“If it were not so I would have told you,” (John xiv, 2).
SOMETIMES it is said that the Bible gives us little information about Heaven, but for this view it is not easy always to find support. Our Lord showed his disciples the way to Heaven, expounded the laws of His kingdom, made clear the qualifications necessary to ensure entry, revealed the character and seeking of those counted worthy of eternal life, spoke of the company that is to be theirs, and predicted their position and occupation in the good land. And was it not in connection with these things and His solitary possession of the “words of eternal life” that His disciples voiced one of their clearest confessions: “To whom shall we go, thou hast the words of eternal life?” A definite hope of eternal life filled the bosom of each, and as definitely did this hope fix itself in Christ alone. Were they to see this hope now led away and put to death with Him? Knowing their thoughts, he anticipates their anxiety. The creation and encouragement of this hope were from Him and accepting this responsibility, He hastened to assure them that the ground of it was among the unmoveable things. Upheavals within their lot they were to expect, bewilderment in plenty lay close to hand, but the Father’s house and the many mansions were facts forthwith their earthly lot. Heaven and their portion in it were things so thoroughly accepted in God’s plan that they were entitled to regard them within the economy of grace as ordinary and normal. “It it were not so I would have told you.” Well, now with this precious truth before us, let us see what further encouragement we may find in these words.
The Reality of the believer’s portion in glory. Here before us stands the Lord who alone possesses authority to lay out for them His people’s joys in glory. The Father has delivered all things into His hands and among these things, in Himself, is the eternal portion of His people. Our Heaven is blood-bought and blood-marked, and is as real as are the wounds in His body by which it has been bought. As we cannot call in question the existence of the God-man Redeemer, we cannot doubt His people’s Heavenly portion in Him. He has ascended on high, the gates have lifted up their heads to receive Him, and His people are made to sit in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus. In the annals of glory, Christ is not more surely in Heaven than His people’s portion is sure in Him. Your Lord, not separate from, but bound up with your Heaven, is accepted, recognised and received as in this relationship established with you. Heaven acclaimed not Christ alone, but your Heavenly inheritance in Him also. Since your Heaven is bound up with the deathless One, and with no one else, how real and sure is its existence, and “If it were not so I would have told you.”
Our Lord’s assurance about the future a compensating factor in life. Through their union with Christ, and their association with Him, the disciples were soon to experience great tribulation, and support of a kind made use of by the Lord Himself is here offered to them: “Who for the joy set before him endured the cross.” Heaven, its joys and His peoples’ participation in them are a reality from which futurity can deduct nothing—and, of course, faith annihilates time. “Draw your chair closer to the fire.” So we are invited by our friends to do, and we soon learn that there are no limits set upon the amount of warmth we may absorb to offset the coldness of the night. Thus are we invited to compensate
ourselves for even slight discomforts, and it is our Lord’s will that we should also compensate ourselves for the heavier ills of life. For those of the broken spirit, of a bruised heart, and for the crushing weight of the cross, our Lord has counter-weights all of His own. A well-balanced load is lighter than a half load ill balanced, and the kind hand of re-adjustment is stretched out towards ours in these words: “If it were not so I would have told you.” When a few grains of “the eternal weight of glory” bear down on one part of your load, do you not find a wonderful and unexpected buoyancy come under all of it? How that wearisome drag runs out of it, and how it tilts upwards and swings him forward, many a believer can testify. There in the curseless land, the healing leaves grow in plenty, and each with such potency too, that the application of even one to the many ills of life will be found to work wonders. How the application of these leaves strengthens the ankles, soothes feet, hot and tired, puts the light of glory into dim eyes, and the boldness of a good cause into a fainting heart, many a saint can tell you. And, this is your privilege too. Take then your heaviest burden and fit it with the wings of anticipatory faith, and now direct its flight to the gates of glory. For that long, straight, sustained and much opposed flight, faith will need strength and nourishment. Here these are in plenty: “If it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you.”
There can be no change in our Heavenly Portion. It is possible that the disciples thought that their title to glory required the support of the Lord’s bodily presence, and if they did so they were wrong. How often do we make the same mistake. We think that our claim to eternal life must be supported by a number of things when in truth it requires only one, “the word that liveth and abideth forever.” Through all the changes in their lot, through all the tremendous experiences brought to Him in His two states of humiliation and exaltation, His covenanted word remained as something apart in its abiding detachment from all change. And so we learn that His presence to-day, and loss of it to-morrow, are things of time, but that His covenanted word passed on our Heavenly state, is eternal. Forthwith the furtherest bounds of time His word has passed on, and there on the immutable walls of a Redeemer’s eternity it has carved our names, “Abide in me and I in you . . . If it were not so I would have told you.” He knew that soon he was to be delivered, mocked, judged, condemned, esteemed a worm and no man. He knew that while He promised Heaven, he was shortly to lose all—followers, name, clothes, life, the company of angels, and of His Father. Soon, very soon, they might well say: “And out of this deep poverty He is giving an assurance of the riches of glory!” He knew too that when these things would happen they would have a devastating effect on these same disciples. Yet see him stand before them with this assurance. He remains unmoved and unshaken in his hope of their eternity. Grasping in omnipotent control all the ages of both eternities, would we expect Him to be otherwise than calm and assured? Soon, the wounds in His hands would become the eternal tokens of that authority gifted Him by the Father, whereby He should put His Heaven at the disposal of His redeemed people. “If it were not so I would have told you.” Let not every whiff of wind across your sky, nor any doubting word in your ear, mark the boundary of your ultimate things. The things of your glory are beyond with Christ in God, and “If it were not so I would have told you.”
