Four Faith Sustaining Promises When Death Makes you Long For Home

I want to go home...

These were the last words I heard Wanda say when I was with her two days before she passed away. It felt like a kind of groaning or longing to return to the place of her childhood.

The whole world understands her groaning. Paul says the all creation groans under the curse of sin like a woman in the middle of childbirth (Romans 8:22-23). All of creation is looking forward to a day when sin and death will be no more. We all long for a sense of Eden. And nothing accentuates that longing more than death.

Wanda was right to long for home. Although death was dimming her eyes to this life, it was making the life she found in Jesus and was promised to her to come more vivid.

This morning I want to give you four promises to sustain you as you grieve, so you can grieve with hope. And I hope that these promises also stir in your heart a deeper longing for the Life Jesus offers you now, and when death comes for you.

We have a kingdom home (Phil 3:20)

Philippians 3:20 ESV

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

By citizenship Paul means to show to what kingdom we belong. Because Philippi was a Roman colony, it enjoyed all the rights and privileges that citizens in Rome enjoyed. It would be somewhat comparable to the rights and privileges those born in Puerto Rico or Guam enjoy being territories of the United States. There was great Roman nationalism in Philippi. Philippi understood what it meant to enjoy their “being Roman” so to speak, despite never once visiting or living in Rome.

Paul is conveying the same idea to Christians. Right now we are sojourners in this life. Earth is a foreign land to us. The moment a person places their faith in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, that person is no longer a citizen of the kingdom of darkness, but is made a citizen of God’s kingdom, a son or daughter in fact, who enjoys all the rights and privileges that come with citizenship. This is an already/not yet promise for you.

You are already a citizen of heaven. Jesus’s atoning sacrifice has justified you, that is he made you pure and righteous to stand in God’s presence. He sealed with you His Spirit guaranteeing your place in His kingdom. You are seated in heavens Paul says in Ephesians.

This already promise works for you because in Christ, death now becomes your Ellis Island. It becomes the port by which you enter the kingdom. But your not entering a foreign land as an illegal alien, but a natural born citizen.

To my understanding, Wanda accepted Jesus as he Savior. When she closed her eyes in death, she awakened them in heaven. She was not welcomed as a stranger or a sojourner. She was welcomed as a child who had been away for a long time and was greeted by her Father and her brothers and sisters. For those of you who are in Christ, let that promise sustain you today.

We have a Savior (Phil 3:20)

Paul says, “We await a Savior.” A Savior from what?

God designed the world as perfect. He made Adam and Eve perfect. He gave them one commandment. Do not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If they eat of it they would surely die (Gen 2:17). Adam and Eve broke this commandment and the world was cursed with sin. The affect of sin is death. That is why we are here this morning. It is appointed for man to die once and them comes judgment (Hebrews 9:27-28). What judgement is coming? Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Death is both physical and spiritual. The second death refers to God’s condemnation on sinners, and this is what we need saving from.

God has promised to judge everyone one of us according to our deeds. All of our deeds, even our most righteous works, are stained with sin (Isaiah 64:6). They are stained with sin because all of us are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1-3). All of us are unrighteous (Romans 3:10). And Jesus says every careless word you’ve ever said and deed you’ve ever done will be held against you (Matthew 12:36).

Jesus says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.”( John 3:17-18)

Paul says your Savior is, “The Lord Jesus Christ!” Yes, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. God has provided you a way of escape from his wrath. You must confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved. For it is with the heart one believes and is justified, that is you are no longer guilty before God. When you believe in your heart this truth, you will confess it with your mouth (Romans 10:9-10).

This is the gospel Wanda believed and was saved by. Her faith in Jesus is what removed God’s wrath from her and made her his daughter, an heir, a citizen of heaven.

Jesus promises you today, if you accept him as your Savior, there is therefore there is no condemnation for you who is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

We will have a glorified body fit for a new heaven and earth (Phil 3:21)

Philippians 3:21 (ESV)

who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

We are promised new bodies that will be free from the affects of sin. Our bodies, Paul says, will be transformed to be like Jesus glorious body; referring to his body after his resurrection. What was Jesus’ body like after his resurrection?

