11-14-21 A Heavenly Perspective

Today I want to talk about a heavenly perspective. What I mean is that when we cultivate an eternal perspective instead of a temporal one we will grow in hope, joy, and peace. A viewpoint or outlook on life that only focuses on who we are and how we operate on this earth, here, now will tend to make us lose hope. But if we adopt a kingdom perspective, or a viewpoint where we live our lives in the light of eternity in God’s kingdom now, we’ll find that our priorities start to shift; we start to adopt God’s priorities and perspective instead of a humanistic, fleeting one. Let’s pray before we get started. Father in heaven, we honor and glorify Your Name. Jesus we praise you for who you are and all you have done for us. Bless this time we have together, and help us understand what you want to say to us through your word. Holy Spirit, we invite you here and we open up our hearts to what you would speak. Help us to adopt your viewpoint as our own so that we might better represent you. In Jesus’ Name, amen. I want us to start by looking at Psalm 39:4-7 NKJV “LORD, make me to know my end, And what is the measure of my days, That I may know how frail I am. 5 Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah 6 Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, And does not know who will gather them. 7 “And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You.” Life is short, we’re frail people, and even when we do a good job in life we’re all like vapor, or the wind. Life is short, we can’t take anything with us, and then we die. It’s an encouraging message from the Psalms, today, isn’t it? But as depressing as this Psalm and meditation on the brevity of life might be if we just stay on the surface, in reality, thinking about life this way can bring us a lot of hope. In verse 7, David says, “what do I wait for, then? My hope is in the Lord.” 1 Now yes, we can say that we have hope because we’re going to heaven after we die. But we have even more hope now, because despite the brevity of life, we can live in the kingdom of God today! We can live in the hope of Jesus because we know that there is more to this life than just what we can see and we know that the longings of our soul for something bigger, something more, something of the kingdom of God is real, it’s not just a dream or vain-hope. God’s invitation to new life in His kingdom now isn’t just forgiveness, it’s also new life in Christ; a new quality of relational life that never fades, dims, grows old, or dies. 1 Now the bible has some interesting things to say about death. Today, we’re talking about a heavenly perspective; how knowing that life is short and that we’re all going to die is actually a life-giving perspective because it brings hope and certainty of joining Jesus in eternal life. And we can join Him in that now, today. But the Bible actually says death is a ministry. Did you know that? 2 Corinthians 3:7-8 NKJV “But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?” You might ask, how could death be a ministry? Well, sometimes, when hard circumstances are over, or put to death, we feel a lot better, we are freed from them. When we put to death things in our lives that block us from walking in God’s kingdom and experiencing relationship with Him, we’re able to move forward in new, healthy ways. This passage in 2 Corinthians is speaking about the law. Paul is saying that the law caused death because we couldn’t ever keep it. The glory of the law is passing away and changing into the new law of love, the law of staying connected to Jesus through relationship by God’s grace. 1 Boa, Kenneth. Conformed to His Image: Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation, P59. Zondervan, 2001. 2 We don’t need to be afraid of death anymore. Hebrews 2:15 AMPC “that He might deliver and completely set free all those who through the [haunting] fear of death were held in bondage throughout the whole course of their lives.” Jesus came to free us from fear of death! He came to give us new life in His kingdom. And it’s important that we’re not afraid of death if we’re going to live life in the context of His kingdom. Why? Because we’ve got to keep dying each day we walk with Jesus. We’ve got to die to selfishness, self-worship, and self-indulgence. We’ve got to die to self-pity, self-righteousness, and self-consciousness. We’ve got to die to our flesh and embrace the cross in light of the eternal love of Jesus. Colossians 3:5 NKJV “Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Notice the Bible says that we are the ones who need to crucify our flesh it’s our responsibility. It’s a growth process; I guess we could say it’s a death process. In a life without Jesus, a person grows physically and once they hit their peak, they’re always trying to avoid death because it’s the end. In the Christian life, we embrace death and grow in our ability to die; and by dying, we find life. John 12:24 AMP “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone [just one grain, never more]. But if it dies, it produces much grain and yields a harvest.” Notice, the grain of wheat remains alone. God never intended us to be alone, He designed us for fellowship with Him and with each other. But if we fellowship with Jesus, it has to be fellowship in His death so that we might live to God. Philppians 3:10 NKJV “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” 3 One example of moving forward in the ministry of death, or dying to self, is seen in the story of Abraham and Isaac. You probably know the story already, but Abraham was called to kill the most important thing in his life, his son. And, to top it all off, Abraham waited 25 years to receive the blessing of Isaac in the first place. So killing Isaac, offering him to God was a big deal. Genesis 22:1-14 NLT Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called. “Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.” 2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” 3 The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.” 6 So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, 7 Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” 8 “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together. 9 When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. 11 At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!” 12 “Don’t lay a hand on the 4 boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son. 13 Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” You see, when we choose to die with Christ, when we choose to take our desires, goals, plans, and promises and give them to Jesus, place them in His hands, lay them at His feet, He promises that He will provide for us; He will bring new life in ways we didn’t understand before. And to end this story, you see exactly what Jesus was talking about with the grain of wheat - multiplication. You’ll not only receive a new, better kind of life, but then you’ll multiply that life everywhere you go. Genesis 22:15-18 NLT Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham from heaven. 