have the beginning motions of God in our lives, those first steps of true repentance and faith. Jesus called people to turn away from their sins and to trust in Him. We do this by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever asked that God would give you His Holy Spirit so that you might repent and believe? It is also by the work of the Holy Spirit alone that you grow in repentance and faith. Keep asking for His work in your life. Jesus was with His disciples. He went to His Father by way of the cross, and then He sent us the Holy Spirit. This is good news for those who have just heard that the Christian life may mean significant suffering.

1. What did it mean to the disciples to have Jesus with them?

2. Why were they sorrowful concerning His coming departure?

3. Why was it better for us that Jesus would ascend to the Father?

4. Why was it necessary for Jesus to return to heaven in order for the Holy Spirit to be granted to us?