What does Scripture actually tell us that heaven is like, and why should we think about it more than we do? In this message, pastor Andy Davis walks us through how Scripture answers these questions.
I. Heaven… We Don’t Think About It Enough!!
Colossians 3:1-4 Set your hearts on things above and things to come
In a word, we are commanded to hope… to be filled with hope, radiant in hope, buoyant in hope, powerful in hope. This is especially vital for our ministry in this world; we are surrounded by people without hope and without God in the world. These hopeless people need to be shown what hope is, where they may obtain it. Because they don’t have it.
If Christians are filled with hope, and they put that hope on display every day, but especially in the worst situations—when diagnosed with cancer, when you lose your home to a hurricane, when you lose a child, when you lose your job… if even in those circumstances Christians are obviously, clearly, filled with buoyant hope, the onlooking hopeless world will ask us to “give a reason for the hope that we have.”
What is “hope”? Is it not a feeling in the heart that the future is BRIGHT based on the promises of God?
And our future IS indescribably bright! It is a hope of HEAVEN, and heaven was revealed in the Book of Revelation to the Apostle John in exile on the Island of Patmos… the last two chapters of the Bible describe it as radiant with the glory of God.
In this sermon, we are going to probe closer to the limits God has imposed on our knowledge of heaven… we are going to avoid speculation. I want what Paul calls, a “hope that does not disappoint” (Rom. 5:5) Meaning, the things we have set our hearts on will actually come true. The only way that can occur is if all our thoughts are based on SCRIPTURE. I am against speculation on heaven. I am not personally opposed to hearing about “near-death experiences”, but I do not consider them anything we can base our hope and our knowledge on. It’s like a friend telling us he had a dream about heaven.
This sermon is based on the rock-solid truth of the word of God, as well as on SOUND THEOLOGICAL REASONING based on scripture.
Meditating on heaven is therefore COMMANDED and it will be BLESSED. That’s what this sermon is about.
Revelation 1:3 Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.
Revelation 21:1-5 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
First priority: YOUR SALVATION!! If you desire to go to heaven, you must first repent of your sins and trust in Christ… only believers in Christ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven… those whose names are written in Christ’s “book of life”… IS THAT YOU???
Now… the rest of my time is entirely dedicated to understanding life in our ETERNAL HOME… heaven.
NOTE: I am usually an expository preacher… I choose a passage and preach through it line by line… been doing that at FBC Durham for over twenty-five years and I love it. This morning, I am doing something very different.
For five years, I studied the topic of heaven and accumulated insights that became a book I published two years ago called The Glory Now Revealed. Today, I want to give you a brief summary of what I found… the themes I uncovered were stunning to me, thrilling. But we can’t begin to delve into these themes in depth… we have limited time.
So, it’s like I am a tour guide at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC… and you all are my close friends. And I am giving you a personal guided tour after hours to the whole museum. It’s the largest museum in the world with 21 separate museums and 1.5 million square feet of space and 157 million museum historical/cultural items or scientific specimens on display.
But we only have limited time… so we’re going to be walking by whole wings of the museum and I am going to flip on the lights and have you look quickly down a corridor a half-mile long, with over 25,000 exhibits on that one corridor. Then, I’ll say “Sorry, folks, we need to move on… there’s a lot more to see and only a short evening together.” Then I will frustrate you and turn off the lights to that corridor and move on to the next section of the vast museum.
Heaven will be infinitely MORE than that! My brief tour today is just a conceptual SAMPLER of what heaven will involve.
II. Central Idea: An Eternal Education in the Glory of God
Many Christians have a tragic and faulty view of our eternity in heaven. They worry that it will be BORING!!!
They think we will be sitting on some fluffy white cloud with a golden harp singing “Amazing Grace” over and over. And when we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less years to sing that song than when we’ve first begun!
That static view of heaven is DEPRESSING to many people! And it is false. As a result, many people just don’t think about heaven at all. One woman told me, “I just figured I would die and go to heaven and be happy. I didn’t think about anything else.”
I am here to say that heaven will be pulsating with energy and light and DISCOVERY.
Revelation 21-22 make it plain that heaven is all about the GLORY OF GOD. The New Jerusalem is radiant with the glory of God, shining all through it.
Revelation 21:10-11 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.
Revelation 21:23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.
Main Idea: For the redeemed, heaven will be a dynamic place of continual education in the glory of God, resulting in wave upon wave of worship for all eternity.
Key Definition: God’s glory is the radiant display of his attributes (e.g. his love, knowledge, wisdom, power, justice, mercy, grace, patience, etc.) before a delighted audience of angels and humans.
This is the reason why God originally created everything, and humanity in his image. That we would know his glory and delight in it and worship God because of it.
Worship is based on revelation and response… God reveals, we respond.
