Heavenly Inheritance by Faith
Notes
Transcript
1 | How have I experienced the tension?
On Apple TV+ there is a newer show called Silo. It is an incredibly stress inducing and claustrophobic show.
It takes place underground in a silo filled with 10,000 men women and children.
They have lived their entire lives there. And they plan on living and dying there. Nobody knows how long humans have lived in the silo or who built it or if humans have ever lived in the outside world.
But they have a screen that shows the outside, filled with a wasteland and destruction.
So while none of the characters can imagine a world that is not the silo, they all have a nagging desire deep within them for something else, as if humans were not created for that underground world.
We all have longings, yearnings, desires.
It might be for a time in your life from the past, to hold onto the present moment, or a dream for something in the future.
I remember at different points since becoming a Dad where I have felt like I have checked off all the items on “Danny’s List”
I love my kids, my wife, my calling as a Pastor, my home, and so much else in my life.
And still as I have taken time to just sit still, what I have faced is not contentment or gratitude… but longing.
And so my mind comes alive trying to look for the next thing, the missing piece, that if I just have that then that will solve the problem.
2 | How have you experienced this tension?
Think right now… seriously I am going to give you a moment to reflect… What do you want?
Peace. Comfort. Ease. Connection. Thrill.
I imagine you have been running after whatever your answer is for a while now… so let me ask this follow up question…
How is that going for you?
If you are like me, you can look at the others in your life or online and think… wow! They figured it out. They have their desires met. They have figured out life through their travel, purchases, beauty, intelligence, service, or whatever else…
But you and I know the truth for them just as well for us… they are filled with the same unquenchable longing as you and me.
With our own unique flavor we are all like the people of the Silo, filled with longings that nothing in this world seems to be able to satisfy.
This reminds me of something I once read from CS Lewis…
The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality… Now there are two wrong ways of dealing with this fact, and one right one.
(1) The Fool's Way.—He puts the blame on the things themselves. He goes on all his life thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the mysterious something we are all after…
(2) The Way of the Disillusioned “Sensible Man.”—He soon decides that the whole thing was moonshine. “Of course,” he says, “one feels like that when one's young. But by the time you get to my age you've given up chasing the rainbow's end.” And so he settles down and learns not to expect too much and represses the part of himself which used, as he would say, “to cry for the moon.”… But supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us? Supposing one really can reach the rainbow's end? In that case it would be a pity to find out too late (a moment after death) that by our supposed “common sense” we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it.
So he puts forward two wrong paths which each of us wrestles with, what then remains as the true resolution of our desires without end in sight?
3 | What do the Scriptures say about this tension?
Tonight we will be sitting in Hebrews 11:13-16 if you want to open up your Bibles.
Last week, we had the opportunity to sit in the Scriptures looking at the examples of the faith of Abraham and Sarah. Two vastly imperfect and often faithless humans who still held onto God as he held onto them.
And so from there the author continues…
Read Hebrews 11:13-16
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
Abraham and Sarah died and never experienced the fulfillment of the good life which was the things promised through their family line… that all of the nations of the earth would be reunited together under the rule and reign of the one true God. That the world would know life, light and freedom.
In other words they never experienced the ultimate fulfillment of their desires. And yet they held fast in faith.
As a kid I was very anxious and couldn’t wait for my mom to pick me up from school, knowing that she was okay and I was okay.
I would look down the road watching every SUV to see if it was my mom in her Jeep Cherokee. I kept watch as far as I could see… hoping trusting that one of those blob vehicles would become clearer and clearer for me to recognize as my mom’s Jeep.
Those who live in faith, hold fast to God’s promises WILL ultimately come to pass. And so we stand off looking in the distance waving at the promises as if they waited on the horizon. Not sure exactly when that promise will become clear. But trusting. That one is my Dad. He is coming near!
But holding fast to that promise comes from an acknowledgment that none of us want to quickly proclaim.
”that they were strangers and exiles on the earth”
This is a recurring theme in Scripture. Knowing and understanding that this world is NOT home. That the world of the Garden. Untouched by sin and death and bondage. A Kingdom of Light.
That is home.
This is planet death. This is the Silo world. This is a place marked by corruption and distortion.
This is the place of longing. But it is not the place of ultimate fulfillment.
