Saturday, October 15, 2005
“HEAVEN”
1. today I want to talk about heaven. The events of the last several months have caused me to think about heaven, a lot…
* the fire in June & how Brenda, Norm, Mel, Will & myself could have been killed if we had made different decisions – all of us were seconds from being in the youth center when that huge fire ball rolled through
* in July my younger brother was shot by his wife in a domestic dispute – he’s going to be okay but if the bullet had entered his body an inch or two in a different direction, he might have been killed
* in August Heather’s brother Gary died less than 2 years after being diagnosed with colon cancer
* on 9/15 I led a memorial service for Maureen Guthner’s sister, Mavis
* on 9/20 Duane Oleson dropped dead of a heart attack in Pasco, WA (son of former CAC pastor)
* on 9/22 Renae Roskott died in her sleep
* on 9/24 I led a memorial service for Nancy Pickett’s 99 year old mother-in-law, Francis
* on 10/5 Tom Sawyer died of a stroke while hunting
* earlier this week in a conversation with my parents I heard that my cousin’s son was wounded in the war in Iraq – the vehicle he was traveling in hit a land mind – the person sitting next to him was killed – he may lose a leg due to shrapnel wounds
2. add to these Katrina, Rita & the earthquake in Pakistan.
3. there have been days where I’ve thought long & hard about heaven & wished it would come soon.
4. on the other side of the spectrum, I’ve enjoyed, we’ve enjoyed, evenings of laughter while eating dinner & having 3-4 conversations going on at once amongst the 4 of us. Life is also good.
5. I have 7 realities about heaven that I want to share with you this morning from Revelation 21-22. I’m indebted to Darrell Johnson of Regent College & his commentary on Revelation for much of what I’m going to share. What will we find in heaven?
Heaven
1st God is there (21:3)
1. in him we live, move & have our being, in heaven as never before. In heaven we are finally encompassed by & enfolded in God himself.
2. we will at long last live, fully alive, within the circle of the inner Trinitarian relations of God. We, mere creatures that we are, along with all of creation, will be drawn into the circle of Holy love that has forever existed as Father, Son & Holy Spirit.
3. God is there in heaven.
2nd glory is there (21:11,23)
1. the ultimate reason for the universe is to show the glory of God (rick warren). What is the glory of God? It is who God is.
2. the essence of his nature. The weight of his importance. The radiance of his splendor. The demonstration of his power. The atmosphere of his presence. God’s glory is the expression of God.
3. Any glory that this earth has seen is but a speckle, a shadow of the heavenly glory.
4. in heaven God’s glory shines – its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. This is poetic language attempting to describe the indescribable – God’s unfiltered presence manifested everywhere.
5. theologians call this phenomenon ‘effusion.’ The unrestrained expression & free flow of all that makes God to be God.
6. glory is found in heaven.
3rd materiality is there
1. heaven is full of tangible stuff. Stones & gems of all colors. Walls, gates, streets. Trees yielding fruit. A city. A river full of the water of life.
2. our Christian faith is the most materialistic of all faiths or world religions.
3. originally God made us for earth & placed us on earth. In Jesus God will fulfill that original intent in a new heaven & a new earth (21:1). Heaven, our eternal home, is actually the new earth.
4. our Christian hope is not to be freed of our creatureliness but to be freed of the sin that causes our creatureliness to decay. Heaven is God’s new earth, new city, his original dream, brought to completion & perfection.
5. stuff matters to God. Materiality is in heaven.
4th peoples are there (21:3, 24)
1. men, people, nations, kings. In heaven God will gather up within himself the full range of the world’s ethnic diversity.
2. no one ethnic grouping can bear or manifest the full image of God. It takes us all – Anglos, Hispanics, Peruvians, Costa Ricans, Dominican Republicans. These are the people Tom & Roberta worked with as missionaries. People that they helped bring to Christ from these various ethnic groups will be part of the make-up of heaven.
3. the new heaven, the new earth, the new city will be composed of a vast multi-ethnic people.
4. peoples are in heaven.
5th creativity is there (21:5)
1. if God is anything God is an artist. God is creativity. God is beauty, shape, form & texture. The beauty & wonder of his creation in earth, sky & sea are signs of that.
2. heaven is going to be noted for its new expression of Divine creativity – I am making everything new, says the inventive God.
3. creativity – vibrant & unceasing. I do not understand all of what that means. As wonderful & stunning & spell-binding & awe-inspiring as this creation is, it doesn’t hold a candle to the new things that God has in store for us.
4. creativity is in heaven.
6th life is there (22:1)
1. this explains all of the creativity. The water of life. The Greek language has 2 words for life. Bios meaning the life we inherit from our biological parents.
2. but heaven will be full of zoe life. The life that does not run down because it cannot run down. It is God’s life. It is eternal life. It is Divine life.
3. it is the life that Jesus brings to us & gives us. Jesus did not leave heaven & come to earth to give us our biological life. He came to grace us with spiritual-zoe life.
