Gooding, David: When I Go Away

Gospel of John, chapter fourteen. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. 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, will receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go, you know the way. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest. How know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father. From henceforth ye know him and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I say unto you, I speak not from myself, but the Father abiding in me, he doeth his works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father. Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask me anything in my name, that will I do. If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments. I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him. Ye know him, for he abideth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you desolate. I come unto you. Yet a little while, and the world beholdeth me no more, but ye behold me. Because I live, ye shall live also. In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself unto him. Judas, not Iscariot, saith unto him, Lord, what is come to pass that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, 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 with him. He that loveth me not, keepeth not my words, and the word which he hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. These things have I spoken unto you while yet abiding with you. But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye heard how I said to you, I go away and I come unto you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced because I go unto the Father. For the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye may believe. I will no more speak much with you, for the prince of the world cometh, and he hath nothing in me, but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence. The Lord himself draw near and teach us. I want to speak this afternoon, addressing myself particularly to my fellow young Christians, on that provision which our Lord Jesus made for us by going away. There are, among others, two provisions which our Lord has made for us, the one by his dying on the cross, the other by his going back to heaven. Now, all of us are very familiar with the provision he has made by dying on the cross. We know that thereby he was able to bring us forgiveness of sins and peace with God. And we revel in that fact and find in that glorious fact that we have forgiveness through his blood, strong motive to wish to serve him and to please him. But we shall find in Christian life that gratitude to the Lord for our salvation, good as it is, isn't strong enough to keep us ever living a holy life pleasing to the Lord. It is perhaps a lesson that we learn somewhat slowly when we are first saved, and in those times when the memory of our Lord's death comes clear upon us, we feel such gratitude to the Lord that we say to ourselves we would willingly die for the Lord, we would give the Lord our all, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small. We know very well that so often the gratitude escapes. Life's temptations and life's monotonies are too much for us. We are left bewailing, oh wretched man that I am, when I would do good, evil is present with me. It will be an enormous help to us in our spiritual life if we learn early on that gratitude to the Lord for having saved our souls, while it is exceedingly good and may lead us to wash his feet with our tears and wipe them with the hair of our head, isn't by by itself enough to lead us into holy living. It is for this reason that our Lord made this other great provision for us by going away. It's expedient, he said to the puzzled disciples, that I go away, and for the life of them they couldn't see the point. How was it good, they said to themselves, that he should go? While he is with us, he is such a tremendous power beside us, such a big influence to keep us in the ways of God. We go to him in our fears, we go to him in our perplexity. How can it possibly be good for us to go away? But he himself explained that unless I go away, the Holy Spirit won't come. By going away, he began to teach them, he was going to make it possible for himself to come and live not beside them, but in them. Though it is a very blessed thing to have the Lord beside one, it is an exceedingly more blessed thing to have the Lord within one. This is, you may call it the one major half of Christianity. Christ not merely for me at the cross, but Christ in me throughout life. But says somebody, what do you really mean? Uh, bring it down to brass tacks. I know it sounds nice in the Bible and in theological texts and hymns, Christ in me. But, um, what do you actually mean? Do you actually mean that at some time Christ comes literally inside you? Says someone, do you really mean that sitting on this seat here in this room, I have our Lord Jesus Christ in. What do you mean in me? Well, that puzzled more than us. It is distinctly encouraging to find that it puzzled the early disciples. It was so new and novel. They didn't know whether to believe their ears or to take it literally, or what to make of it. And in their puzzlement, they broke in on our Lord's conversation and plied him with questions. I like those disciples for that. You know, there are some teachers, and they are so terribly severe that even if you didn't understand what they meant, you dared ask them for fear they might bite your head off. Our Lord wasn't one of those teachers. And as he proceeded, I think I see him every now and again halt a little bit with a curious look in his eye to see whether it has sunk in, and knowing all the while it hasn't yet sunk in. Giving the disciples their chance to ask him again what he really meant. And I like those disciples for being brave themselves. You know, there are some students. And they