A Prepared Place For A Prepared People
A Prepared Place for a Prepared People
Excerpted from “A Prepared Place for a Prepared People” Sermon #2751
Delivered on Lord’s Day evening, May 25, 1879, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
There is a certain longing for home that will be fulfilled only on the New Earth. Even now, Jesus is preparing our true home for us—a literal, physical place we can anticipate. As Spurgeon puts it, this place will be “the best of the best”!
The King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Matthew 25:34
My real text is not from the Bible; it is one of those Christian proverbs which are not inspired in words but the spirit of which is inspired: “Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.”
Yet I shall have two texts from the Scriptures. The first will be our Savior’s words to his disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2), from which we learn that “Heaven is a prepared place.” And the second will be Paul’s words to the Colossians: “Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12), from which we learn that there is a prepared people, a people made fit to be partakers of the inheritance which Christ has gone to prepare for them.
When we get to Heaven, we shall know—perhaps it may take us a long while to find it all out—but we shall know and discover throughout eternity what he meant when he said, “I go to prepare a place for you.”
I do not profess to be able to explain our Lord’s words, but I am going simply to make a few remarks upon them. First, I ask you to notice that Heaven is already prepared for Christ’s people. Christ has told us that, when he comes in his glory, he will say to those on his right hand, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34). So there is an inheritance which the Father has already prepared for the people whom he gave to his Son, and this inheritance is reserved for them.
But if it was prepared from the foundation of the world, how can it be said to be prepared by Christ? The explanation is probably that it was provided in the eternal arrangements of Jehovah that there should be a suitable place for his people to dwell in forever. He made the pavilion of the sun, and he gave the stars their appointed positions. Would he forget to prepare a place for his people?
He gave to angels their places, and even to fallen spirits he has appointed a prison house. So he would not forget, when he was arranging the entire universe, that a place would be needed for the heirs of grace.
Therefore, in purpose and plan and decree, long before God had laid the foundations of this poor world and the morning stars had sung together over creation’s six days’ work accomplished, he prepared a place for his people. It was not actually prepared, but it was in the purpose and plan of the eternal mind. Therefore it might be regarded as already done.
Our Lord Jesus Christ has gone to Heaven, he says, that he may prepare a place for his servants. We may be helped to form some idea of what he means by this expression if we just think a little about it. First, I am sure that must be a very great and glorious place which needs Christ to prepare it. If we do not know all that he means, we can get at least this much out of his declaration: he spoke this world into being. It was not; but he said, “Be,” and it was at once made. Then he spoke it into order, into light, into life, into beauty. He had but to speak and what he willed was done.
But now that he is preparing a place for his people, he has gone to Heaven on purpose to do it. He used to stand still here on Earth and work miracles. But this was a miracle that he could not perform while he was here. He had to go back to his home above in order to prepare a place for his people. What sort of place, then, must it be that needs Christ himself to prepare it?
He might have said, “Angels, prepare a mansion for my beloved.” He might have spoken to the firstborn sons of light and said, “Pile a temple of jewels for my chosen.” But no, he leaves not the work to them.
Brothers and sisters, he will do it well, for he knows all about us. He knows what will give us the most happiness—and what will best develop all our spiritual faculties forever. He loves us so well that, as the preparing is left to him, I know he will prepare us nothing second rate, nothing that could possibly be excelled. We shall have the best of the best, and much of it; we shall have all that even his great heart can give us.
When it comes to our eternal home, we often imagine that this world as it now is, under the Curse, is our ultimate home. C. S. Lewis writes, “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”a
Theologian Donald Bloesch suggests, “Our greatest affliction is not anxiety, or even guilt, but rather homesickness—a nostalgia or continual yearning to be at home with God.”b
Jesus says, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. . . . I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). The word place is singular, but rooms is plural. This suggests that Jesus has in mind for each of us an individual dwelling that is a smaller part of the larger place.
The word room is cozy and intimate. The term house can also be viewed as “estate”; either way, it suggests spaciousness. That is Heaven: a place both spacious and intimate. Some of us enjoy coziness, being tucked away in a private space. Some of us enjoy largeness, the freedom of a wide-open space. Most of us enjoy both at various times. The New Earth will offer both.
Think of it. The Carpenter from Nazareth promised us, his bride, that he was going to prepare a place for us and would one day come to take us there. Carpenters build things and fix things. Long ago he built a universe that later went wrong, and he’s going to fix it. He has qualities that come in handy in building projects—including being all-knowing and all-powerful.
When this life is over—and particularly when we arrive on the New Earth—God’s children will truly be able to come home for the first time. Because our home in Heaven will never burn, flood, or be blown away, we’ll never have to wonder whether home will still be there when we return. The new heavens and the New Earth will never disappear. They’ll give a wonderful permanence to the word home.
If Heaven is truly our home, we should expect it to have the good qualities we associate with home. Home as a term for Heaven isn’t simply a metaphor. It describes an actual, physical place—a place promised and built by our Bridegroom; a place we’ll share with loved ones; a place of fond familiarity and comfort and refuge; a place of marvelous smells and tastes, fine food, and great conversation; a place of contemplation and interaction and opportunity to express the gifts and passions that God has given us.
Though many of us affirm a belief in the resurrection of the dead, we don’t understand its implications in terms of place. Our truncated doctrine of the Resurrection, which fails to include eternal life on the New Earth, dresses up men and women in bodies, then gives them no place to go! This unbiblical stereotype of the eternal Heaven as a vague habitation of disembodied spirits hurts us far more than we realize. We envision an immaterial and utterly unfamiliar Heaven that might work for angels or ghosts but for human beings would be the opposite of home. No wonder there is such ambivalence and uneasiness about Heaven in our churches.
Bible scholar W. Graham Scroggie puts it this way: “Future existence is not a purely spiritual existence; it demands a life in a body, and in a material universe.”c
When we see the particular place he has prepared for us—not just for mankind in general but for us in particular—we will rejoice. We will realize it is truly the perfect home, tailor made for us.
As Spurgeon says, “Brothers and sisters, he will do it well, for he knows all about us. He knows what will give us the most happiness. . . . I know he will prepare us nothing second rate, nothing that could possibly be excelled. We shall have the best of the best, and much of it; we shall have all that even his great heart can give us.”
a C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 115.
b Donald Bloesch, Theological Notebook (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers and Howard, 1989), 183.
c W. Graham Scroggie, What about Heaven? (London: Christian Literature Crusade, 1940), 93–95.
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