Heaven: Of Bodies and Boredom
Heaven
Of Bodies and Boredom
Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor
October 5/7, 2007
We are in the second week of our series called Heaven, and if you were not here for the first week of the series last week, shame on you. Don’t you even want to go to heaven? Come to church, for crying out loud. I shouldn’t joke about that I guess, because we don’t get to heaven by our works but by faith…so those of you who missed don’t need to feel too bad, a little, but not much.
I do need to catch you up though, because if you miss the main point of last week, then the rest of the series and the biblical teaching about heaven doesn’t make much sense. So, to give you the big idea from last week that you really need to know, here it is:
Slide: ________________ ) Heaven is going to be great.
Okay, now we are ready to move on. No, the main point of last week had to do with the story of God’s redemption, the story that we are all in the middle of right now and the story that heaven is the culmination of. Adam and Eve were created for perfection, for paradise, and had that for a while, but they chose curtain B when they chose to sin and rebel against God, and when they did, no longer was this earth paradise and life here the way it was meant to be. This earth and all of life on it was subject to the curse, to futility, so that nothing is as it was originally meant to be and we live messed up lives on a messed up planet. God however did not just give up on us and move on to some new creation; he in his grace stuck with us. All the way back with Adam and Eve, God promised that he would send a redeemer and restore this world and humanity back to what it was meant to be. So our big idea last week was this,
Slide: ________________ ) Heaven is a re-made earth, life as it was meant to be lived.
Therefore, if you want to know what haven will be like, look around, because we live in the ruins of a once perfect earth. God will make a new heaven and a new earth, and as we saw last week the two will merge, the heavenly city will be part of the new earth and God will dwell with us and we will enjoy the redeemed planet and universe forever. If that fills you with lots of questions, get the CD from last week.
Starting today and continuing into next week, we are going to be discussing what life in heaven will be like. In the rest of this talk we are going to look at two very big questions:
Slide: ________________ )
- What will we look like in heaven?
Talking about our bodies there. And
Slide: ________________ )
- What will we do in heaven?
Let’s talk about the first one first, our bodies. Aren’t you curious about what you will look like and what your body will be like forever?
As we talked about last week, God is in the process of redeeming all things, restoring his creation to what it was meant to be. So, our redemption, even though we have a relationship with God will not be complete until our bodies are entirely set free from the curse. That’s what Paul is talking about in Romans 8, when he says,
Slide: ________________ ) Romans 8: 23-24
“Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved…”(23-24). The Bible term for this is glorification, when our bodies are remade to what they were meant to be. This will happen at the rapture, when it says in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15 that our bodies will be raised up and glorified, made perfect.
Slide: ________________ ) 1 Cor. 15:51-53
says, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.” What happens when someone dies now is that their spirit, as Philippians tells us, is present with the Lord, but our bodies, the remains of them stay down here. At the rapture, before he takes up the living believers to heaven, he will resurrect the remains of our old bodies and change them forever. We will receive new, re-made bodies, that will last forever without the effects of the curse.
Slide: ________________ ) Philippians 3:20-21
says, But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. He will take our bodies and transform them to be new, glorified bodies, like Jesus’ post-resurrection body. So, when Jesus raptures us up to heaven, those who are living will have their bodies transformed and those who have already died will have their bodies rejoin their souls, but they will be transformed bodies.
So, we will have bodies in heaven, which raises lots of other questions…the main question being, what will they be like? If they are transformed, transformed to what? Will we have angel bodies, with wings
Slide: ________________ ) (show pic of Ty and Sean)?
Boy, I hope not! Actually, I know that we will not have angel bodies. A lot of people assume that we become angels when we die, but angels and humans are two separate parts of God’s creation and the Bible is very clear that we stay separate. We will never become angels; we will stay human beings with redeemed human being bodies.
Does a transformed body mean that we get to help choose how they are transformed? Like this nose chart, do we get to choose what kind of nose we get? What body shape we have? How tall we are? Our hair color? That’s a pretty good question. A recent survey of American women found that 99% of them would change something about their appearance if they could. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t say if we get to pick…it just says that we will have transformed bodies.