don't really understand what the teacher is saying. And they would really like to ask a question and find out a bit more what he means, but then... I wouldn't like, uh, my friend next door to know that I didn't know. If I asked a question and said, uh, what do you mean there, everybody would think I was terribly silly. I'd say, look at him now, fancy him not knowing that two and two makes four, he must be a chump. And so they pretend they understand. And when life's examinations come, the examinations prove that they never did understand. But in our Lord's presence, somehow people lost their fear. It will be well for us this afternoon if we can lose ours and admit our ignorance and, uh, tell the Lord we don't know, and what's more, we don't understand, and ask the Lord to tell us again. Lord, what do you mean by living in me? I know, said the Lord. Let not your heart be troubled. There never was a stranger putting together of words than this. Peter, he said, before the cock crow twice, thou has shalt deny me thrice, let not your heart be troubled. He was, on the one hand, announcing to Peter his gravest fall, and in the very next breath saying, and let not your heart be troubled, Peter. He was telling us two things. He was telling us that there is enough in our hearts to cause any single one of us, however exalted we may be, to fall grievously and to fall unexpectedly. We need to remember it. He was telling us that even though he knows our tendency to fall, he has a something else to tell us that will make our hearts steady and take from them fear and dread and assure us that he has a way that in the end will make us perfectly holy. What is holiness, you say? Does it consist in not going there and not doing this and uh, toeing all the rule, the lines of the rules? Well, not first and foremost, it isn't. True holiness is a love of the Lord. True holiness is a following after a person. It says our Lord to Peter, Peter, and you others, let not your heart be troubled, for I'm going away, and I'm going away to prepare a place for you, so that I can come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. I'm going to arrange it that one of these days you're going to be where I am. That is the secret of holiness. That is the secret of heaven. We shall be where Christ is. My brother, if you love the Lord, you are three parts on a way to holiness. Let not your heart be troubled, he said, in my father's house are many mansions. And I go to prepare a place for you, not, we notice, prepare you for the place that he did when he died on the cross. I go, he said, to prepare the place for you. One of those many places. I was talking yesterday to your learned astronomer, the learned Dr. Lindsay of your Armara Ob- uh, uh, Observatory. He was telling me a conversation he had with a Christian not so long ago. And, uh, this good Christian asked him, Dr. Lindsay, do you believe there's life on other worlds? He said, yes, I do, most certainly. Oh, but said his friend, that's not in the Bible anywhere. Isn't it, he said. But doesn't your Bible say, in my Father's house there are many mansions? I go to prepare one of them for you. What do you think all the others are for? To let or something? No, no. This is a vast world, and God's word itself tells us that inhabiting his father's house, in some of those mansions, there are vast beings, principalities, powers, mights, and dominions. He has gone to prepare in those lofty places a place for humble you and humble me. Oh, what a glorious thing. But you know, before he gets us there, in one of those many mansions that he shall prepare. He's going to prepare us to live in the mansion. So he went on to explain, and he said, you know, I'm going, and uh, whither I go, you know the way, don't you? And I fancy there was a pause as he said it, for he knew right well I didn't know. He was waiting for them to be frank enough and honest enough to tell him they didn't know. And presently Thomas blurted it out when he said, excuse me, Lord, um, um, I don't even know where you're going to start with, he said. How on earth can I know the way there? What is the way? To whom our Lord replied, Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one cometh unto the Father but by me. Did you notice that when he replied, he gently changed the wording a bit? First of all, he is talking about the Father's house, and he's coming again to take us to the Father's house, and that will be wonderful. But now he turns and he talks not of taking us to the Father's house, but taking us to the Father. There's a difference, isn't it? Sometimes on my holidays, I, uh, take a journey and go around one of England's stately homes. It's a pleasant way of spending an afternoon. It's moderately cheap. You pay your tombsix and you enjoy, enjoy all the furniture and all the paintings, and you don't have to pay any rates and taxes to keep it up or anything of the sort. It's a pleasant afternoon. But you know, there's a difference between going to a stately house and going to the lord and lady of that house. I've been through many estatey homes, and I haven't even set eyes on my lord and lady. And they never once asked me to tea, and they never told me anything about themselves, nor made friends of me or gave me the chance of making friends of them. I know them no more now than before I went. And you know, going to heaven will be wonderful, but there's something exceedingly more wonderful than going to heaven. And that is going to the Father himself. Heaven will be wonderful, walking around, you say, on golden streets. Oh, but you can soon get used to that. I don't know whether it will be anything more wonderful than running around on the tarmac, to be honest, in the end. You'll get used to it very quick, won't you? The wonder of heaven is the people that you'll meet. