I grew
up in the church, and went to church for as long as I can remember, I even went
to lots of chapel services as a student at Bible College and sat through many
revivals yet I cannot recall hearing one sermon on Heaven. We are called to live for the Kingdom of God
so that we don’t go to hell and go to heaven.
I have been told more of what hell is going to be like then heaven. I have heard streets of Gold, rivers of milk
and honey, and all that. I remember
being told that in heaven we are going to be praising God all the time. I often have had this misguided notion that
we are going to be in a church service for eternity. Truth be told when I first thought of doing
this series I thought 4 weeks tops on heaven, after all the bible doesn’t have
that much to tell us about it after all.
I was wrong the bible has a lot to tell us about heaven, the truth is if
we want to live for the kingdom of God we need to understand what heaven
is. I remember the summer before my senior
year in college I was able to take a trip to England and visit the sights that
John Wesley and other great theologians came from. For about a month before going I studied up
on England, watch what the weather was doing so I knew what to pack. I would assume that many of you do the same before
taking a trip somewhere. Yet we don’t
really look at studying Heaven as those that Serve God we know it is where we
are going spend eternity. But for some
reason we never look at it.
This has
not always been true in the past, the early Christians often spoke of
Heaven. In fact in the catacombs where
the bodies of many martyred Christians where buried contain tombs with inscriptions
such as these: “In Christ, Alexander is
not dead, but lives. One who lives with God.
He was taken up into his eternal Home. One historian writes, “Pictures on the catacomb
walls portray Heaven with beautiful landscapes, children playing, and people
feasting at banquets.” In AD 125, a
Greek named Aristides wrote to a friend about Christianity, explaining why this
“new religion” what so successful: “If any righteous man among the Christians passes
this world rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs
and thanksgiving as if he were setting out form one place to another nearby.”
Why shouldn’t they have been excited
for all this, after all Paul wrote “
For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot
tell. For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to
depart and be with Christ, which is
far better.” (Philippians1:21-23)
He also wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 “As long as we are at home in the body we are away from the lord… We…
would to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” (I suggest
reading verses 1-8)
The place
of Heaven is a very real place it is not like some may think of as a place that
spirits just float around and look like a spirit from Charles Dickens A
Christmas Carol. No Heaven and the new
earth is going to be what this earth was meant to be. We must begin to put our focus on Heaven,
living for the Kingdom God because we understand what it is, not because of
what we think it is but because we are to dig into the bible and learn and
begin to understand Heaven. We read in Revaluation
21:1-8, “Now I saw a new heaven and a
new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also
there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for
her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold,
the tabernacle of God is with
men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself
will be with them and be their
God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there
shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain,
for the former things have passed away.
Then He who sat on
the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write,
for these words are true and faithful.”
And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the
Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of
life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit
all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But
the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral,
sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which
burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
I
believe that these verses alone tell us two things, first that Heaven is a physical
place where we are going to be able to spend eternity, with the Holy and an all-powerful
God. Second that we need to not only
make sure we are living for God but we making sure that others come to know God. Christ said in John 14:2-4 “Let not your heart be troubled;
you believe in God, believe also in Me. In
My Father’s house are many mansions; if it
were not so, I would
have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where
I am, there you may be also. And
where I go you know, and the way you know.”
Many people probably get a picture in
there head of Christ up in Heaven with overhauls on and a carpenters belt on
looking at blue prints and building a home for them. But what Christ is saying hear I am on my way
to the cross so that you may entire into Heaven. The price for you get into Heaven is going to
be paid for. All you have to do is
follow me join my Kingdom and leave this earth behind. Come and allow me to show you something
better than this earth. As Paul tells us
in 1st Corinthians 15: 50-56,
“What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that flesh
and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These perishable bodies of ours
are not able to live forever.
But let me
tell you a wonderful secret God has revealed to us. Not all of us will die, but
we will all be transformed. It will happen in a moment, in the blinking of an
eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, the
Christians who have died will be raised with transformed bodies. And then we
who are living will be transformed so that we will never die. For our perishable earthly bodies must be transformed into
heavenly bodies that will never die.
When this happens—when our perishable earthly bodies have
been transformed into heavenly bodies that will never die—then at last the
Scriptures will come true:
“Death is swallowed up in victory. O
death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law
gives sin its power. How we thank God, who gives us victory over sin and death
through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and steady,
always enthusiastic about the Lord’s work, for you know that nothing you do for
the Lord is ever useless.”
*qoutes from Randy Alcorn book Heaven*
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