So what does the Bible say about our future bods? We get some very good clues from 1 Corinthians 15 and then from Jesus’ resurrection body, so let’s look at 1 Cor 15 first:
Slide: ________________ ) 1 Cor 15: 42b-44
first: The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body…just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we[f] bear the likeness of the man from heaven. He contrasts our current bodies with our future, glorified bodies, in four ways. First,
Slide: ________________ ) From imperishable to perishable
Our bodies will no longer be perishable, no longer subject to aging, to disease, to deformity. People who have struggled with deformities or injuries will no longer struggle there. That’s true mentally as well. One time Joni Ericson, a Christian writer and speaker who suffered a severe spinal injury early in life leaving her paralyzed from the waste down, wrote: "Somewhere in my broken, paralyzed body is the seed of what I shall become. The paralysis makes what I am to become all the more grand when you contrast atrophied, useless legs against splendorous resurrected legs. I'm convinced that if there are mirrors in heaven (and why not?), the image I'll see will be unmistakably 'Joni,' although a much better, brighter Joni."[1]
The contrasts continue,
Slide: ________________ ) From dishonor to glory
The word used here is one that describes someone’s appearance. He’s talking about beauty, that our bodies here are compromised but there they will be beautiful, reflecting the glory and beauty of God. You will be beautiful in heaven, which is not as much about having a perfect body shape as it is reflecting the beauty and glory of God. Some passages talk about how we will glow this radiant glow, though in other places it seems like that isn’t the case. Whichever, our bodies will be beautiful.
The next contrast is
Slide: ________________ ) From weakness to power
Our bodies now in comparison to our heavenly bodies are very weak, meaning that they will have the fullness of strength and power that we were originally meant to have. Does that mean that we will have super-human strength, like superman or the bionic man or woman…be able to run in slow motion and jump over buildings? When we throw things, hear that noise that the bionic man used to make
Slide: ________________ ) (find noise?)?
Will I be able to hit my driver on the golf course 700 yards? Maybe. What we know is that our bodies will be stronger than they are now.
The last contrast is also a significant one,
Slide: ________________ ) From natural to spiritual
This doesn’t mean from material to immaterial. In the Bible, the word spiritual is not in contrast to physical. Spiritual means in keeping with the character and work of the Holy Spirit. We will have no sin nature in heaven, and our bodies will not be affected by desires for sin or an undisciplined lifestyle.
These contrasts help, but it also helps to look at the post-resurrection appearances of Christ, because he had a glorified body after the resurrection, and we are told that our bodies will be similar to his. So, what do we learn about our heavenly bodies from Jesus? Well, in many ways there is continuity, similarity. Jesus did have a physical body, that could be touched. He ate food. He maintained his gender identity as a man. He wore clothes. In other ways, his new body was different. It took a while for people to recognize him. If you have heard the story of the two on the road to Emmaus, where they are going home after the crucifixion, very discouraged. Jesus appears and walks with them on this road and asks what is wrong. They start telling him about Jesus, and it takes a good long time for them to realize that they were talking to him. At times even the disciples didn’t recognize him right away in those early post-resurrection appearances. Once they knew who it was, they saw the resemblance, but it wasn’t quite the same. It may be a little like us, when you don’t see someone for years and then do see them. You kind of recognize them, but they have aged or lost weight or gained weight…they’ve changed. You can still see the them you remember, but it takes just a little while. Jesus was different, though they didn’t think he was an angel or someone other than another human being in his appearance. Another thing that was different about Jesus’ new body is that he seemed to have new abilities. He appeared and disappeared multiple times, which was a new trend after the resurrection in his new body. Will we be able to do the same thing? Maybe so, which could be pretty cool, able to zip around or being beamed around to new places. Fun to scare each other that way, too.
We also know from other passages that we will be able to recognize each other, and that there will be a good bit of continuity between our old body and new one because we will maintain our racial and ethnic distinctions. When John sees heaven, he sees all nations represented there, which will really be a cool part of heaven. Heaven won’t be, like that video we saw last week, a bunch of white people—but much more colorful and rich and diverse.
So, you will get a new, improved body in heaven, and we will be able to recognize you and you us. We will have bodies that are unaffected by the curse, the way that they were meant to be.
The second big question we are asking today is about our time there,
Slide: ________________ ) What will we do every day?
Time will be with us in heaven. We will live forever, but will still be bound by time. God isn’t. God is eternal, which means he exists above time. You and I will live forever in heaven, but we are not eternal. Once time is gone, there is not going back and we won’t be able to jump ahead. So, we will experience time in heaven, and forever is a lot of time. To get a feel for that, I’m going to be quiet for one minute. Let’s let a minute go by and see how that feels (do it). Felt like forever, and that’s just a minute. So, what are we going to do for forever
As we talked about last week, we aren’t just going to be standing around or singing all the time. We will experience life on this earth the way it was meant to be lived, more similar to the way Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden before sin. So, what will be doing? Let’s go through a quick list of some of the big components of what we will do every day:
Slide: ________________ ) Relate
The Bible is clear that we will recognize people in heaven, and Jesus said that people will come from all over to “sit at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” We will relate with people from all ages of life on this planet, as well as the people we know and love on this planet. Jack will talk more about this next week, but we will have real relationships. Christy, my wife, was talking about this in Life Group last week and said that one of the things she is looking forward to is unhurried relationships, that she feels she never gets enough time with anybody here in all of our hurriedness, never feels like she can finish a conversation fully. There, we will have time for relationships.
