Original Sermon Link

Well, good morning Two Cities Church. It is a joy for me to be with you, and I’d like to open our time in prayer asking God’s help. Father, we thank you for the joy of assembling week by week with the people of God, and we thank you, oh Lord, for the work you’re doing around the world. We thank you for both the local church and the universal church. And we thank you that we can partner together to reach a city like Two Cities is here, and we can also partner together to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now be with us as we meditate on heaven. Be with us now as we unfold scripture and we try to understand what that glorious future, heavenly home will be like. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. Well, I’ve been looking forward to doing this since Kyle asked me to come, and I am just excited to be able to share with you some insights the Lord’s given me on the topic of heaven.

In Colossians 3:2 the apostle Paul says, “Set your hearts on things above and things to come.” In other words, the apostle Paul wants Christians to be filled with hope. We are commanded to hope, to be radiant in hope, to be buoyant in hope, to be clearly and obviously hope-filled people, especially in this present age. Because we’re surrounded, the Bible tells us, by people who are, “Without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). And as we Christians go through daily life filled with hope, and especially as we go through significant trials- medical trials, financial trials, just practical life trials, things that are going on in our lives – so clearly filled with hope, it may well be that some of those people who are around us, who are lost, who don’t know Christ, will ask us to give a reason for the hope that is so evidently in us.

So, we are commanded to be radiant with hope. Now what is that? What is hope? I believe that hope is a feeling, a strong sense in the heart, that the future is bright based on the promises of God. A feeling, a sense in the heart that the future is bright based on the promises of God. And friends, I can tell you our future is indescribably and infinitely bright.

Now, this morning we’re going to probe closer to the limits of what the Lord has revealed to us in scripture about heaven than perhaps you’ve ever done before. I want a hope as it says in Romans 5:5, that does not disappoint. I want a hope that’s based on truth. I’m not into speculation about heaven. I’m not against people sharing near death experiences, I think that’s fine. But I don’t think it’s much different than someone having a dream about heaven and then telling us what’s in that dream.

I don’t think we should get out notebooks and write down detailed notes about what their dream is about. I want to base my understanding about heaven on scripture and sound reasoning from scripture, and that’s what we’re going to do. The Lord revealed aspects of our future heavenly home to the apostle John when he was in exile on the island of Patmos, a little island off the coast of modern-day Turkey. The Lord revealed to John a series of visions, first of the glorified resurrected Christ, and then there was a door standing open in heaven. And he was invited through the Spirit to ascend through that door and to see the heavenly realms, a throne and someone seated on it. But he was also invited in a later vision ahead in time to see what the new heaven and the new earth will be like. Meditating on heaven based on scripture, not just in the Book of Revelation, but throughout Scripture is promised to be blessed.

In Revelation 1:3, it says, “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. Listen, because the time is near.” Isn’t that exciting? So very, very soon we’re going to be in our heavenly home. The time is near. But the point in Revelation 1:3 is we are blessed by reading scripture on this topic of heaven. Now later in Revelation 21, he has this incredible vision. 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. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with people. He will live with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, there’ll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who is seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new.” And then he said, (and I love this) “Write this down for these words are trustworthy and they are true.”

So, what that means is what John wrote in the Book of Revelation is a sound basis for our heavenly hope. It’s not speculation. Now, before I go on into the details about heaven, I have to just stop and say, it’s very clear, and it’s revealed in scripture throughout scripture, but especially Revelation 20-22. It is only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life that will enter the new Jerusalem. It’s only those who have genuinely come to personal faith in Christ, who have received forgiveness of sins for their sins through repentance and faith in Christ that you’ll spend eternity in heaven.

