The Present Heaven 1-19-2020

HEAVEN - SEEING THE UNSEEN THE PRESENT HEAVEN Sunday January 19, 2020 Scripture Reference: 1 Thessalonians 4:13 Intro. A. Today we are going to begin a new aspect in our study of Heaven. The big question a lot of us want answered is "What happens when we die?" If I were to die tomorrow, and I have no plans by the way, but if I were to die tomorrow what happens to me? Do I instantly go into the Presence of God or do I enter into a state of limbo and wait until to final resurrection? 1. I am not a theologian in the professional sense, but the reality we are all theologians if we are Christ followers. A theologian is just someone is studying about God and while we may not do it like a teacher or professor does, we should all be growing in our understanding of God and the things He has to say about and to us. Based on the studies I have been doing on Heaven I am going to try and answer the questions I just poised. I don't know about you but for a long time these questions puzzled me. I really wasn't sure what happened to us following our physical death. I wanted to believe that I would go to be with God, but I also thought that maybe we just entered to something some people have called a soul sleep. It is sort of like we go to sleep and then wake up at the final resurrection. 2. My style of preaching will probably change a little bit as we enter into this new aspect of our study. You may notice that I am going from my normal style of exhortation to more of an explanation style. What I mean is that my preaching might be a bit more like teaching for a short time. What we are about to do is essential for us to gain a true and biblical perspective of Heaven. B. I have been saying even before I began this series that I will be introducing you to some ideas about Heaven that you probably never had before. I think I can freely say this because a lot of these things I am sharing were certainly new for me and that is because as I said in my first message, I never had any classes on Heaven when I was in Bible college and honestly, I never did any real study about Heaven. I just had my thoughts and ideas that had been accumulated over the years I have been a Christian and a pastor. 1. I also warned you that I would be presenting some ideas that might foreign to you and frankly they might be hard to grasp at first, but what I need you to do is allow for this whole series to unfold before you begin to object or even reject what I share. Once again, I ask that you consider these things in the light of God's Word and not what have come to be our strongly held traditions. I have seen in my studies that a lot of my ideas were just strongly held traditions, or it was simply what I wanted to believe whether I had any biblical support for the idea or not. 2. Here is our scripture for today 1 Thessalonians 4:13 it says "And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope." 1 Thessalonians 4:13 (NLT) Notice that the Bible tells us that we can know what happens to us after we die. If you have questions as I said I had, if you have questions like those, I poised a minute ago then I have great news for you. Those questions can be answered. Paul didn't say we can speculate, he said we can know. For most of this series I am going to be focusing my attention on our final destination which the Bible calls the New Heaven and the New Earth, but we do not enter that place when we die, but we do enter what we can appropriate call Heaven because Heaven is the place where God dwells with His children and when we die we are with the Lord. 3. When someone dies who has been a follower of Christ we say, "________ has gone to Heaven which is true, but what you might not realize is that they have entered into what we are calling "The Present Heaven" or you could also say "The Intermediate Heaven". Now once again I say that these are probably concepts you have not thought of before, so hang in there. Again, these are not things I have made up but as you will see they correlate with the Word of God. Trans. Let's talk about the nature of the present heaven. I. THE NATURE OF THE PRESENT HEAVEN. What we want to do here is try and get a grasp of what this Present Heaven is like. The first thing we should know is that: A. The Present Heaven Is Temporary. 1. Now in our minds the Present Heaven has already lasted a long time because since the fall of Adam and Eve thousands in fact millions of people have died in the faith. They have passed from this earthly life having put their trust in God and they have entered the Presence of God, but just remember this once we leave this earthly life our concepts of time will not be as they are now. I say all this to say that I do not believe and there is anything in the scriptures to indicate that those in the Present Heaven are getting impatient or anxious and are wondering when they can finally enter the New Heaven and New Earth. This is part of the baggage we carry being in this fallen world. I will talk more about this later, but I do believe there will be concepts of time in Heaven but not in the negative sense as we have it now. I don't believe that "early" or "late" will be a part of our vocabulary when we leave this earth. 