Slide: ________________ ) Worship
When we hear the word “worship” we tend to think of corporate worship, where we gather to worship God, and we will do that. That’s not all we will do, but we certainly will gather to worship, including singing songs of praise to God. I can see Tyrone leading a worship service with Abraham, David, and Ruth on his worship team already. One of the reasons people think we will be doing this the whole time in heaven is because when they think of worshiping, this is all they think about. The biblical view of worship though is that we are to worship God all the time, in our relationships, our work, our recreation. We will be worshiping all the time, though not in a worship service all the time.
Slide: ________________ ) Learn
Some assume that in heaven we will all of a sudden become all-knowing, like God is…but there is no indication of that. We, like Adam and Eve in the garden, will have a lot left to learn and will be learning for all eternity.
Slide: ________________ ) Recreate
We will rest and have fun in heaven. Do you realize that rest and recreation are God’s idea? God mandated that we take at least a day off every week just to enjoy each other and enjoy creation, get recharged for the rest of the week. God even does this, the Bible says. What kinds of recreation will we do? My guess is with the general flow of continuity of the good things in this life on into the next life that some of the same things we enjoy here we will enjoy there, only without the frustration. Does that mean we will sail in heaven? Garden in heaven? Scuba dive in heaven? Play golf in heaven?
Slide: ________________ ) (show pic)
I think so. What will it mean to play golf without the curse? I have no idea…my golf life is completely cursed. I don’t think it means that every shot will be perfect or that we will never be challenged. Yet, it does mean we will have fun without the frustration and futility of the curse. I wonder if people like Moses will play? He hits a great drive, and the group says, “Holy Moses! That’s a great drive.” Who knows?
Slide: ________________ ) Work
We will work in heaven, the Bible is very clear about that as we will see. Does that surprise you? I think it does surprise most people, because we have a hard time imagining how work could possibly be part of heaven. We connect heaven with no work, and our whole lives we spend preparing for retirement, the ultimate conclusion to our life where we don’t have to work and can do what we want to do. We may not expect to get angel’s wings when we get to heaven, but we expect to be handed Bermuda shorts, maybe a hammock and a metal detector so we can live out the rest of our days in eternal rest. The Bible does talk about entering into God’s rest, but that can happen here and means rest from the pain of the curse and sin and all that comes with it.
Slide: ________________ ) (show pic)
so we can live out the rest of our days in eternal rest. The Bible does talk about entering into God’s rest, but that can happen here and means rest from the pain of the curse and sin and all that comes with it.
The reason we have a hard time thinking about work as a part of heaven is that we have never experienced work apart from the curse. Even at its best, work is subject to the futility and frustration of the curse. But work itself is not the curse…work itself was just cursed after the fall of man.
You and I are made to work. Adam and Eve had huge responsibility to basically care for the planet, along with their descendents, and they had a lot to do. They had time for relationships, worship, and rest…but they also had time for work. God designed us to not just rest but to know the significance and reward of work without the curse. God also is a worker.
Slide: ________________ ) John 5:17
Jesus says, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too, am working.” It is godly to work, and God built us to work.
That’s why people who work there whole lives to retire and do nothing often don’t do so well. Many get depressed, often people don’t live very long. They don’t do well, because we were made to work. It’s a little like my Mustang. I drive a little Mustang convertible, and when I bought it my dealer friend I bought it from told me, “Drive this thing. Don’t baby it. It was built to run!” which is music to my ears. A couple of weeks ago I went horseback riding with some area pastors, and the one who owned the ranch was excited about it because his horses needed to run. That’s what they are made for. You and I are made to run, made to work. That’s why our present view of seeing no work in retirement being the ultimate goal is really a foolish goal. I encourage you to retire with a purpose…nothing wrong with extra flexibility for more recreation or travel or relationships. That’s great, but make sure you retire with a purpose, a reason to get up every day. Jump into serving others, serve in this church, volunteer in the community, use your gifts and abilities and keep them sharp. We were made for work, and we will work in heaven.
That is why in the heaven passages we are often referred to as “servants,” because we will be serving and working. We see that in
Slide: ________________ ) Matthew 25:23
that pictures when we enter into heaven, Jesus will say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' Over and over again, the Bible says that we will reign alongside Christ and each other in heaven. We will have responsibilities as we exercise dominion over this earth.