Jesus’s resurrected body could be touched, “the disciples took hold of his feet (Matthew 28:9). He appeared on the road to Emmaus as a traveler walking on the road (Luke 24:15-18, 28-29). He took bread and broke it (Luke 24:30) and he ate a piece of fish to clearly demonstrate he was not a spirit. Mary thought he was a gardener (John 21:12-13). He invited Thomas to touch his hands and his side (John 20:27). He prepared breakfast for his disciples (John 21:12–13), and that he explicitly told them, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). Peter said that the disciples “ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41). its a physical body.

His resurrected body was also, however, supernatural. He was able to appear and disappear out of sight (Luke 24:31, 36; John 20:19, 26). He was able to walk through walls. Jesus came and stood among the disciples on two occasions when the doors were “shut” (John 20:19, 26). His glorified body defied our natural earthly laws.

When God raised Jesus from the dead He assured your resurrected body will be in the most part, like Jesus’s body.

Your transformation is a guaranteed renewal. We long for God to clothe us with our new glorified bodies, to restore us to how it was supposed to be like in the Garden of Eden. We long to be transformed into the image of our Savior. Through his life, death, and resurrection, God promises/guarantees we will be transformed.

We have a Savior who will restore heaven and earth (Phil 3:21)

The resurrected and glorified Jesus, who conquered death, has the power to subject everything in heaven, earth, and hell, to himself. He has promised to return to not only gather his people, but to reverse the curse, reconcile every wrong, and restore everything to its original perfection. There will come a day when

Revelation 21:1–5 (ESV)

the first heaven and the first earth will pass away, and the sea was no more.

A holy city, a new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

We will hear a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

The world will be different in that God will destory sin and death. Never will we live under the tyranny of the law and the consequences of God’s judgement. Old age is not a thing in heaven. Hospitals, funeral homes, cemeteries do not exist. Only life, good life, exists with Jesus.

When God makes things new, it does not mean that he is starting over. It means that he is taking what exists, and restoring it back to what is was supposed to be. Though some things will be different for sure, there will be familiarity; like our bodies, streets, buildings, sights and sounds, animals, and food.

Randy Alcorn wrote a masterpiece book on heaven. And in his study if heaven, he describes what he believes the New Heavens and Earth will be like for those who are in Christ Jesus. I find it extremely encouraging, and I want to leave that encouragement with you today. He describes it this way,

“If we take literally the earthly depictions of life on the New Earth, it allows us to make a direct connection with our current lives. When I’m eating with people here, enjoying food and friendship, it’s a bridge to when I’ll be eating there, enjoying food and friendship. This isn’t making a leap into the dark of a shadowy afterlife; it’s just taking a few natural steps in the light Scripture gives us.

Every joy on earth—including the joy of reunion—is an inkling, a whisper of greater joy. The Grand Canyon, the Alps, the Amazon rain forests, the Serengeti Plain—these are rough sketches of the New Earth. One day we may say, as a character in one of my novels said, “The best parts of the old world were sneak previews of this one. Like little foretastes, like licking the spoon from Mama’s beef stew an hour before supper.”

All our lives we’ve been dreaming of the New Earth. Whenever we see beauty in water, wind, flower, deer, man, woman, or child, we catch a glimpse of Heaven. Just like the Garden of Eden, the New Earth will be a place of sensory delight, breathtaking beauty, satisfying relationships, and personal joy.”

Well done and Welcome Home

In Christ, believer, when you pass from this life to the next, the words you long to hear are well done and welcome home. If Jesus was Wanda’s “all in all” on earth, he is her everything in heaven, her groaning is over, her longing is almost satisfied. She is enjoying being home. She is exercising her rights and privileges as citizen of heaven, however, she is still looking forward to her glorified body as we are, and the day when heaven and earth will be restored. On that day, those who have accepted Christ as their Savior will sit down together and eat the wedding meal and be satisfied. We will dance. We will sing. We will enjoy Jesus forever. We will finally be at home.