The question I want to ask is, is that you? Is that you? Have you trusted in Christ as your Lord and Savior? And if not, I want to urge you before this day ends that you repent and trust in Christ and believe in him for the forgiveness of your sins. Now, for all of those of you that have come who are already Christians, I want to spend the time that we have probing, scripturally, what heaven is all about. For a period of about five years, I meditated on the topic of heaven based on scripture, and I had the opportunity to write a book as Kyle mentioned called The Glory Now Revealed. And the themes that I uncovered through scriptural meditation were thrilling, but we can’t begin to delve into all of those themes in depth. We have limited time. So, I feel like the image I have this morning as I stand before you is kind of like I’m a professional tour guide at the Smithsonian Museum. And you guys are all hundreds of my closest friends, and I’m spending an evening with you giving you a personal tour of the Smithsonian.

Now the Smithsonian is the largest museum in the world. It’s actually 21 museums, 1.5 million square feet, and get this, 157 million separate items on display, 157 million. By the way, I had to look all that up on the internet, alright? I didn’t know any of that, but I knew it was big. And so, imagine that I’m giving you an evening, a special personal tour of the museum and we’re going to be walking through kind of wings of the museum. And I’m going to turn on the lights and they’re going to go on about half a mile down that corridor. And I’m going to tell you there are about 25,000 items down that corridor. Here’s a few of what they are. Got it? And I’m going to frustrate you by turning off the light and going to the next wing of the museum. We don’t have time to delve into all the things. And I think heaven’s going to be infinitely more varied and infinitely more complex than that.

heaven will be an eternal education in the glory of God resulting in energetic and eternal worship.

So, we have limited time and that’s what I want to do with you this morning. Now, what is my idea about heaven? Foundationally it is about this. I believe that heaven will be an eternal education in the glory of God resulting in energetic and eternal worship. God is going to reveal his glory to the redeemed. We’re going to learn things about God we never knew. We’re going to respond in eternal worship. Now, let me just stop and say this. Many Christians have a very tragic and limited view of heaven. They think of heaven as essentially boring static, like nothing ever changes. And so, we have an image of like you’re going to be on a fluffy white cloud, and you’re going to be there with a golden harp. And you’re going to be singing “Amazing Grace” forever. And when we’ve been there 10,000 years bright shining as a sun, we’ve no less days to sing amazing grace than when we first begun.

And people are like, is that it? And so, one woman said to me when I was talking about the topic of heaven, she said, “I don’t know, I just always figured I would die and go to heaven and be happy, and I didn’t think much more about it.” Well, I think we can do much more than that. Let’s dig in and find out how energetic and exciting heaven’s going to be. I believe it’s going to be all about discovery of the glory of God.

Now, Revelation 21 and 22 make it very plain that the new heaven and new earth and the new Jerusalem are radiant with the glory of God. It’s all about the glory of God. Listen to these verses. 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…. It shone with the glory of God, its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.”

So, it’s glowing, it’s radiant, shining with the glory of God. Few verses later, 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 its lamp is the Lamb.” So, for the redeemed heaven will be a dynamic place immersed in the glory of God. And we’re going to be learning aspects of the glory of God that we never knew in life. But they’re going to be revealed to us in heaven resulting in wave upon wave of worship for all eternity.

Now, what is the glory of God? We talk about this all the time, but what does it mean? I believe a good definition of the glory of God is the radiant display of the attributes or perfections of God. Let me say that again. The glory of God is the radiant display of the attributes or perfections of God. What are the attributes? Well, you remember when God revealed himself to Moses on the mountain. Moses said, “Show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18). And God said, “The Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.” Those are attributes. And so, throughout the Bible, God has given us… It’d be impossible to give a physical description of God because God doesn’t have a physical existence. Instead, he’s given us a verbal description just like that, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding and lovingkindness.

So, theologians have gone through and have pulled out 25, 26 attributes. They describe God, they answer the question, what kind of God is he that we worship? And so, their attributes are God’s love, his knowledge, his wisdom, his power, justice, mercy, grace, patience, and many others.