2. Another thing I think I should say here is that by using the word "temporary" I do not mean lesser. [] A few years ago, while I was away up near Mammoth the road to a lake, I fish a lot was under construction. The temporary road was dirt and gravel and it was not pleasant to drive on. The Present Heaven is not temporary in the sense that "Well the best is yet to come". When we leave this world and enter the Present Heaven there will be joy as we have never known, peace that more than surpasses our understanding. We will not be standing around saying to each other, "Well this is nice but wait until the final resurrection." Here is what Paul said in Philippians 1:23 "I'm torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me." Philippians 1:23 (NLT) 3. The Present Heaven though is not our final destination. Our final destination is to inhabit a New Earth and as I said before I will spend most of my time in the coming messages talking about what this life will be like because most of what the Bible tells us about Heaven is referring to our final destination in the New Heaven and New Earth, but it is vital that we understand that before that final resurrection The Present Heaven is where we will be. Trans. Let's talk a little more about distinguishing between the Present Heaven and the Future Heaven. B. Distinguishing Between The Present Heaven And The Future Heaven. 1. Really there are two questions for us to consider. #1. What is Heaven like? And #2 What will Heaven be like? a) What is Heaven like? This answers the first question I poised "What happens to us when we die? What happens to me if I die before the return of Christ? The Bible clearly teaches us that to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord. 1) One thing I think is important to make clear to us is that the Bible does not support an Idea of a place called Limbo or purgatory. For those who choose to believe this there is only one scripture they can point to. It is 1 Peter 3:19-20 which reads, "19So he went and preached to the spirits in prison- 20those who disobeyed God long ago when God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat. Only eight people were saved from drowning in that terrible flood." 1 Peter 3:19-20 (NLT) To say this scripture refers to a place the dead go who have not yet accepted Christ and where they can now make that choice is to gravely distort the scripture and pull it out of context. I can't spend the time I need to here or I will never finish, but if we were going to have this scripture mean that there was a place we could go after death to get right with God, why then were the only ones mentioned the people before the flood? If we are going to interpret this verse literally then the only ones who got this chance were those who rejected God before the flood. This idea come dangerously close the belief in Universalism we talked about last week. If you died having not accepted Christ, but then had another opportunity now knowing that Heaven and Hell are real places would you not chose Heaven? This concept of life after death lends itself very much to the thought that everyone will eventually go to Heaven which definitely is not supported by the Bible. b) The Bible says that when we die, we face Judgment. Now let me introduce a thought that will probably be new to you. It appears that there will be two judgments we face after death. The judgment of faith and the judgment of works. The first judgment determines where we will spend eternity. Again, this eliminates that idea of having a period of time where we can change our minds. We know that we are not saved by our works, by the things we have done but what Christ did for us. Again, I take you back to the words of John in 1 John 5:13 that we can know we have eternal life and that eternal life he was referring to was Heaven. But the Bible also speak of our works being judged. Ephesians 2:10 tells us "For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago." Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) This verse follows 2:8 that tells us we are not saved by our works. Now that we are created anew in Christ there are works that God has designed each of us to do. Remember what we talk about a lot here at Cornerstone, our SHAPE? Our spiritual gifts, our heart our abilities our personality and our experiences. All these combine to help us do what God has created us in Christ to do. In the second judgment we will be judged on what we did with what God had given us. We see this in the parable Jesus told of the talents. Revelation 22:12 says "Look, I am coming soon, bringing my reward with me to repay all people according to their deeds." Revelation 22:12 (NLT) 1) Now if you are like me you have struggled with the idea of rewards in Heaven so let me ask you, "Why is that?" Why is it hard for us to think about God giving us rewards in Heaven especially if we think of this as being rewarded for what we have done? I can simply tell you that we feel this way because we are thinking in terms of this fallen world. When I use to think about God giving out rewards in heaven, I always believed that this could not be because what if someone got more than I did, that wouldn't be fair. Why did I think this way? Because this is the way we feel in a sin cursed world, but what did I tell you as we began this series? I said let's think about what this world would be like without the curse of sin. I hope this does not terribly disappoint you, but it is hard for me sometimes to not to feel jealousy towards those who have bigger churches. "Hey, I work hard why don't I have a bigger church?" This is what we know about being rewarded, but this is part of living under the curse of sin. In Heaven we will celebrate the rewards of others not feel jealousy towards them. 2. Now let's talk about what we will be like in Heaven. I spoke about this in the first message, but will we have a physical body, or will we be some kind of disembodied spirit? As I said before God created us both as physical and spiritual beings. When God created Adam, he didn't create a spirit and give him a body he created and body and gave him a spirit. We are not essentially spirits that inhabit a body that would be Gnosticism. We are essentially both we are physical and spiritual beings. I want to share with you some scriptures that I feel will help us greatly when it comes to this subject. Let's look at what Paul said in 1 Corinthians. "It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. 