Past, present, future glory: When we get to heaven, our experience of the glory of God will be in three categories: God’s past glories (revealed in his mighty works throughout the history of the world); God’s present glories (his face his throne, Christ, the radiant redeemed, the angels, the New Heaven and New Earth, the New Jerusalem); God future glories (the unfolding events of our eternal life in the New Heavens and New Earth).
Heaven will thus be dynamic… and the redeemed will be growing in our knowledge of God.
Key insight: We will never be omniscient; therefore, there will always be more we can learn about the infinite glory of God!
GOD WILL TEACH US HIS GLORY as best displayed in REDEMPTIVE HISTORY… how saving a multitude from every nation on earth over six thousand years brought him glory
God will show us the past… so we may see his mighty works.
III. Biblical Proof of Heavenly Memories
If I can’t prove my assertions from scripture by sound theology, I am merely SPECULATING!
How do I know that in heaven we will remember or learn about our lives in this present evil age??
Key Text:
Psalm 111:2-4 Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them. 3 Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever. 4 He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the LORD is gracious and merciful.
Grace: Ephesians 2:6-7 God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Rewards: Matthew 5:11-12 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The Wounds, Works, and Words of Christ:
Revelation 5:6 Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne
Revelation 5:9 And they sang a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.
Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
Stories of the Multitude: Revelation 7:9 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. …
Revelation 7:13 Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes– who are they, and where did they come from?”
IV. Resurrected Bodies, Minds, and Hearts
At the Second Coming of Christ, all the redeemed will receive resurrection bodies.
1 Corinthians 15:42-44 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
The resurrection body will be IMPERISHABLE… unable to decay or die; it will be GLORIOUS, radiantly beautiful; for Jesus said “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.” (Mt. 13:43) It will be POWERFUL, with limitless energy… like Isaiah 40:31, “They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and never faint.” And it will be a SPIRITUAL BODY… a perfect combination of physical and spiritual in a way that is incomprehensible to us… but Jesus’ resurrection body was physical, he said “Touch me and see… a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” (Lk. 24:39) But it also passed through walls and appeared and disappeared.
We will also have resurrected minds and hearts as well. Those minds and hearts will be eternally freed from idolatry, pride, weariness, boredom, dullness, and forgetfulness.
With these glorified bodies, minds, and hearts, we will be perfectly equipped for the eternal education in the glory of God that we will be receiving. We will be LEARNING without WEARINESS! We will “get it”
Luke 24:25 Jesus said to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!
Yet, we will still have limits. We will never be omniscient, and we will also have other limitations. Only so much we can handle.
V. Seeing the Past… Not Merely Hearing About It
Heaven is about seeing, not merely hearing:
1 Corinthians 13:12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
God has often transported prophets through Spirit-visions to show them things far away, either geographically or in time:
Ezekiel 8:3 The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and in visions of God he took me to Jerusalem
One key example is how the Spirit showed the Apostle John the future glories of the New Jerusalem:
Revelation 21:9-10 One of the seven angels… said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.
Why couldn’t the Spirit carry us all away back in time to show us how she was built?! God can teach us the past in ways far more fascinating than a dry history lecture.
Imagine what it will be like for the Spirit to take you back in time to see the Red Sea crossing? With water walling up on the right and the left? Or to see Elijah defeat the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, when fire came down from heaven
Extend it also to church history… to see the Christians testify boldly to their faith in Christ during the Roman Empire, even though they were martyred in the Colisseum. Or to travel with the Apostle Thomas when he brought the gospel to India for the first time. Or to stand with Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms when he testified to the gospel saying, “I can do no other. Here I stand. So help me, God!” Or to be with Billy Graham in 1957 when he preached the gospel to thousands in Times Square New York City.
Not merely hearing about it. Experiencing it through visions of the Spirit so real we are not sure whether it’s in the body or out!
VI. Rewards: Unequal Capacities for Heavenly Glory
Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The treasures we store up are GOOD WORKS done for the glory of God. God will make certain not one of those good words will ever be forgotten!!
The three C’s of rewards: Crowns… Commendation… Capacity
Crowns = emblems of honor… like the glorious crowns the 24 elders were constantly casting down before God in Revelation 4
Commendation = praise from God (“Well done, good and faithful servant”… “My Father will honor the one who serves me”)
Capacity = the ability to take in and appreciate the infinite glory of God
Heavenly rewards are “more of God” in some sense:
Luke 6:38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
None of us, no matter how glorious, will be able to comprehend completely the infinite glory of God. But some will have a greater capacity than others.
Capacity: Think of it like the Pacific Ocean with a vast number of submerged vessels. The various vessels have larger or smaller dimensions: a thimble, a bucket, a vat, a water tower, an oceangoing super-tanker. They are all submerged and 100 percent full, but they have vastly different capacities. And the Ocean has far more it could give. So it will be with rewards.
We will all be completely filled with the glory of God… but not equally so.