These things are going to be radiantly on display in heaven. And I believe it’s the reason that God originally created the universe to begin with. I believe in eternity past, actually before there was anything at all, I believe there was the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God determined to create all things for the display and the enjoyment of his glory. God did it not out of emptiness or out of loneliness, for God was full within the Trinity, within the Godhead, but he wanted to share himself with us. And so, he’s generous. And he created angels and people, and then many other creatures as well. But we are special. Angels and humans are special in that we can understand and study and appreciate those attributes in ways that eagles and rivers and stars can’t. And so, we are created for that purpose. And so, God created all of those things for a display of his glory.

Now I believe when we’re there in heaven, we’re going to be immersed in the glory of God constantly. We’re going to be immersed in it. So, imagine, just go ahead in your mind, we’re there. We’re in the new heaven, new earth, we’re in the new Jerusalem, we’re in our resurrection bodies. This present evil age is done. No more death, mourning, crying and pain. That’s all done. We’re there. I believe that our experience of God will be in three senses: God’s past glories, God’s present glories in that beautiful world, and God’s future glories. Alright, so God’s past glories are all of God’s actions, all of the things he’s done over 6,000 plus years of redemptive history. God’s present glories will be seeing his face, seeing his throne, seeing Christ, seeing the angels, the cherubim and seraphim, the living creatures, all that. Seeing the redeemed, a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people and nation radiantly beautiful surrounding us.

The new heaven, new earth, the new Jerusalem, all of that. And we’ll be able to explore the new earth. We’ll be able to explore the new Jerusalem. We’ll be able to see all that God has woven into his new creation and how beautiful that will be. And then God’s future glories. The Bible says very little about in heaven, but we’ll be in resurrection bodies in a new heaven, new earth with plenty of things to do. And there’ll be an unfolding story and development in that world that we can be excited about.

Now, the sermon that I want to preach today is mostly about God’s past glories. When we get to that place that God’s going to be teaching us what he did over 6,000 years. Now a key insight in my studies was this, though we’ll be glorified in heaven, we’ll be perfected, we’ll never be omniscient. We’ll never be omniscient. So, what does that mean? Well, someone once said, a pastor once said it this way, has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God? Now the earlier service, those folks were kind of sleepy. You guys are more energetic, right? Let me say it again, say it slowly. Has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God? What does that mean? God has never had a new idea. Why? Because he’s omniscient. He already knew it.

By the way, I want you to know when you go to the Lord in prayer, and you’re praying for your sick friend in a hospital or say, “Lord, I want you to know that my friend,” he already knew it. There’s nothing you can ever teach God, nothing. You can never tell him something he didn’t know. Alright, but here’s the question, will things occur to us in heaven?

And the answer is, oh yeah, they will. Things that we never thought about, things we never knew will occur to us. That’s what I mean by an education in the glory of God. There’ll be things that God did in this present age that we never knew anything about, and how many are there? They’re literally more than we could count. It takes an infinite topic to fill up infinite time, and God is that infinite topic. We’re going to be studying for all eternity the greatness and the majesty of God.

Now before I go on, I need to root what I’m asserting here in scripture. That’s my methodology. That’s what I want to do. Can I prove from scripture these things that I’m asserting, and I think I can. I want to take you in your mind, you can just listen or go there in your scripture to Psalm 111:2-4. I think Psalm 111:2-4, which I discovered about well into my five years of meditating on heaven and studying about it. I said, now that captures the essence of what it is I’m trying to say in this book on heaven. Psalm 111:2, 3, 4, listen to this,

Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them. Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the LORD is gracious and merciful.

Just brings goosebumps even now. I’ve been over it again and again, but I just love that passage. Let’s go back over it slowly. “Great are the works of the Lord,” the things God did. “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them.” Studied means learning aspects of the greatness of the work of God. And it results in delight on the part of the people of God. “Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.”