Definiteness. As an article of belief, most readily do we underline “Heaven,” but our own position in it, we as often indicate by a very decided question mark. Difficulty of thinking on anything but the present stress and pain is one of the handicaps of conflict: Pain absorbs the present and the future, for through it, the best-founded hopes of to-morrow are rendered unreal and indefinite. So it was with the disciples. Present sorrow robbed them of the power to hope in a future. The warning words of Christ, the tenseness of the atmosphere, now so hostile, the approaching darkness, the menace hidden in each of the many crooks in their now forbidding path, filled them with thoughts too heavy to as much as glimpse a future glory. But out upon their morass of things unsubstantial, unreal and threatening, steps the Lord. His step is firm, His footing unyielding—it is rock. By the Ancient of Days and with the deliberation of omnipotence, and on the ageless rock of Heaven’s guest list, each unfaltering word is written, “If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” With this positiveness and with this clarity only God can speak of the mansions of God’s preparing. No number of words added to this statement can make it more definite, and no mere event on whatever scale can wrest this thought from the heart of God, this purpose from His holy will, nor frustrate this act of supreme love. There is nothing more definite in relation to the eternity of each disciple than this, “If it were not so I would have told you.”
Challenge. Our Lord’s assertion here is designed to challenge doubt. Your right to the good things of Canaan is founded upon covenant provision, promises, obligations and relationships. Heaven and everything necessary for its possession in full, are things secured by the blood of the everlasting covenant. Soon, very soon, the disciples were to experience to the full the bitterness of their defection from the Lord, and guilty consciences, shame-filled hearts, bitter memories and deep self-loathing were to fill up their “season of heaviness.” Yet these grievous but gracious states were to lie very close to their Heaven. It was He who alone could measure the extent of their guiltiness, He against whom their sin was most readily directed who assures them, “If it were not so I would have told you.” The place of His preparing was never on the ground of human merit and always in spite of His people’s sins. Rest assured therefore, that if there has been an effectual calling, there will also be a Heaven; if there is repentance, forgiveness, peace through the Blood, renewal, communion with God through our Lord Jesus, there is also Heaven beside these. The covenant cannot bespeak these into your life without in the same breath speaking of your Heaven. “According to God’s own purpose and grace which was given them in Christ Jesus before the world began.” As surely as the election of God predestined you in Christ to these gracious states, so surely did He predestine you to Glory. Sorrow, self-reproach, loathing and felt unworthiness, and all the other states which give rise to doubt are met by a challenge from Him, the knowledge of whose person and nature is the immediate source of these experiences. “If it were not so I would have told you.” These gifts, following the knowledge of Him and of yourself, are the sure tokens of the Spirit of the Covenant, and bespeak a preparation in you for that place prepared for you under covenant provision. The covenant stands. “If it were not so I would have told you.”
He offers His word alone as ground of hope. The circumstances were such as might lead one to expect some spectacular demonstration given in support of His words. There was none. He drew no curtain aside. He exposed to view no Heavenly hosts. He directed no angelic choir to attend on His words. Supernatural voices and thunderings there were none. No, nothing but the voice, still and small, on that night made noisy by evil clamour. From this we should learn to expect no outstanding sights nor sounds to attend our departure from time to eternity. The passing of a soul to eternity is an experience solemn and impressive, yet for the undertaking of it Heaven promised us nothing beyond The Word. No, nothing as an additional strength to faith. No, nothing as a particular support to hopes of loved ones soon to mourn. Nothing but the word, the bare word, the unassisted word. No, nothing but silence, vast and tremendous, except that word, “If it were not so I would have told you.” We are called to step out of this world. we are called to embrace and welcome a world largely unknown to us, and for this solemn undertaking, beyond His simple word, the Lord offers us no guarantee that all will be well with us. The word and faith in it, that is all. Of all the doings wherewith faith honours its Lord, surely among its greatest is this last act. “These all died in faith.” Can you pass out of time and believe glory is to be your new home and, for that, depend on no more than a simple promise? Do you doubt that blessings so weighty can possibly depend on a thread apparently so weak? Do you fear that “faith like a little child” can never introduce you to blessings so precious? A little further back I referred to His word as a naked word. Others speak of it in this way, too, but all of us err. No word of Christ’s is a naked word. Every word is clothed with the divinity of His Person as the Son of God: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” No nakedness there: “full of grace and truth.” His promise is weighted down with the preciousness of His own Person, and so the words, “If it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you,” reach you as the bridge made strong by the merits and efficacy of His Saviourhood. The word spoken is as substantial as the Word made flesh. To launch out into eternity resting on His Word of promise is nothing less than to lay one’s soul down upon the broad and mighty bosom of Immanuel. “I will lay me down and quiet sleep will take . . . and to thy glory afterwards receive me to abide.” Yes, without fail every one of them shall find it so, for “if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”—Penuel.