East Baptist Church – Denison, TX

Rejoice That Jesus Is Going Home

John 14:28-31

This is our Lord giving the disciples and all of us His perspective of His upcoming departure to go home to be one again with the Father.

John 14:28 (NASB77) ²⁸“You heard that I said to you, I go away, if you loved Me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.”

In order to get the full impact of what our Lord is saying we need top get a basic understanding of the Trinity. 

 The definition of Personhood: These elements are body, autonomy, and essence. The study of personhood in Russian prison literature is an examination of humans stripped of worldly context.  

We speak of the Father as the First side of the Personhood, the Son as the Second side of the Person, and the Holy Spirit as the Third part or side of the Personhood or Trinity. 

“Because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.” There is order but no rivalry; position but no superiority or inferiority. When Jesus said, “My Father is greater than I,” He was stating a fact having to do with the relationship within the Godhead. 

Again, when Our Lord spoke these words in the Upper Room, He was preparing to go back to His Father, by way of crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. He was about to take back to heaven a battle scarred, glorified resurrection body.

Luke 24:50-53 (NASB) ⁵⁰And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. ⁵¹While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. ⁵²And they, after worshiping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, ⁵³and were continually in the temple praising God.  

His Homegoing was something He anticipated with joy. His excitement and joy should be a source of joy for those who love Him. We can almost hear Him say to his disciples, as He looked into their glum faces, “If you would only look at it from my perspective for a moment, you would be glad because I am going home.”

The Lord gave them the warning in His prediction (14:29):

John 14:29 (NASB) ²⁹“Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.”

Look at how great God’s love for His own is. He knew what chaos and confusion was coming better yet was already under way. He was doing everything he could to bolster their faith—so that, even if it should falter, afterward it would be all the stronger as they recalled this incident. 

I think we also need to get hold of how John tells something we need to meet head on in the next verse about the Lord and the Satan(14:30):

John 14:30 (NASB) ³⁰“I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me;

“Prince of this world” or ruler of the world is one of Satan’s titles used in the Bible. 

After the Lord’s temptation in the wilderness, Satan “departed from him for a season.”

Luke 4:13 (NASB) ¹³When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.

My beloved if Satan never let up on trying to tempt the Lord, why would think he would stop trying to trip us up.