That’s heaven. “He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and merciful.” So, putting it all together, Psalm 111:2-4 says, the people of God will assemble together to celebrate the mighty works of God that he did throughout all of history. He will cause those works to be remembered and delighted in and studied forever. That’s heaven. Or again, Ephesians 2:6-7. Again, I’m trying to prove that when we get to heaven, we’ll actually remember our earthly lives, the lives we lived in this present world of sorrow and sin and pain, this present evil age. Yes, we will remember all of those things. Ephesians 2:6-7, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 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.”

So, Ephesians 2:7 says, in the coming ages, in eternity future God is going to show how much grace he gave us in Christ. All of us here, all of us Christians underestimate the grace of God. We underestimate how much grace God showed us as sinners. We underestimate the provision that Christ made through his blood shed on the cross. In heaven we’ll have a more and more and more proper estimation of the grace of God. And not just, friends, for ourselves personally, but we will be so expanded in ourselves to take in brothers and sisters fulfilling the second great commandment. We will love our neighbor as ourselves. We’ll be just as interested in how God showed grace to our brothers and sisters as how he showed grace to us. And how awesome will it be for eternity future to study the grace of God, Ephesians 2:7. Or again the issue of rewards.

We’re going to talk later briefly about rewards, but in Matthew 5:11-12, Jesus said,

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

So there Jesus is promising rewards to people who are persecuted for the gospel. And he’s saying those rewards will come in heaven. But there’s no point in rewarding or celebrating some great thing that was done on earth if it’s not remembered. Imagine seeing someone walking down the road and you find that they have an Olympic gold medal hanging around their neck. And you ask, what did you get it for? Did you get it for rowing? Did you get it for power lifting? Did you get it for basketball? What was the sport?

What if the person said, “I actually bought it in a pawn shop.” I mean, what would you think about somebody like that? It’s like, take it off. You didn’t earn it. There needs to be a backstory. Same thing with congressional medal of honor, right? It’s for valor on the battlefield. It’s not about the ribbon and the actual medal, it’s about the valor that the soldier showed. And so, without the story, there’s no glory.

And so therefore rewards are all about the past. They’re all about what we did in this present age to serve Christ. And so, we will remember those works for all eternity. What about Christ himself, his wounds and his works and his words? Will we remember those in heaven? We will. We’ll be celebrating what Jesus did in this present age for all eternity. For example, in Revelation 5:6, it says, “Then I saw a Lamb looking as if it had been slain standing in the center of the throne.”

Jesus mystically retained in some way his wounds from the cross. Remember how Thomas said, unless I put my finger in the nail marks and all that? He didn’t need to do that, but he did it as emblems of his atonement so that we could worship him and celebrate him for what he did on the cross. Therefore, in heaven, we will be able to look back and remember what Jesus did for us.

A few verses later, Revelation 5:9, “And they sang a new song, saying ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals, because you were slain, and by your blood you purchase people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Friends, we’re never going to get over that. We’re going to be remembering for all eternity what Jesus did for us. We’re going to remember the past. And we’re going to celebrate.

Probably the simplest text to prove the point I’m trying to prove here, which is in heaven we’ll remember the past is Matthew 24:35. Jesus said, Jesus said this, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” We’re going to remember the words of Jesus for all eternity. This present age is going to go away. A new heaven, new earth are coming. We’ll still remember Jesus’ words. So, Jesus’s wounds and works and words we’re going to study and celebrate for all eternity.

But one of my favorites is in Revelation 7. Revelation 7:9-10 says this,

After this I looked, and behold, 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, and they were saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and unto the Lamb!”

They’re celebrating salvation, but where they came from is known, their ethnic background, their culture, their language, that story came with them. And even cooler, a couple of verses later in Revelation 7:13, “Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘These in the white robes, who are they and where did they come from?'” Let me ask you a question. How long do you think that story is going to take to tell? We’ve got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of brothers and sisters from every era of church history, from every corner of the globe. How did Christ save them? And then how did Christ use them? How long will that story take? And we’re going to be studying that for all eternity. And that is glory to God, isn’t it? I believe it’s the most glorious thing God’s ever done, is to save sinners like you and me by faith in the blood of Christ.

