There Is A City
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Introduction
Introduction
Many people in Christianity today walk around worried about a great number of things. The world has gone absolutely haywire. The Church has not fulfilled its Commission in some time in a Biblical manner. We could point to any number of things that are going on around us that are designed to distract or discourage us.
However, we have a hope that lies within us that many others don’t! We have a reason to rejoice when the rest of the world mourns the loss of its own self inflated identity.
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;
for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
He waited for a city....
It wasn’t like nothing was going on in Abraham’s life. In fact, it would appear that even in his day, Abraham was a very well known and highly esteemed person.
He was a man of action, that wasn’t without his own flaws as many of us have here today.
Distractions of Life
Distractions of Life
How many times have you tried to focus on items in your life that you know are a high priority, only to fail at the same goals that you just set for yourself?
Then He said to the disciples, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come!
Things happen…life happens!
Some believers have fallen for the lie that they need to focus on the problem to get through it!
The problem is not you r identity!
Your destination in Christ is your identity or it should be. ‘
You don’t belong to this world
You’re just passing through
I wish I had a couple of people here that were still excited about going to God’s Kingdom...
Making the problem bigger makes your God smaller.
“For I am the Lord, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.
Yet from the days of your fathers You have gone away from My ordinances And have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” Says the Lord of hosts. “But you said, ‘In what way shall we return?’
We change constantly, even though we try to convince ourselves we don’t...
I am so glad this morning that there is a rock that I can go to in my time of trouble. That I can hide myself in the cleft of that rock until the Lord comes by and shows me revelation I did not have but needed for my journey.
Some of us need to go back to the old pathways because they are true, but we have stayed away because we would be reminded of those places we came away from legalism or bad experiences.
The Bible is absolutely full of people just like us; that were easily distracted. Christians sometimes tend to over-spiritualize the people they read about in Scripture simply because they are the focus of a certain storyline.
Even Abraham’s wife Sarah became distracted several times from the calling that God had placed on her family.
Jesus told His disciples that He knew they would be distracted by the events that were about to unfold and flee from Him.
Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe?
Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.
These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
They still wanted to go with Jesus to His Father’s Kingdom, but what they were facing physically was pretty hard to ignore.
But there is still a city that we need to get to
There is a place that has been made for us
A place that Jesus said that He Himself has prepared for you!
“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.”
God Is Longing For Your Homecoming
God Is Longing For Your Homecoming
So many religious figures spend way too much time trying to figure out who is getting in or who will be left out of God’s Kingdom.
The Holy Word that has been given to us is sufficient to illuminate the pathway to that place we all long to go.
He has told us the way
He has declared who will enter
He has declared who will be denied access
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
The equation is simple; those that have repented of their sinful lives before the Lord will inherit the Kingdom of God.
Those that refuse to repent will not enter there.
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Imagine the intensity that we have in longing for our children,
That they be near us
That they are protected
That they are thriving
That they know our love for them
Why does religion spend so much time making people think God hates them? Like He is an abusive Father that could care less if we get into the Kingdom or not?
Luke 15:11-32 details one of the most well known parables of Jesus, where He speaks of a son that went and did all the things that he wanted to do with his friends. Sinful behaviors that drove him from the teachings of his father.
The time frame is not known or given in this parable of how long the son spent living a demonically inspired lifestyle.
But there was a father that was waiting and longing for his son to come home.
“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you,
and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” ’
“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.
And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet.
And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry;
for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.
We often equate those outside the Church as the prodigals, but were we not once as they are?
Do we not still have struggles and distractions trying to pull us away from that Heavenly Home?
But there is a city that is waiting for our arrival
There we will be given new garments
We will be changed from corruptible to incorruptible
Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore comfort one another with these words.
Be Encouraged
Be Encouraged
One day, all of this will be a distant memory.
One day, we will be reunited with those that have gone on before us .
One day, we will look at each other and say WE FINALLY MADE IT!!!
One day, we will know all that we do not now have the capacity to understand when it comes to that home that seems so far away.
But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
For since the beginning of the world Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, Nor has the eye seen any God besides You, Who acts for the one who waits for Him.
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.
God’s love for you and I is perfect brothers and sisters
You have not caused Him to hate you
I want you to be encouraged because Your Heavenly Father is longing for you and wants you to be with Him forever.
Don’t allow any distraction or fear to enter your hearts.
We are in this world but not of it
We are on our way to a city with streets of pure gold
Do not fear that you will not be received, if you are His then you will be received.
Your greatest task on this earth is not to be well known or rich. It is to be known by Almighty God through His Only Son Jesus.
His love for you is not just for the Kingdom, it is for you now!
Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.
We love Him because He first loved us.
There is a city whose Builder and Maker is God!
Are you going this morning?
Don’t let anything distract you from what God has prepared for you
Don’t let anything keep you away from Him who loves you with the utmost intensity and purity
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.
Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.