16 “This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that 17 I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. 18 And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.” See, after Abraham chose to die to himself, his dreams and plans, God swore by His own Name that blessings would be multiplied on him and his descendants for generation after generation after generation. And so we need to start to see God’s big-picture perspective - that death is not actually the end, as our culture tends to think. 5 Death - in this case, death to self and falling into radical obedience to Christ - is actually the beginning of a new kind of kingdom living, a new kind of relational connectedness to God and His ways. And it’s risky to change our mindset about life, death, and what it means. It’s risky because the way God thinks about our lives on this earth challenges everything the culture would reinforce and promote. But if we choose to do it, to think about life from a biblical perspective, it will make us want to pursue things that last instead of temporal, earthly things. Now, that doesn't mean we’re so heavenly minded that we’re not earthly good. It should be the opposite; when we are actually focusing on God and His kingdom life, we will learn to treasure the passing opportunities of this life and become more alive to the present moment. Instead of getting overwhelmed at the trials we face and the tribulations we go through, we start to understand that those things will eventually pass away. We’ll find that it’s true; Romans 8:18 NKJV For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Instead of taking life for granted, we’ll learn to savor joys and blessings that might otherwise be overlooked.2 And this always leaves us with a question - how are we using the resources of time, talent, and treasure that God has given us? Are we operating according to His kingdom life, or are we more entrenched in a worldly mentality? As I start to close, I want to give you a few areas you can focus on as a part of gaining a heavenly perspective. One area has to do with our relationship with the Lord. Are we growing in sharing all of our lives with God? In Heaven, we’ll be around the Lord all the time; and as we grow in kingdom principles, we should be 2 Boa, Kenneth. Conformed to His Image: Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation, P63. Zondervan, 2001. 6 growing in sharing all of our lives with the Lord - our joys, our pains, and our failures. Ultimately, Jesus doesn’t just give us an invitation to live this life and enjoy our time, though He wants us to enjoy the journey. Jesus invites to be with Him through each moment of each day. Romans 8:35 NKJV Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? You know that the answer is that none of these things can separate us from the love of God. But these things can separate us from the awareness of His love.3 I’ll say that again, nothing can separate us from God’s love, but sometimes we allow circumstances to separate us from the awareness of His love, His grace, and His presence. So one area of focus is our awareness of His closeness and how much we will let Him into each moment of our lives, each thought we have and each season we go through. Another area we can focus on is making God’s kingdom values our own. We don’t have time to go through all of God’s values today, but a good place to start is the beatitudes from the sermon on the mount. Jesus is going through some of heaven’s values; He’s talking about God’s kingdom perspective on how His people should operate. Matthew 5:3-10 NKJV 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 3 Cook, Jerry. A Few Things I've Learned Since I Knew It All, P113. Word, 1989. 7 Again, here Jesus is introducing a new set of values by which citizens of His kingdom are supposed to live by. These values run counter to the ones we find in man-made society. It only makes sense to try to live by these values if we truly believe God rules our lives, governs our circumstances, and will show up as the-God-who-provides, Jehovah Jireh. These values are supposed to be expressed in action; any value we really hold dear will find some expression in our behavior. Jesus isn’t teaching us a morality here that we just agree with in our minds; He’s teaching us ways of operation that should shape our lives! And this is impossible to walk out in our own power. But if we choose to die to ourselves and trust in Jesus day by day, we’ll find that His kingdom power is at work in us to display His kingdom values through us. Now the other area we can try to grow in is walking by faith. We want to try to walk in faith in God, a kind of faith that obeys God through death to self and resurrection with Christ. As we grow in that, we’ll gain strength, we’ll grow in kingdom values, and we’ll see ministry be multiplied through us and to us. Romans 4:16-22 NKJV Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all 17 (as it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations”) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; 18 who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” 19 And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. 20 He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, 21 and 8 being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. 22 And therefore “it was accounted to him for righteousness.” You see, embracing the ministry of death to self produces righteousness. And it produces it because God is the God who gives life to the dead. He’s the only one who can. He is the One, who when you don’t feel like you have any hope left, will take the dying flame you have and partner it with the Holy Spirit to give you a new fulfillment, to multiply grace in your life. And contrary to the world’s idea of hope, we can believe in the hope of the resurrection life of Jesus to break in our circumstances when we believe. We can stand unwavering at the promises of God that are YES and AMEN in Jesus, knowing that if we will choose to go to the cross with Jesus, if we will choose to give Him all that we are, if we will die, we will see that the same God who promised is also able to perform His will and word through us and for us. And so the call today is one to embrace God’s perspective on life. But it’s also a call to come and die so that Christ might live through us. It’s a call to walk to the cross so that Christ can be resurrected through us. It’s a summons to embrace the ministry of death to self so that we can live in Jesus Christ. Romans 7:4 NLT “So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.” Thank you Jesus for your resurrection power that brings dead things to life, that breathes new vitality into our spirits and that empowers us to follow you into your new kingdom life! 9