Alright, so I believe that I’ve proven from these various passages that we will remember the past. When we get to heaven, let’s talk about what kind of people we will be at that point. We’re going to be glorified; we’re going to be perfected human beings. We’re going to be conformed absolutely to the image of Christ. We’re going to be conformed to him in all respects: physically, mentally, emotionally, volitionally, spiritually, in all respects. We’ll be conformed to Christ. Let’s start with the resurrection body which is described in great detail in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44. This is what Paul says, that at the second coming of Christ, every believer will get resurrection body. And this is how it’s described, “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable: it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown in natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”

Alright, let’s go back over that. The resurrection body will be imperishable. What does that mean? It cannot age. It cannot decay, it cannot die. Secondly, it’ll be glorious. It will be radiantly beautiful. Jesus said in Matthew 13:43, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.” All of you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, you are going to be radiantly beautiful. You’re going to shine like the sun. The resurrection body will be glorious. Thirdly, it will be powerful. It is sown in weakness but is raised in power. It’ll be a powerful body. And I don’t think that means we’re going to be like Marvel superheroes, but I think what it does mean is we’ll at least as in Isaiah 40:31, “Run and not grow weary, walk and not be faint.” How about that? How about having limitless energy to do whatever God wants you to do in heaven!

And then finally it will be a spiritual body. Now what in the world does that mean? I don’t know, but I think it’s a perfect combination of the body and the spirit in one, a oneness between the body and the spirit. A spiritual body. Think about Jesus’s resurrection body. Wasn’t it just a little bit different? Didn’t Jesus pass through the walls of the tomb long before the angel came to roll back the stone and let the women in, and let Peter and John in to see it? Jesus had passed through that. And then later he goes to the upper room, and the disciples are there. And though the doors are locked for fear of the Jews, he comes and stands in their midst. So, he’s just passing through walls. Then with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, he breaks bread with them and suddenly disappears, and he’s gone. So, what is our resurrection body going to be like? I don’t know, but it’s going to be a spiritual body.

Alright, so that’s us physically. What about us mentally? What about us in our souls, our minds and our souls? Well, I believe we’ll have resurrected minds and hearts as well. And those minds and hearts will be eternally free from the evils that beset our minds and hearts now. We’ll be done with idolatry. We’ll be free from pride. We’ll be free from weariness and boredom and dullness and forgetfulness.

Dullness means, “Wait a minute, I don’t get it.” Jesus, at one point said to his disciples, “Are you so dull?” It means like you don’t get it, do you? Or remember he said, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus when they’re like, we can’t make head or tail of what’s happened. The women came and said the tomb was empty. We don’t know what’s going on. And Jesus said, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25). So, they were dull. They were slow on the uptake. They didn’t get it. They were forgetful, they were idolatrous. All we’ll be done with all of that.

And do you remember at the end of the time, at the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, when Jesus patiently showed them everything that was written in the scriptures about himself and then he disappeared as I said a moment ago. They said, were not our hearts burning within us when he opened the scriptures to us? That’s going to be us in heaven. Everything God will show us about his greatness our hearts are going to be burning about it. And we’re going to give him worship. That’s what heaven will be all about.

Now, we’re still going to have limits. We’re not going to be gods and goddesses. I already said we’re not going to be omniscient. We’ll still have to learn. And so little by little we’ll get a bigger and bigger sense of the majesty of God in redemptive history. How awesome will that be?

Now I want to tell you the most speculative part about my book, but I’m going to go ahead and share it with you. And that is I believe that God will have the ability not merely to tell us what he did, but to show it to us. To show it to us. Why do I say that?Well, heaven is about seeing, not merely hearing. Right now, it is about hearing. Faith comes from what? Hearing the word of God. But now we see through a glass darkly. Then we’re going to what? See face to face. Now we know in part, then in heaven we’ll know fully, even as we have been fully known. As a matter of fact, Paul says there in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I thought like a child, talked like a child, reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” We’re doing childish thinking about heaven right now. It’s the best we can do.