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. How do I come near the Father? How do I get to know the Father and make friends with him? How can I get near him? Of course, said our Lord, continuing the conversation, if you'd known me, Philip, you would have known the Father anyway. In fact, he says, from henceforth, um, you, um, have seen him and you, you do know him, don't you? I fancy there was a pause again in the conversation while Philip made up his mind to confess his ignorance when he said, I'm sorry, Lord, he said, but really, uh, I that I was just thinking just now, if only you'd show us the Father, then that would settle it, you know, and that would be enough. Show us the Father, he said. Why, wouldn't it be wonderful to see the Father? Go on, Lord, he said, don't let us wait till we get to heaven. Show us the Father, and that w- that's all we would ask for. But said our Lord, our Philip, have I been so long time with you and you haven't known me? Don't you realize, Philip, that, uh, he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father? Well, anyway, he said, gentlemen, if you don't believe what I say, believe the works. You tell me, he said. You've seen my works, you've seen me raise the dead, you've seen me cure the leper, you've seen me give sight to the blind. Now you tell me, how do you think I do those works? He says, the, um, the words I speak, I speak not from myself, but the Father dwelling in me. He doeth his works. There must have come a hush over that room, don't you think? As for perhaps the first time, some of those men caught a glimpse of what this really meant. Sitting across the table in that humble upper room sat the Father himself, incarnate in the person of Christ. That was a magnificent temple down the road, adorned with all sorts of festive offerings. Music was glorious, the intoning of the Psalms was fascinating. That temple was but a shell. There was something far more glorious in that human personality, that divine personality, that Jesus of Nazareth that sat the other side of that table. God was in him. The Father was in. And we noted with great interest that our Lord still was conscious of his own personality, the words I speak. I speak not from myself. Still conscious of his own personality, but at the same time conscious that the words and the works came not in their origin from himself. The Father abiding in me, he doeth his work. How sacred. If I hadn't to wait now until they got up to one of those many mansions to meet the Father. Christ is the way not only to heaven, Christ is the way to the Father. He shows us men and women how to come near to God, so very near, nearer we couldn't possibly be. See it in him that the Father was not next to him, the Father was in him. Just as the Shekinah glory of God had dwelled in the tabernacle and in the temple of Allah. I say it shone a lust around that room. It made the ordinary tablecloth glow white. It made the humdrum knives and forks sacred vessels in the ministry of God's servant. That wasn't all. I am the way to the Father, for it's not only true of me, but, uh, the argument's going to be, this is what I'm going to make possible for you. There's coming a day when it will dawn on you, and you will know it, that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, and I am in you. In you. It's a lovely thought, isn't it, to stand, uh, by your office desk or by your blade in the factory and feel you are working for the Lord. It's an even more profound thing to know as you stand by your kitchen sink that the Lord's working in you. But this is Christianity, nor any task too humble to be performed. The Lord himself lives in us. Ah, my brother, this is much more than mere gratitude driving us to try and live for the Lord's glory. This is the Lord himself living in us. Does not mean that our personalities will be obliterated. We shall still be able to say meaningfully I and myself. We ought increasingly to be able to say, but not I so much, but Christ who lives in me. I am the way, he said. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. But then he said more. I am the truth, he said. No one cometh unto the Father but by me. I am the truth. You see, there's need not only of a way to come. If ever we're going to come right near the Father, we shall need to know the truth. How so? Well, we know it from ordinary daily life. Here is Mr. Jones, and here's Mr. Brown, and they're sitting right next to each other. They had to anyway, because there wasn't a seat left when they came in. If they had have done, Mr. Jones would have sat rather a long way off Mr. Brown, but there weren't any more seats left, so Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones had to sit right bang next to each other, and they're as near, so near they're touching. Cool. But in heart, they're millions of miles off. Why is that? Oh, well, because Mr. Jones, uh, has heard it said that Mr. Brown has been saying a lot of things behind his back, uh. And suspicions and enmities and jealousies and hatreds and spite and misunderstandings have come in. Oh, you can't see them. But those misunderstandings and those envies and jealousies and angers, they have put Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones miles apart. Coming to the Father doesn't mean merely coming and sitting beside the Father. Coming to the Father means coming to know the Father, intimately as a friend, coming to trust the Father. And even yet there are barriers between us, huh? All the barrier of guilt of sin is gone. That is to say, if we have trusted the Savior. We're not afraid to come now. We know there's no condemnation. We shall never be thrown out. I think most of us, there are still deep-seated misunderstandings and misconceptions of God. We may never know they're there until life's troubles hit us. Sudden bereavement, unexpected loss, long continued trial, and then we ask whether our hearts don't begin to say, why is God allowing this? And is it really, can I still believe