4. Zoe life becomes ours when we humble ourselves before God. When we admit that he is God & we’re not. When we admit that we’re helpless to do anything about our “sin” problem. When we recognize that God has solved our sin problem in Jesus. When we by faith accept the fact that Jesus died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for us. When we confess our sins. When we invite Jesus into our lives to be our forgiveness. When we turn the reigns of our lives over to Jesus & ask him to lead the way. Zoe life, spiritual life, eternal life becomes ours. And heaven becomes our true & lasting home.
5. zoe life is in heaven.
7th God’s face is there (22:4)
1. I save the best for last. Here’s the most wonderful reality of heaven. It’s a face. The face of God is there.
2. we will finally be able to see the face of God & not die. Then we shall see him – Father Son Spirit – face to face as I Corinthians 13 says.
3. and they shall see his face. Isn’t this the deepest longing of our hearts? As children we possess a deep-seated longing to be intimately connected with our parents, those who give us bios life.
4. I believe this is even truer with our heavenly Father. Beneath any longing we have to know & be known by our earthly parents, we hold a desire to be connected with our Creator.
5. we have a God-shaped vacuum in our souls. Only God can fill that. To look into God’s eyes & have him look into ours is to fill that vacuum so that we are completely satisfied, so that finally feel completely at home, completely human, completely made in the image & likeness of God.
6. God’s face is in heaven.
On earth as it is in heaven
1. this phrase from the Lord’s prayer is taking on a greater & greater significance for me as I grow older. These 7 realities of heaven are also meant to be earthly realities. Right now. Today.
2. We as Christ-followers exist, in part, to do our part in showing them in the here & now. We pray that God’s kingdom may come & his will be done, NOW, on earth as it is in heaven.
God
1. God is in heaven & God is on earth. We are his people. We are his Body. God shows up “in” us. The world discovers Jesus “in” us.
2. are you allowing God to be your very life? Your everything?
Glory
1. I wish I had a better grip on this one. The glory of God. A friend emailed me a prayer 2 weeks ago – Lord, would you increase my appetite for the things that attract your presence. God’s glory is God’s presence.
2. do we have a hunger, a longing to both experience God’s glory & be conveyers of his glory?
Materiality
1. matter matters to God. Do we value our bodies? Do we take proper care of them – diet, exercise, rest? Do we value God’s creation? He has made of keepers of his vast, wonderful world.
2. When it comes to ecology & the environment, we as Christ-followers should be leading the pack. As we sometimes sing, this is my Father’s world (Tom Sawyer loved this hymn). What are we doing with our Father’s world?
Peoples
1. heaven is truly going to be multiplicity of races & ethnic groups. The Alliance church is Paris, the international church, is composed of people from 32 different countries. That’s a picture of heaven on earth.
2. if that’s the shape of heaven, we’d do well to begin to live like that now. To shed our American ethnocentrism – national self-centeredness & pride – and begin to affirm & embrace other nations. In doing so we will begin to bring heaven to earth now.
Creativity
1. we Protestant evangelicals are slow to get this one. Historically we have not valued creativity. We have debunked the arts. And in being so we have denied an essential part of God’s nature.
2. I would pray for an outburst of Spirit-driven creativity in our midst. Song – dance – painting – sculpture – drama – writing – drawing – lettering. We are impoverished without it. We miss out on part of God’s very nature.
Life
1. are we experiencing God’s life? Spiritual life? Divine life? Zoe life? Eternal life?
2. the unique role we play in this world is to act as conveyers of God’s eternal life. Government can’t dispense it. Schools don’t have it. Business doesn’t trade in it. But we as the church do.
3. Jesus came to seek & to save the lost – those with biological life but not spiritual life. This is what we must be about.
God’s face
1. God’s face is reserved for heaven. But here’s the counter-part. We can be reflections of Jesus. As we surrender our lives to Jesus & give ourselves to him & his mission, he is seen in us.
2. we may be the only Jesus some people ever see. The closest they might ever get to God’s face is to peer into our face.
3. we must be like Moses. We must spend enough time in God’s presence that his radiance, his love, his life, his presence shines through ours.
4. On Earth As It Is In Heaven – let’s help to bring heaven to earth by being Christ-followers in whose lives can be found – God, his glory, his value of materiality, his love for all peoples, his penchant for creativity, his life, and his inviting face.
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Unedited notes. Sorry, no time to clean it up this week.
WG We don’t hear a lot about Heaven
VM We don’t hear about Hell either!
MC The closer you get to it the more you think about it.
BS I think that is true. My son & his wife don’t think about it much, they are in their 30s
BW It’s the one thing in life that we can always look forward to. We don’t know a whole lot about.
VM There won’t be a suin or moon, no night, all light. No tears, no sickness.
KV When I was in there service I wasn’t concerned about
WG Idea of metaphor Beauty (dreams
MC Froiend’s near death experience claims that reality seems pale, dim, not as brioght as the afterlife.