But in heaven we’re going to see, we’re going to see it all. It’s about not merely hearing but seeing. So, if that’s true and God is going to teach us the past, wouldn’t it be awesome if he could actually show it to us in visionary time travel? Alright, now I know you’re ready to freak out. I thought this guy was good until this moment. Now we’re into weirdness. But you need to understand in the past the prophets were often transported in visions of the Spirit to see things in different places.

Ezekiel 8:3 is a very good example. Let me read it, “The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem,” transported him there. What did he see there? Wickedness, corruption. The elders of Israel doing wicked things, and it was an interactive vision. He was actually able to dig through a wall and see some secret hidden things. How cool is that? But it was tragic because of the wickedness. Probably more to our point is the way that the Spirit transported the apostle John ahead in time to see the new Jerusalem, right? We already talked about that. But listen again, Revelation 21:9-10, “One of the seven angels…. said to me, ‘Come I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ 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.”

That’s visionary time travel. So please don’t freak out at me. I’m saying that’s what happened to John. Well, here’s the thing, what did he see? He saw the new Jerusalem, the Bride. He saw the church. He saw the people of God, what Peter calls living stones built into what Paul calls in Ephesians 2 a spiritual temple assembled together to glorify God.

Well, here’s the thing. If the Spirit could transport the apostle John ahead in time to see what she will look like, imagine going back in time once she’s completed to see how she was built. Every single living stone quarried from Satan’s dark kingdom set into the spiritual wall of the temple. How awesome will that story be? And so, it would be very cool to see, not merely hear how that whole thing happened. So, what does that mean? Well, if that actually happens, God could transport us to show us what the Red Sea crossing was like, to actually be there.

Imagine being immersed with the water walling up to the left and the right and the pillar of fire leading the Israelites through that dark night to the other side, with the Egyptians held at bay behind them and then destroyed. How awesome would that be? Not just to see it. Paul said of his vision of heaven, he said, whether in the body or out of the body, I don’t know. That’s how real the vision is, how intense the vision is. Imagine that it’d be like movie night in the new Jerusalem every night. But better movie than you ever saw, better than the surround-sound and 3D and the goggles and glasses. None of that. Better than virtual reality. Immersed. Seeing. Or with Elijah and the prophets of Baal when the fire fell down from heaven and consumed that sacrifice, and all the people of God fell on their faces and said the Lord, he’s God the Lord, he’s God.

Or church history, not just Bible history, but church history. Like seeing our brothers and sisters who stood firm for the gospel during the Roman persecutions, who wet the sands of the coliseum with their blood and stood for the gospel. So, we in subsequent eras would have a pure gospel. To see that, to see Polycarp burned at the stake after testifying so courageously about the Lord. And how God used his death. The blood of martyrs is seed for the church, Tertullian said. To see how God used those martyrs. How awesome would that be?

And so, I think it would be awesome to see all of those things and to have full immersion. Billy Graham, 1957, preached in Times Square, New York. You should google the image. It’s amazing. He’s there standing to tens of thousands in the city of New York, people out in the streets, and he’s preaching the gospel. Or earlier George Whitfield preaching to thousands during colonial America. To see the results, to see people’s tears coming down their faces, to see his courage.

How awesome would that be? So not merely hearing about it but experiencing it through vision. In any case, even if God doesn’t do that, he may do something even better than we could conceive. I’m just telling you it’s not going to be boring. You’re saying, well pastor, you have a PhD in church history. Of course you like that. You like sitting and listening to lectures. We really don’t. I get it, but I think God has the power to engage you in what he did in every generation.