that, uh, all his promises are true? You'll mark that there's still something wrong with us those days and those nights when we find it very hard to thank the Lord and give thanks in everything. You see, my brother, if we got home to heaven, and those misunderstandings of God weren't already banished forever, heaven would cease to be heaven, and its sunshine would become overclouded with suspicions and questions. I can imagine Princess Margaret perhaps one of these days going off to the concentration camps and the throwouts of Europe, and her heart being taken with great compassion for these poor folk, and telling them, look, in my sister's house in England there are many sweets. I'll go back to England and prepare a place for you, and I'll come back again and receive you that, uh, where I am and she is, there you may be also. And so one of the suites in Buckingham Palace is all fitted out, and these refugees are brought in and placed in this glorious apartment. And then maybe they learn something of the etiquette of the palace, and I see some of them, their brows knit a bit and their faces darken. They say to themselves, hmm, you know, this is too good to be true. There's some trap here. Yeah, you wouldn't expect, I mean, the King, Queen of England, I mean, what's she care for us really? Is it likely that she would give us such enormous wealth and comfort as this? No, there's some trap here. You see, poor folks, their only conception of a ruler is some terrible jackboot of a tyrant. They lived in fear and suspicion, dared to reveal their souls, always living a fade of their next neighbor, a withered life. And what years have done is not undone in a moment. I find it difficult to trust the queen in everything she does. It happens like that, you know, with some of us where God is concerned. Here's a little toddler, and his first impressions of God gave him to think that God was such a God of wrath that if the little toddler look- didn't look out, he'd be hell tomorrow. And the little toddler grows up, deep seated within him, there's an awful fear of God to some mighty great being who's conquered his will because the little cat didn't do anything else. Coming right near to the father is going to be difficult for that little fella. Here's a form of the fellow out with the sons. Father? Daddy? Well, if you mention that word, his concept of father is of a big ugly brute of a man that comes reeling home drunk every Friday night, smashing the furniture about and beating his wife. Father is a concept from which this little lad will run right away. And you tell him that God is a father? Whatever is the little lad going to think? He's never known in his early days what it is to nuzzle up against a big warm fellow that spells security for him, and he's missing a big thing in his own psychological development. It'll take God's Holy Spirit some time to undo those impressions. She's a girl. She was the only girl in the family. Because she was the only girl, maybe she was spoiled. Just a few girls occasionally are. Thought the world revolved around her, you know. She never snapped. She never allowed to think she did anything wrong. She ruled the home. When she grew up, she became just a little bit difficult because the world seemed a terrible hard place where there were thousands of other girls appearing around, you know, they all wanted the attention. Well, unless that was only awkward. Her concept of God may be. Is ever someone who just exists at her beck and call. And until that idea gets straightened out, life is going to be difficult. All but the whole lot of us. You stand on my toe and you'll find out what I think of God. You ask me for too much money for the Lord's work, and you'll find out what I think of God. Every time you see me, uh, standing on my personal dignity and demanding my pound of flesh, you'll find out that I haven't yet learned that there's a mighty infinite God in heaven that's looking after my interests. And because I don't really believe that he's looking after them, I'm obliged to look after them myself. And how shall we ever come near him? How shall all these knots be untied and our image cleared, and we know God as God really is. I am the truth, says Christ. The truth about God. The truth about you. No one comes unto the Father but by me, and for that reason, I'm going to pray the Father, and he's going to send you the spirit of truth, that he may be in you, working deep down underneath all those wrong impressions, working down there in the depth of our personality as well as in its conscious heights. He will make God known and dispel the wrong ideas and chase away the bitter thoughts and, uh, free us from our infantile immaturities till we come near the Father in perfect understanding. That's why heaven's going to be heaven, my brother. We shall see then not as through a glass darkly, but we shall see face to face. We shall see God face to face, and we shall see each other, shall we? As the old hymn put it, we shall know each other better when the mists have rolled away. I am away with truth. And the life, he said. No one cometh unto the Father but by me. I am the life. By which you'll come to the Father. Coming to a person in the end, you know, will demand that we have the same life. As I may have told you before, I like dogs. So do you. We get as near to each other as we can, you know, by various means and methods. You coax him around the ear, you give him a bone, you get as near as you can. There's a limit, though, isn't there? So many things about us that dogs don't understand, and for my part, there's so many things about dogs I don't understand either. There is a limit. Because, uh, they don't have the life we have. To know God, you've got to have his life. Yes, said Judas, not Askeri, not Judas Asker, he's gone out, the other Judas. He said, I was thinking there, Lord, now, if you don't mind my butting in at this