We Believe in Heaven
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Game: Tylor Swift or Lamentations
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Testimony Dan
Testimony Dan
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What do you think Heaven is like?
QUESTION: What will happen to you when you die? That is a powerful question to ask and to ponder on.
Introducation
Introducation
Last week we learned about hell.
A place of judgment
A place of fiery agony
A place of conscious torment
A place of complete separation from God
A place of eternal duration
Thankfully, Hell is not the end of the gospel. The gospel points us to the horror and reality of hell because of our sin, but the gospel also points us to the reality and hope of heaven for the Christian.
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Philippians 3:20
The Realities of Heaven
The Realities of Heaven
Just like Hell, there a spectrum of views for Heaven. (SLIDE)
there are a lot of misconceptions of Heaven.
Secular
Universalist
Christian Universalist
Biblical Christian
There are also a lot of misconceptions of Heaven.
Is it this current world OR
Is it a place of clouds and light where Everyone in heaven looks like chubby babies with wings and harps
Everyone in heaven looks like chubby babies with wings and harps
But the Bible gives us our understanding of Heaven.
SLIDE: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I 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 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.”
Heaven is God’s dwelling place with man (SLIDE)
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I 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 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.”
Heaven is not on Earth currently. Scripture teaches that God made the Heavens and the Earth. It also teaches that Heaven is God’s dwelling place.
BUT, Heaven will be on the Earth one day. It will be when God will dwell with man, where earth and heaven will pass away and the New Heaven and New Earth will be one.
Why is Heaven good news for the Christian?
Why is Heaven good news for the Christian?
It is the New Earth where God will dwell with His people in unhindered communion and unimaginable joy.
MEANING
It is the ultimate end of the gospel, not that we will go to heaven but that heaven will come to us.
Heaven is home for the Christain
“Heaven, as the eternal home of the divine Man and of all the redeemed members of the human race, must necessarily be thoroughly human in its structure, conditions, and activities. Its joys and activities must all be rational, moral, emotional, voluntary, and active. here must be the exercise of all the faculties, the gratification of all tastes, the development of all talent capacities, the realization of all ideals …. Heaven will prove the consummate lower and fruit of the whole creation and of all the history of the universe.” A.A. Hodge
Heaven is a place without sin
27 But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Sin is what breaks our relationship with God. Sin is what causes brokenness, hurt, sadness. In Heaven there will be no sin. It is a place of perfect righteousness.
Heaven is a place without suffering
Heaven is a place without sin
4 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.”
Revelation 21:27
There will be no broken relationships, no hardships, no sorrow. It will be only Joy!
The joy we experience on earth will be nothing like the true joy in Heaven, because all that we experience here is tainted by sin.
Heaven is a place of full reconciliation with God
22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,
21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,
22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,
Heaven is a place of final resurrection for our bodies
Freed from sin
Rev
Heaven is a place of full reconciliation with God
51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
We will have real physical bodies in heaven. We wont be spirits or shadows of our former selves. We will be perfected and glorified. Where you wont grow tired, where you wont be able to fail.
It is the ultimate end of the gospel, not that we will go to heaven but that heaven will come to us.
Heaven is home for the Christian
“Heaven, as the eternal home of the divine Man and of all the redeemed members of the human race, must necessarily be thoroughly human in its structure, conditions, and activities. Its joys and activities must all be rational, moral, emotional, voluntary, and active. There must be the exercise of all the faculties, the gratification of all tastes, the development of all talent capacities, the realization of all ideals …. Heaven will prove the consummate lower and fruit of the whole creation and of all the history of the universe.” A.A. Hodge
,
13 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.... 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.
Philippians 1:21-24
13 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.... 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.
21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.
Heaven is the home for the Christian. It is where we are meant to be, because it is where God is. God did not create us to be separated from Him but to be with him
Where we will dwell with God for all eternity.
And the amazing thing is that looking at the Scriptures, heaven is coming to us.
Yes, when we as Christians die we will be with the Lord, but in the end as says, the new heaven and the new earth will come to us for God to dwell with His church.
There is this thinking that all of creation will just pass away and all that we will just be in the clouds with God. But when God created the world he declared it “good”. Our sin has corrupted the world, but God does not surrender this good creation to the devil for destruction. NO! He wins it back through the blood of Jesus! Redeeming it and making it God’s dwelling place again as the New Heavens and the New Earth.
This is the ultimate end of the gospel, not that we will go to heaven but that heaven will come to us. Our Home is coming to us!
Heaven is not boring, but fascinating.
Heaven is not boring, but fascinating.
Now if we are honest, I think many of us, when we think about heaven, if we’re completely honest, have a pretty boring picture. Even if we don’t picture ourselves as fat babies on clouds, we think “well what are we going to do? Just stand around with each other and sing songs and stare at light for a few trillion years?”
The Bible tells us No! There is so much more to our home, to our hope of Heaven. It won’t be an endless choir practice but a fulfillment of all our desires in a New Earth
“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.” C.S. Lewis
Last Battle Excerpt
clouds, but a new earth where we have everything to do: a God to
worship, a kingdom to rule, a universe to explore, work to accomplish, and
friends to enjoy.
“Those hills,” said Lucy, “the nice woody ones and the blue ones behind—aren’t they very like the southern border of Narnia.”
“Like!” cried Edmund after a moment’s silence. “Why they’re exactly like. Look, there’s Mount Pire with his forked head, and there’s the pass into Archenland and everything!”
“And yet they’re not like,” said Lucy. “They’re different. They have more colours on them and they look further away than I remembered and they’re more . . . more . . . oh, I don’t know ... .”
“More like the real thing,” said the Lord Digory softly.
Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled round and then alighted on the ground. “Kings and Queens,” he cried, “we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all—Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. his is Narnia.”
“But how can it be?” said Peter. “For Aslan told us older ones that we should never return to Narnia, and here we are.”
“Yes,” said Eustace. “And we saw it all destroyed and the sun put out.”
“And it’s all so diferent,” said Lucy.
“he Eagle is right,” said the Lord Digory. “Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. hat had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as a waking life is from a dream.” …
The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and lower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I mean.
The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and lower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I mean.
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed and then cried: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”
One day, we will be home at last! We will be in our real country, a place where we truly belong. The land we have been looking for all of our lives.
The things we love most about this world, the good gifts that God has given us on this earth are just a foretast of the good gifts God has in store for us.
Just see it: Heaven is not a place where we have nothing to do but float on the clouds, but a new earth where we have everything to do: a God to worship, a kingdom to rule, a universe to explore, work to accomplish, and friends to enjoy.
That is what the Bible tells us, that is what Christians believe, that is the hope of the gospel.