Let’s talk now briefly, and I already mentioned it, but about rewards. Let’s talk about rewards because I think this is vital in terms of my whole understanding of this heavenly topic. Jesus in Matthew 6:1-21 (various) talks about rewards, and he’s very zealous that we do not lose our rewards.

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you’ll have no reward from your Father in heaven. So, when you give to the needy…. don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray… go into your room, and close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will what reward you.

And when you fast, don’t tell everyone that you’re fasting. Do it in secret so your Father will reward you. Then he summed it all up in Matthew 6:19-21, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths 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.” We are commanded therefore to store up treasure in heaven, to store up rewards and what is that?

Its good works done for the glory of God by the power of the Spirit, done for the building of the kingdom of God. That’s what the rewards are all about. Now, what are rewards? I’m going to give you three Cs that I think rewards are. They are crowns, commendation, and capacity. Crowns are emblems of honor given by the hand of God to the people of God to elevate them and honor them, right? The 24 elders were sitting on thrones, and they had crowns. And they were constantly falling down and casting their crowns before the throne of God. They were giving him full credit, but those crowns were theirs to cast. They were honors given for service. So that’s what crowns are, their emblems of honor. Jesus said in John 12, my Father will honor the one who serves me. How awesome is that?

We should live every moment of every day to please the Lord. That he’s a good, good Father, and he will tell his children he was pleased with them.

Secondly, commendation. What is commendation? It is praise from God. It is God praising you. I believe in heaven we will praise God. Of course we will, but God also will praise us in this well-known pattern. “Well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful with a few things. I’ll put you in charge of many things, enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21). That’s commendation, that’s God telling you, I am pleased with what you did. Now I think we ought to store up as much of that as we possibly can get. We should live every moment of every day to please the Lord. That he’s a good, good Father, and he will tell his children he was pleased with them. And not just on judgment day, well done good and faithful servant. Kind of like at that moment I told you your honored, and if anything ever changes, I’ll let you know.

No, it would be an eternal experience of the personal pleasure of God between you as his adopted child and he as your heavenly Father. “I was pleased with that.” We should live for that. We should live every moment for that and store up as much of that as we can.

Thirdly, capacity. This is the hardest of the three to understand, but it’s incredibly important. In Genesis 15:1, God said to Abraham, “Fear not Abraham, I am your very great reward.” I am what you get. We get God in heaven. But the fact of the matter is God’s infinite. We will have varying capacities to take the glory of God in. We’re not all equally going to have that heavenly experience. I believe we’ll have differing abilities to immerse ourselves in the glory of God. Picture, if you will, different sized vessels like a cup or a bucket or a vat or a water tower like for a town or a super tanker.

All of them completely submerged in the Pacific Ocean. and there’s a lot more ocean beside that, but they’re all a hundred percent full, but they’re differing capacities. So, we will be in heaven. How we live our lives now will affect how much of God’s glory we’ll experience in heaven. We will all be 100% satisfied, but we will not all have the equal heavenly experience. How do I know that? Well, one verse in particular, Luke 6:38. Jesus said, “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’ll be measured to you.” The size of generosity, spiritual generosity you use here and now to the poor and needy, in evangelism, in various services to the church, or whatever, the measure you use is the measure you’ll get back to you. When?  Jesus said in another place, at the resurrection of the righteous. So that’s what rewards are all about.

Now, concerning God’s sovereign weaving together of history- that’s so big, I can barely even begin to talk about it. History is complex. 2 Peter 3:8, Peter said, “With the Lord a single day is like a thousand years.” With the Lord a day is like a thousand years. Let me ask you a question. What do you think God did yesterday? 24-hour period? What did he do Saturday? You’re like, I don’t know? Just keep it simple. He did a lot.