stage, he said, um, I- I'm a bit puzzled by what you said just a minute ago there. He said that this business of your manifesting yourself to me and to us in general, and not to the world. He said, what has happened exactly? I don't get this. What has happened exactly that you'll manifest yourself to us and not unto the world. Well, that is a point, isn't it? When did the Lord last manifest himself to you? So that you could tell us now what, what, what, what happened? What was it like? What I mean? Can you, can you tell me what it was like? Did the person sitting next to you know? Or see? What does it mean? I mean, supposing it isn't moonshine, this. What does it really mean that, um, the Lord manifests himself to us and not to the world? Well, said our Lord, you see, is this matter of life and love, and if you love me, you'll keep my commandments, he said, and my Father will love you. We will come and make our abode with you. We'll come and make our mansion, and he uses the same word, our mansion with you. You can't have a person living in the house with you without knowing it, can you? Not really. Here's a company of people all sitting around the same table. Elegant society all over the world. And the meeting is going on, and uh, one gentleman sitting here gives a wink to a person sitting across the table there, and out of his pocket he picks a rough bit of stone, and there's a knowing glance goes between them. The other guests look, huh, funny old bit of stone, means nothing. Or it means nothing then. But you know, between these two, that stone, uh, was picked up on a beach, uh, right at the north of Norway somewhere, and a extremely funny thing happened when I was picked up that they'll never forget. There's a something they share, you know, they've only got to show the stone like that, and that, well, the whole thing comes alive. There's a something they've got between them that the others haven't got, you see. How many common, ordinary, daily things of life there are in which our Lord is prepared to manifest himself. Touching one of the things is fishing, for instance. Pete, you know, got his living at one stage by fishing, and he and John and one or two others, they went out one morning to fish. Want to live? They went fishing. Well, fishing's all right. That can be a rather cranny, cold, uh, very much down to earth or down to water sort of a job. Fishing. Ah, but one morning it was a fishing with a difference. They pulled the nets, and the nets were so full. And as Peter tugged at those full nets, you wouldn't have known perhaps, but my, it was tugging up a memory of some years ago. And Peter nudges John, and Peter says, John, that's the Lord, you know. You've never known that? Never known in some ordinary mundane thing of life that the Lord has shown himself to you. You say suddenly, ah, that's the Lord. He waits to make himself known. He's given us the life that we can share with him, understand him and his secret. And it's an eternal life. It shall not perish or decay with the passing of years. Spiritual experience will alter our psychology, maybe, but it isn't dependent on our brains, and it isn't dependent on our physical bodies, though God uses our minds and our bodies for his purpose, yet this knowledge of God goes deeper than that. Some of you have stood maybe by a bed, stood by an elderly life that all its younger days was Christian and bright, and you watch the mind grow dim and raw nature assert itself once more. And ask yourself maybe, has it been all in vain, those years of serious Christian living, those years of Christian discipline of character, has it all gone in vain? Now nature takes over, and childish petty and spite and selfishness assert themselves once more. Ah, my brother, the character that Christ builds, it uses mind and body and emotion for the material of its exercise, but the lessons it learned will remain engraved upon its spirit long after the mid- Only thought to know that Christ was gone and death had come in, that it had severed her from the power that once cleaned her character. But she learned that the life that is the secret of true holiness is a deeper thing than death can touch. I ascend, he said, to my father and your father, to my God and your God. You love me. It will not merely be a me- a matter of waiting to go to heaven. My father and I will come and set up our mansion in the rickety garret of your personality. You think it works? Or is this merely a beautiful theory of the theologians that breaks down at the wash tub on Monday morning? None of us can say, perhaps, that we have, um, proved all its potential. But Earth has seen one demonstration that's proved forever that it works. As Christ rose up from that room, to walk down the stone stairs outside that eastern house into the dark of Jerusalem's night, a night loaded with envy and bitterness and malice. To walk into the very jaws of death, and a horrible death, to walk there, no. To meet the prince of this world and all the forms of rage and fury he could put on, to bludgeon a man's spirit and to sour his soul. Even in the moment that he rose to get up to walk down, he said, peace I leave you. My peace I give unto you. Peace. Ah, that inner peace of knowing that the Father was with him and in him. The conscious peace of a man who knew he had all resource for everything that would come. The Father was in him, and the prince of this world had not so much as a finger grip with him. It works, my fellow believer. There was a man who, beneath his groans and tears, was at peace. And being at peace was strong, and being strong overcame the world and overcame its prince. He leaves that peace to us, not as an attainment to which we frantically and feverishly try to climb, but as a gift, the reality of which we shall increasingly enjoy as we come to realize what it is that Christ has done and is doing for us, what he means by living in In us. us.