BW We get used to what we like, what we enjoy. Waht Paul speaks to in scripture, the reality of it is greater. He did make us to enjoy this life.
BS In our perspective we are trying to make our own heaven here on earth.
BS Perhaps in heaven there is no sense of ownership “He who dies woith the most toyus wins”
BH But god owns everything here on earth, we just don’t know it.
MC Even our bodies
MW Here we see as through a glass darkly, but then it will be face to face.
RW We will be able to think like He thinks, no longer as we do now.
I’d like talk about that creativty. Sculpture, art, I don’t think I like that stuff and I don’t think we need to go that way.
DC I THINK HE LIMITED IT TO FINE ARTS, BUT ENGINEERING, architecture. A hundred years ago Christianity was the leader in creativty. . . look at the hymns
BG I WAS THINKING ABOUT Galileo and leonardo da Vinci. Conservative views has led to persecution. As a Christian I would like to see more things.
WG EXAMPLE POTTERY PAINTING
BW The difference between you and I is when I pray it is alone, but when I see what you have done in the prayer room, and it touches people. Different people, we are wired differently.
RW I think we get hung up sometimes on trying to make things that are for specific people.
DC I don’t think that creativity is nescessaruiily of God. I don’t know exactly what is creativty. While I bbelieve in creativty but I also think that God created us in His own h=image and there are certain rules that make things so they are not dissdent. That there are things that make a lack of harmony.
BW I see some people do things and I think of creativity as thoings that I couldn’t do. You have the worship team and that is very creative. Sometimes the sermon is creative. The prayer room is creative. I appreciate it when people are creative in ways that nobody feels out of place.
BH Quotes sermon about creativity.
DC There is a theory relating to last things, utopia, eden, the Garden, his presence. And that was heaven and will come. It’s a theory that is supported in scripture, but the new things may be things we have never exp[erienced before. Newness does not nescessarily mean things that have never existed before.
VM Isaaiih 65:17 - - -
BS The sermon was almost like, that this is our inhyeritance, something that belongs to us. But is there an entrance exam? Are there conditions there? The book of life, are our names written there? There is the other side, what about Hell? I didn’t see that balance in this presentation.
VM A lot of people think about Heaven, bnut they don’t think about Hell.
BS To a lot of people walking around Heaven doesn’t mean a lot to them, or heell.
VM Unitarian church believes that they are gods, that they don’t even think about Heaven.
JAW I have a (?) who has a friend who has a friend who is holding each other accounatble to the word. They went to a little church, and they were welcomed in, and it seemed all right, but they started meditating. And things there seemed very wrong. We knew that we were in the wrong place, in Satan’s churhc. They ran so fast from the church. Ran right across a busy street. I was so thankful that they were able to recognize what was true.
BW I have a granddaughter done in Springfield, she says she is a Christian, but listening to her talk I see that she is so polluted with non-christian things. Their priorities are really not where they should be. Which has been really good for my prayer life, now I can pray for L and know what to pray.
JAW S. was here and I am so thankful for how she was prepared in Sunday School classes that prepared her for life. When other Chrisitans are reinforcing what you as a parent teach is so important. I like the last part of what he said, how we are going to see His face.
BS Will I be all who I am in the afterlife?
WG Idea of eternal consciousness.
MC God said “I am who I am” Follows what you said about there being an eternal present.
BS I often wonder about when we talk about going to heaven, will that emotional bond that we have here in lifgge. I think that when He makkkes all things new, I think that we will be all new, that we will have a focus on Him. We will only be about the need to living and being with God.
KV There is going to be a new heaven and a new earth. So who is going tto be in heaven and who will be on earth?
BG The idea of the trinity, the three are one, so maybe the new heaven and the new earth will be in some ways the same. I think it is all too much for our finite brains to comprehend.
WG I’ve thought a lot about this stuff in terms modern physics, and I could share it (but it would praobably sacre you
), but I think it’s important to remember that what ever we imagine, it’s probably wrong. The only thing that matters is that God is real, He loves us, He died for us, and He wants us to share that.
KV I think too many people think about what heaven is to them and not so much about being in the presence of God
(Woah. . . class is slipping into multiple conversations. . . can’t keep up!)
BW When I was in Africa the church I visited was their whole life. Those people were there a half hour before church worshipping, and didn’t leave when it was over. Chruch was their life. My routine is pretty predictable. To me that is heaven. This is the world that I live in. For those people their routines arte not easy. Church is what they look forward to.
Silence.
RW I thought he did a good job in comparing the whjole thing about going to heaven to bringing it back to what is going on here. That we have a responisiblity. The seven points about heaven we applied to earth.
DC It will be interesting to see what he does this afternoon with that with a different audience.
BW Oops...missed it
BH When my uncle died his children where JWs, and the pastor said that he went to Hell during the sermon because he wasn’t a JW.
VM Read: Isaaiah 65:17+ & 66:22
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