East Baptist Church – Denison, TX

The Hope Given In the Upper Room Looking To Easter

John 14:1-6

In a very short time the world of the eleven is about to cave in around them and cover them in darkness that would bring them into utter chaos. Jesus for Whom they had not only given up so much to follow, loved, and risked their very future on was going away all the way to Heaven (DEATH).

John 13:36 (NASB77) ³⁶Simon Peter •said to Him, “Lord, where are You going?” Jesus answered, ” Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you shall follow later.”

When death comes it is such a dark painful, bewildering, confusing, and anxious time to have to live through. The promise that we see made in the Upper Room is just as relevant today as it was as the 11 gathered around the Lord’s Supper.

¹Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.

Hear our Lord in

John 16:33 (NASB77) ³³These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

In the summing up of what hope we have in His victory won in the darkness we see the Wording speak as if the triumph is already done. That is HOPE that moves us all the way into eternity. 

To put the promise of going to prepare a place for you in context, we need to see Chapter 14 begins where Our Lord’s Words about Peter’s failure leaves off.

John 13:38 (NASB77) ³⁸Jesus •answered, “Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a cock shall not crow, until you deny Me three times.”

This is the love of Christ on full active display. And yet Jesus’ love is so strong that He Himself goes to prepare a place for a sinner like Peter and me. WOW!

The Love reaches past the pain He was in and the pain He is about to take on Himself because of that very love that was the only path to HOPE and it is preached as Our Lord faced the nails, the spit of mockers, the evil of our sin and the feeling of the Father abandoning Him. Can you not hear the pain as he hangs on the cross between Heaven and earth:

Matthew 27:46 (NASB77) ⁴⁶And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ” ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?” that is, “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?”

 I would like for us to understand that John 14:6 prepares the way for the writer of Hebrews to proclaim:

Hebrews 10:19-20 (NASB77) ¹⁹Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,  

Please do not walk away from our Upper Room this Lord’s Day without seeing that Easter is summed up by Jesus not being a way, but the Way, not a Truth but the Truth not a Life but the Life.

John 14:6 (NASB77) ⁶Jesus •said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me”