To Encourage You

Acts 1:25 “Judas turned aside to go to his own place.”

In those well-known words from Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home.”  If your home is a good place where love dwells, you would probably agree with those words.  A home is a wonderful thing.  If you are a homeowner one of the things you can say about your house is that it’s “your own place.”  Our home is our own little kingdom. We are in control of who comes into it, and to a large part we control what goes on within its walls.  When we’ve been gone from home, it’s always good to return, as in the sentiment “home for the holidays.”  In that context we think about going home as going to the place where those we love most are.  We associate that place with love. 

Well, spiritually speaking, do you know that there is also a home waiting for us at the time we leave this life.  The verse above refers to this in the life of Judas, infamous for his betrayal of Jesus.  We are told that Judas “turned aside.” It means he turned aside from the path the other 11 apostles, who followed Christ, were on to go on another path. The result was that he ended up in “his own place,” but here the concept isn’t a good one, like when we talk about having our own place here on earth.  It’s interesting that it’s called Judas’ “own” place.  The original Greek word from which this was translated means “pertaining to self, i.e. one’s own; by implication, private or separate.”  Have you ever heard someone joke about hell with words something to the effect of “Yeah, I’m going to hell.  It’s where all my friends will be”?   Well, you should know that friendship is a gift of God, and hell will be a place void of such things.  So, the thought of Judas having his “own place” becomes very sobering, in that the place he went to is a place of overwhelming loneliness.  If you’ve ever been lost in the woods, like I have, it can be a terrifying feeling of being all alone.  The Bible talks about life without a relationship with Christ as a condition of “lostness.”  Just think of a feeling of being all alone, forever and ever.  That’s what hell is.   It’s a person’s very own place, in the most horrible sense. 

In contrast Jesus promised, just before His death, that those who would follow Him and not turn aside as Judas did, would also have their own place, but it’s a place the very opposite of the place where Judas went.  In John 14, Jesus told His disciples that “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”  You see this place, this home in heaven, is a place of fellowship. It’s a place where believers will dwell for all eternity fellowshipping with Jesus Himself as well as with all those who have believed in Him. It’s where the church, His body, will be together like they never have been, as those from all nations and all ages since the beginning of time will be with each other. Wonderfully, it’s a place not for the lost, but for “the found.” 

So, where will your home be when you pass from this life?  Will it be a home like Judas has, your very own, but where you are all alone?  Or will it be a place of fellowship, a place prepared by the Creator for those who love Him, where there is eternal fellowship with “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).  Two places: one a cursed place, one that has been “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41); the other a blessed place, one prepared for believers to dwell in fellowship with Jesus and those who have put their faith in Him.  Where will your place be?