Reigning can mean leading governments and nations and cities, and some of us will do that. But reigning also refers to the general dominion that humans were created and commanded to live out on this planet. Work in heaven will entail whatever it means to exercise dominion on the heavenly planet, living life as it was meant to be lived. So, some will rule cities, others will grow food, and still others will create works of art. Some will make furniture and others will write books.
This raises a question of how will such work be assigned. My guess is that just as there is continuity in what we look like and what race we are that there will be continuity in our gifting. The Bible says that we have all been gifted by God uniquely, and that good work is when we use our gifts and strengths. That is when work is compelling and fun. My guess is that what we are good at here, we will be really good at there, and will be able to express it without the curse, without frustration. We will be able to fully express who we are and know the true joy of work as God intended it to be enjoyed.
If that is true, than some will complete their life work, their dreams, and be able to work on things that they knew they would never be able to do on this planet. It is hard to even imagine that kinds of things that will be invented, works of art created, and new discoveries that will take place.
Not only will we have different jobs but different responsibility levels, as we do here. Some will have a lot of responsibility and others not so much, all based on our earthly resume. That’s what the Bible teaches, as in the verse we just read out of Matthew. You have been faithful with a few things here, I will give you responsibility over many things there. The same is true of wealth in heaven. Various verses talk about our heavenly bank account, and the deal is the only way you and I can grow our heavenly bank account is by what we do with your money here. The only way you and I can grow levels of responsibility in heaven it to be faithful to do what God calls us to do here.
This brings me to a judgment that all believers will face, which will take place before the new heaven and new earth, shortly after the rapture when Jesus brings us all up to what is heaven, or paradise now. It is called the Bema judgment, and there is a lot of confusion and fear around it. You may have been taught when you were younger that one day when you get to heaven that you will stand before God to give an account for all of your sins. All your sins will be shown on this big jumbotron kind of screen for all to see. You’ll be there embarrassed, and it will be awful…so you better not sin because it is really going to be regrettable later when all those sins are shown on those big screens. Have you ever been taught that before?
That is horribly, horribly wrong. You and I will never answer to God for our sin if you know Jesus Christ. You know why? Because he has taken it away. He has forgiven it. The Bible says in Romans 8 that those who have placed their trust in Christ will never know God’s condemnation or never know the shame of their sin. It is gone.
Slide: ________________ ) John 5:24
says, “I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life. You and I will stand before Christ to give an account of our lives, but it is not about our sin. It is about our works, the good works that we have done. Each of us has been given gifts and abilities, time, and money. Whenever we use it for God’s kingdom or for those in need, God will reward. What God will judge is our motives in those works, not our sins.
Slide: ________________ ) 1 Corinthians 3:12-15
talks about this judgment, “If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames (3:12-15).
It is our works that will be tested, and nowhere does it say this is public. It may be, but may not be. Certainly, when that is happening we will be very thankful for anything we ever did for Christ or gave to his kingdom work and will feel like dumbos for whatever we did not do. That’s why Jesus at times says if we are smart, we’ll live here in a way that maximizes our reward in heaven. In
Slide: ________________ ) Matthew 6:19-21
Jesus says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
He says if you are smart, you will use your money and time here in a way that will grow your reward, your wealth in eternity. God gives you the choice. You can focus on the now or you can live in light of eternity. Yet, we do need to know that we will not all the be same in heaven in terms of responsibility levels and levels of wealth. Some will be very wealthy and be given a lot of responsibility and others not so much—all based on what we do with our time and money here. As it says in 1 Corinthians, some will get into heaven, but they will have very little reward, very little wealth and responsibility.
Here is what we need to know about rewards:
Slide: ________________ )
The only way you can send it ahead for later
Is to give it away now.
Jesus rewards us for everything we do.
So, what are we going to be doing in heaven? Not just sitting around singing or sitting up in a cloud playing a harp. We will be enjoying life on a redeemed earth, life as it was meant to be lived. We will relate to our loved ones, have fun on this planet, do meaningful work with no frustration, participate in corporate worship, eat, rest, and learn. It is life without the curse, the way it was meant to be. Even though we get glimpses of joy down here on this cursed earth, these are only glimpses. The best of days and the brightest of joys here doesn’t even come close to the way heaven will be every minute of every day. That’s something to look forward to, and it only makes sense therefore to live in light of eternity…to live as the bible says not just for the hear and now but with eternity in mind.
For those of you who would like to go deeper on this topic, I highly recommend Randy Alcorn’s ministry—Eternal Perspective Ministries. You can find a wealth of resources at their website:
Slide______________________ ) www.epm.org
Let’s pray.
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[1] Joni Eareckson Tada, Heaven: Your Real Home (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 39.