VII. God’s Sovereign Weaving of the Tapestry of History
History is like a vast, complex tapestry in which there are countless threads of varying lengths, colors, and materials… all woven together to make a massive picture of the glory of God.
History is infinitely more complex than we can possibly imagine:
2 Peter 3:8 With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
In the heavenly review of history, we will see how God sovereignly orchestrated every single day for his own purposes and glory.
Let me ask you a simple question: “What did Almighty God do YESTERDAY?” June 8, 2024? There are 8.1 billion people… according to World Christian Encyclopedia, there are approximately 2.7 million conversions to Christ every year; that means on average 7400 people come to Christ every single day. God celebrated those seven thousand yesterday. Some of them were sinners who God had been working on for decades… all their lives. Yesterday was their day of salvation.
But God also sovereignly overruled every aspect of government all over the world. There are 195 nations on earth. Each of them has a government of some sort.
Proverbs 21:1 The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.
That’s been true every single day of every single year since the beginning of time. God’s mighty works are incalculable!!
The rise and fall of every world empire, the scope and dimensions of their conquests, the details of their histories… all were planned and orchestrated by God
Acts 17:26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
God’s ultimate purpose in the control of nations and peoples is his own glory in the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, and from the resurrection of Christ to the end of time. In heaven, we will study the details and dimensions of all of human history to learn what God has done.
VIII. Honoring Heroes, Worshiping God
Some Christians did many and mighty things for the glory of God, thus winning a name among the greatest heroes among God’s people; other Christians did far less; no Christians did nothing.
In 2 Samuel 7:9, God said he would make the name of David great like the names of the greatest men of the earth.
But Jesus was given the greatest name:
Philippians 2:9 God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name
In heaven, we will honor all the heroes of church history appropriately and proportionately to their achievements, without the smallest amount of jealousy. But we will reserve worship for God and for Christ alone.
Some of the greatest names:
Polycarp… who courageously died for Christ, burned at the stake in Smyrna in the 2nd century
Felicitas, the Roman noblewoman who said to her Roman interrogator, “While I live, I shall defeat you… and if you kill me, I shall defeat you even more!”
Athanasius, who stood for the orthodox understanding of in incarnation of Christ against almost all of the church leaders
Augustine, the greatest theologian of the ancient church
Martin Luther, who risked his life for the gospel
George Whitefield, who preached over 18,000 sermons to over ten million hearers before the American Revolution
Jim and Elizabeth Eliot… Jim died as a martyr and Elizabeth won those who killed him to Christ
Some names you know, many you don’t. You’ll meet them all in heaven! And learn how God used them to spread the gospel
IX. Obscure People and Events Finally Revealed
1 Corinthians 1:26 Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.
I once counted 911 names listed in the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles. Over 90% of the people listed we know nothing about at all other than their names.
Why are they there? God cares about obscure people!!
The overwhelming majority of God’s people are obscure. History is made up of common, ordinary, obscure people whose quiet actions resulted in the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.
An obscure hero of missions that captivated my attention was James Gilmour of Mongolia. In 1870, Gilmour ventured forth alone into the vast territory of Mongolia… he trekked in the Mongolian plateau at a grueling pace, covering sometimes 300 miles in 7 days, over 40 miles a day. He survived on handfuls of millet and braved the temperatures of the harsh winter that sometimes reached forty below zero. He knew basic dentistry and extracted rotten teeth from the people… he also preached the gospel of Christ; over a four-year span, he treated 6000 patients, preached to over 24,000 people, travelled over 1900 miles… and saw only TWO PEOPLE come to faith in Christ. Stunning levels of dedication and suffering for such a small visible return on the investment. That he didn’t give up in despair is one of the greatest triumphs of his life.
James Gilmour… an obscure hero of church history. We’ll meet him in heaven and find out how God ultimately used his faithfulness.
I especially think God will reveal the stories of WOMEN… mothers who quietly led their children to faith as they grew. Today you did a parent dedication… and the hidden work of moms and dads all over the world winning their children to Christ will be celebrated in heaven.
Recently saw a movie called “A Hidden Life”… about a courageous Austrian Christian in World War II who refused to take the oath of personal loyalty to Hitler and was killed as a result.
Movie Title from George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch:
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.
X. Spiritual Dimensions Unveiled
Scripture reveals that we are surrounded every moment by an invisible spiritual dimension where holy angels as well as Satan and demons affect human history every moment in ways that are impossible for us to comprehend, let alone record.
Ephesians 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Hebrews 1:14 Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?
Hebrews 13:2 some people have entertained angels without knowing it
Heaven will fully reveal the full activity of angels and Satan and demons in every day of human history
XI. Difficult Topics
Our sins… our sufferings… the damned… all things remembered and known, understood
BUT with NO SORROW or PAIN or SHAME!
Revelation 21:4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
XII. Application: Overflow with Hope; Store Up Treasure!!
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 6:20-21 Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