This doesn’t mean that this world is purposeless, dull, or intolerable all of the time… This is still the world that God crafted in his infinite love, abundance, and beauty in the beginning. It has just been infected and affected by sin and death.
There is a spiritual enemy who works in the shadows to kill, steal, and destroy.
He wants to convince you simultaneously that this world is all there is, that it is a hopeless world, and yet you should scavenge for as much purpose and pleasure as possible, because after all this is all there is.
And those deep longings that we would express as our answer to “what do you want?” Answer that with what is right around us here in the Silo. Because there is no outside world, and even if there is it couldn’t truly be better than this homeland.
But the author of Hebrews explains…
Read Hebrews 11:14
For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
In other words, there are people like Abraham and Sarah who have awoken to reality. The Silo is not all there is! This land is not my home.
Instead, there is a land of Promise that is out there on the horizon.
This language is borrowed from the physical journey that Abraham’s family went on toward the land of Promise…
Read Hebrews 11:15
If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.
If their minds and hearts would have been set on the land that they came from then they never would have been able to proceed in faith to God’s promised land.
The author is drawing a comparison on the human desire to look back out of a lack of faith.
I might be tempted to believe “maybe I can achieve peace or contentment in what I can buy.”
Yours might be “if I just get married then maybe that will give me the hope for connection I long for”
In other words, maybe God is holding out. Maybe the Silo is the best it gets and so might as well make the most of it.
But in Hebrews, we are discovering NO! Don’t believe it for a second! You don’t want to return to that pattern of thinking that is at best settling and at worse is destruction. Don’t do it.
Instead…
Read Hebrews 11:16
But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
Remember the two wrong approaches to desire that CS Lewis pointed out?
The Way of the Fool who keeps trying every option for fulfillment and the Way of the disillusioned sensible man who learns how to simply settle for a life without fulfillment.
Lewis points out as well one “right way.”
(3) The Christian Way.—The Christian says, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.
You and I were created for a better world than this one, a better country than this one, that is, a Heavenly one. A land of Promises that no politician, no fame, no amount of money, no relationship, no child, no career, no hobby, absolutely nothing can satisfy!
This is not some new truth… this has been God’s plan all along for his people. To discover and walk in the life of faith. Where we put on confidence in what we cannot yet see.
believing that planet death, this world of the Silo is not the world we are created for, and yet Jesus is coming to restore his Kingdom, through his people. Here. Now.
And one day when this world is reformed and death and darkness are forever done away with.
4 | How can the Gospel bring resolution to this tension in your life?
But here is a significant part of what it means to mature in faith… not just believing that the better country is out there on the horizon.
But to desire it.
The early followers of Jesus would often pray “come lord Jesus come” and that is still echoed by brothers and sisters in the forever family today, especially those whose immediate surrounding make this world’s imperfections more obvious.
But if you still struggle to be convinced, I don’t blame you. It is hard to imagine a world we have never touched or seen. And yet in Jesus we get the first glimpse of the Kingdom and eternal living.
He lived an unhurried life. Filled with intentionality and purpose. He radiated love and boldness. Kindness and empathy.
Everywhere he went, darkness dissipated by his presence.
People would come to Jesus with their earthly problems, and while he oftentimes resolved those problems he would still refocus them on the Kingdom, explaining that the true longing has been resolved.
Not just “you are healed” but “you are forgiven”
Not just “stand up and walk” but “follow me”
Not just “your faith has made you well” but you are clean”
What do you want?
Peace. Contentment. Thrill. Connection. Ease?
Imagine if you allowed your heart and mind to be thrilled with the idea that in Jesus, the truest form of that longing finds its fulfillment. In His Kingdom, the true Land of Promise. We don’t get what we want and then it melts in our hand. We don’t escape to the outside world and wish that we could go back into the Silo.
In Jesus, there is life that is truly life.
Begin to cultivate a desire for your better country. A Heavenly one. Because there God is not ashamed to be called our God! And there he is preparing a city for us!
And as we cultivate that desire, we don’t just become intoxicated with a land of wishing and dreaming, hoping simply for an eternal life. But we become more like Jesus, we begin to live out what Dallas Willard referred to as “eternal living.”
Where the world around us experiences more of Jesus through us, that as we go we push back the darkness. We go after one more life. We live daringly missional lives! Because we follow Jesus, and where he goes darkness flees. Where he goes, the Kingdom. Our true home descends. Let’s pray.