43 Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. 44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies. 45 The Scriptures tell us, "The first man, Adam, became a living person." But the last Adam-that is, Christ-is a life-giving Spirit. 46 What comes first is the natural body, then the spiritual body comes later. 47 Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth, while Christ, the second man, came from heaven. 48 Earthly people are like the earthly man, and heavenly people are like the heavenly man. 49 Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man. 50 What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever." 1 Corinthians 15:42-50 (NLT2) Here is what I am seeing in these verses and seeing more clearly than I have ever seen before I might add. These verses make is abundantly clear that we will have a body when we are in Heaven, but that body will not be like this earthly body. Now I am using my imagination a little here to fill in some of the blanks that the Bible doesn't give us, but here is what I think, I believe that what I need to exist now in this physical world will not be what I need to exist in Heaven. Because the Bible does seem to speak of food in Heaven it seems to me that we will eat, but will we have to eat to survive? I doubt it. Would any of us ever be dying of hunger or dying of thirst? Paul clearly tells us that these dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever so clearly there will be a difference in this body and the one I have in Heaven. What it will be like fully I cannot say, but I will say this much, we can use the God given logic we have to say that whatever these bodies will be like in the Present Heaven they will be exceedingly better and I would also add the word different than the bodies we have now. Another reason we can believe that in the Present Heaven we will have physical bodies comes from the story Jesus told of Lazarus and the rich man. When you read that story do you envision non-physical bodies? Of course not, the rich man was begging Lazarus to come and touch his tongue with water. I guess you could call that symbolic language, but it seems the only reason you would was because you simply did not want to believe in Heaven as a physical place. I had never noticed this before but were you aware that in the story of Lazarus this is the only story in which Jesus gave an actual name. In the story of the talents we are just told there were three men. In the story of the rich young ruler that is all we know we don't have a name. It would certainly appear that Jesus wanted us thinking in concrete terms of a physical person. And of course, Lazarus is the name of a dear friend of Jesus whom he raised from the dead. 3. Here is one more scripture that would seem to tell us that we have physical bodies in Heaven. 9 So I went to the angel and told him to give me the small scroll. "Yes, take it and eat it," he said. "It will be sweet as honey in your mouth, but it will turn sour in your stomach!" 10 So I took the small scroll from the hand of the angel, and I ate it! It was sweet in my mouth, but when I swallowed it, it turned sour in my stomach." Revelation 10:9-10 (NLT) Look at the things John does. The angel gives him a scroll, so it appears he has hands to grasp. Then he eats the scroll and it tastes like honey, so he has taste buds which are certainly a part of our physical bodies. Then his stomach gets upset when he eats another scroll that tastes sour. I can't imagine a non-physical stomach getting upset. Once again let me emphasis that this will not be are permanent body because the Bible clearly tells us that this body will be given to us at the final resurrection. Conclusion A. I am going to stop here and finish up the rest of this message next week. I have probably given you a lot to chew on for the next week before we finish up this study of The Present Heaven. Next week I want to finish a few more thoughts on the physical aspect of the Present Heaven and then I want to address the question "What Will Life Be Like In The Present Heaven?" Once again, I want to stress the importance of these messages in how they will help us where we will spend most of our time and that will be talking about the New Heaven and New earth. 1. There are a couple of things I hope you will take away from what I have shared. The first is that we can look forward to the Present Heaven if that is where we go before the final resurrection. As I shared in the first message Heaven is not something we should fear by any stretch of the imagination. The cause of most fears is the unknown so I hope to remove a lot of those unknowns we now have about Heaven so that we can look forward with anticipation for when the day comes for us. The second thing that I want to you take away from what I have shared is to debunk the idea that there are so called "second chances" to accept Christ after we die. There is no limbo and there is no purgatory. Remember what Jesus said to the Rich man in the story I just talked about. He wanted Lazarus to go and tell his brothers so that they didn't make the same mistake he did. Jesus said this, "The rich man replied, 'No, Father Abraham! But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.' 31"But Abraham said, 'If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't listen even if someone rises from the dead.'" Luke 16:30-31 (NLT) Today is the day and now is the time to decide to follow Christ. I don't like to use scare tactics to try and get people to ask Jesus into their hearts because once the fear subsides, we just return to the old life. What I do try to do is warn us and remind us that we do not know the length of this life. None of us is promised tomorrow. It frankly is foolish to say to God, "I will consider you later" because later may never happen for you. Today is the day to decide to follow Jesus. 8