Well, he did a lot every day. God cooked a glorious meal every day. He’s not going to rake it off into the trash. He’s going to serve it to us, but we blew by it in our lives on earth. We didn’t have the capacity. Jesus said, “I have much to say to you, more than you can now bear” (John 6:12). In heaven he’s going to circle back and say, “Let me show you what I did that day.” Estimates say about 7,000 plus people come to faith in Christ every day. I don’t know how they know that. I have no idea, but that’s a lot of people. Imagine all the heavenly celebration that happened yesterday at all those people crossed over from death to life. Imagine being able to study all of that. So, we’re going to study how God wove all of history together.

Now, let me share with you, I’m skipping a lot of things here, but let me share with you probably one of the most encouraging parts. We know about the great names of history, Calvin, Luther, Jim and Elizabeth Elliot, all these great heroes. And we’re going to know them and we’re going to study their lives. But God delights in obscure people. The first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles is nothing but for the most part genealogies. I once went through and counted 911 names. 90% of them we know nothing else about them except their name and what tribe they are in. And why does God do that? He wants to tell people like you and me, obscure people, that he knows us. And he’s aware of our lives, and he never forgets.

So today we celebrated parents. They brought in their little children, right? I think one of the greatest roles there is in redemptive history is that of a Christian mother who poured the gospel into her children from infancy. It says in 2 Timothy 3, 2 Timothy 1, how from infancy you have known the holy scriptures. And so, they’re not famous, but I think it is the most strategic category of service there has been in 20 centuries of redemptive history. And so, we’re going to celebrate the works of women, the works of parents, the works of obscure brothers and sisters who went to parts of the world we didn’t even know they went. There’s nothing recorded about what they did. Their lives were over like a mist, a vapor. It was done. But in heaven, we’ll be able to find out how God used those brothers and sisters, those obscure people. And how he built the kingdom using them.

Well, so many other things I could talk about. I didn’t even mention demons and angels and being able to study how God protected you, and sent angels, and you entertained angels without knowing it in heaven. You’ll find out. And how much God put a hedge of protection around you and would not let the demons get at you at a time of weakness, and how God protected you and sustained you. We’ll study all of that, all of those things. So how can we put all these things into practice? Well, first and foremost, I began by talking about hope. Meditation on heaven is about building hope in Christians.

Romans 15:13 says this, “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.” I want you to do that. I want you as Colossians 3:1-4 says, set your hearts on things above and things to come. Jesus said, where your treasure is there, your heart will be and should be. Also, fill your heart with heavenly meditation so that you can then be an overflowing fountain of hope to the people around you, to Christian people around you. They’ll come and drink from you. To non-Christian people. They’ll come and ask you to give a reason for the hope that you have. Fill yourselves with that.

Secondly, store up treasure. Look again at Matthew 6:19-21. Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal. Well, how should I live my life, Jesus? What should I do every day? Store up treasure in heaven. Do the good works that God has prepared for you to do. He’s gone ahead of you, Ephesians 2:10, and prepared good works every day. He will never forget anything you’ve ever done. So, store up treasure by those good works- by secret prayer that no one ever knew about. By putting sin to death by the power of the Spirit, by raising your families in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, by boldly sharing the gospel with your boss or with a coworker, by going on a mission trip, store up treasure in heaven. It’s not some guilty pleasure to think about treasure in heaven. You should be motivated by it because, what is it? It is God being pleased with you, pleased with how you lived your day today.

Let us close in prayer. Father, we thank you for these heavenly meditations we’ve had today. There are so many more things we could talk about, but I pray that you would take these biblical truths that we’ve learned, that heaven is all about the glory of God and a full immersion in the glory of God and learning aspects of the glory of God we never knew. Oh God, I pray, help us to meditate on these things and be immersed in them and be glowing, radiant with hope. Even if we get a cancer diagnosis, even if we are going through medical, physical trials or financial trials, that non-Christians who are without hope and without God in the world, can see and ask us about Jesus who died and rose again. And they might find eternal life in him. In his name we pray, amen.

*For more on this topic, check out Andy’s book The Glory Now Revealed: What We’ll Discover About God in Heaven.

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 2^nd 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.