Now, what if you
knew that whatever person you chose would pick you as their answer to that
question? How much fun would it be to know that the person you wanted most to
be with also wanted to be with you? You could sit and talk and eat for hours.
Now, the problem with actually having a night like that is that it always has
to come to an end. Don’t you just hate it when a great evening ends?
Well, I have some
good news. In fact, I have good news on top of good news. Imagine actually
being able to enjoy whatever food you want with whomever you want and never
having to worry about running out of time. That is just the smallest of
pictures of life in Heaven. And even better than all of that, you could enjoy
that meal with Jesus Himself. Can you imagine sitting down at a real table and
eating enchiladas with Jesus, talking and laughing and asking each other questions?
Because He has chosen you as a believer in Him to spend eternity in fellowship
with Him, you can spend as much time with Him as you want, knowing He wants to
eat enchiladas with you too.
That’s a pretty
powerful vision for me, not just because I like to eat but also because I can’t
imagine Jesus wanting to spend time with me and yet the Bible would teach us
that He does. That’s a far cry from what most people think about how Heaven is
going to be. What is the stereotypical view of Heaven? What do all the cartoons
show people doing in Heaven? Sitting on a cloud strumming a harp. How boring! I
don’t want to do that. That would not be Heaven for me and probably not you.
Gary Larson was the
artist for the Farside cartoons and I remember a cartoon he drew one time with
that picture of a man sitting in Heaven on a cloud with a harp in his lap. The
caption read, “Wish I had brought a magazine.” Why is it that Heaven seems to
get such a lame rap? Why is it that Heaven, the place of all joy, all
happiness, all health, all fulfillment, all everything we want is depicted as a
place that makes people say, “So what if there is a Heaven?”
It’s not the Bible’s
fault. The Bible is full of information about Heaven and we will discuss some
of what it says today. But where does this misinformation come from? I’ll tell
you where it comes from. It comes from the father of misinformation, the father
of lies, the opposer, the accuser, the adversary Satan. Satan doesn’t have to
prove to us that there is no Heaven. He just has to convince us that Heaven is
a boring place and if we believe that then we will be robbed of our joy and
anticipation. We will set our minds on things of this life and not the next and
we won’t be motivated to share our faith. (Heaven, Randy Alcorn)
Revelation 13:6says that Satan opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and
to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in Heaven.
What better way for the devil and his demons to attack than to whisper lies
about the very place that God tells us to set our hearts and minds? Let’s set
our hearts and minds on it this morning by turning to a beautiful passage in
the book of John.
This passage is one
of my favorites. It has fascinated me since I was a little kid. It has
comforted at funerals and has been used to lead people to a life-changing
relationship with Jesus. Turn to John chapter 14 and we will read verses
1-6.
14 “Do not let your
hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 In my Father’s
house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going
there to prepare a place for you.3 And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where
I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.” 5 Thomas
said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the
way?” 6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through me.”
I don’t know about
you but to me that passage is like a favorite pair of old blue jeans. I have
read it a thousand times and it always makes me feel good. I’m always glad to
read it and every time I do, I feel like I found 5 bucks in the pocket. You
know what I mean? It’s a gold mine of good stuff.
You can use this
passage to teach all kinds of things but I want to see just 3 things this
morning.
1) Heaven is a
place.
2) Heaven is a
prepared place.
3) Heaven is a
prepared place for prepared people.
Every culture that
has ever existed has had some sense that this life was not all there is.
Anthropological evidence shows that everybody from the Australian aborigines to
the Mayans to the Native American Indians has had some kind of God-given sense
of the eternal. That’s why you may have heard before that it takes more faith
to be an atheist than it does to believe in God.
It is natural for us
to consider an after-life even if we have never read the Bible because God put
that in us. We are wired to see creation and realize there must be a Creator.
And if there is a Creator then there must be more to this life. That is
especially important to those who go through life in great pain or need or
without ever feeling fulfilled. And this nasty old life can sure be that way
for a lot of folks. If this is all there is to life then I would have to think
it’s not really worth it.
The problem is that
too many people see the afterlife just as bad if not worse. It scares people to
think of the great unknown especially if we are going to fly around like Casper
the ghost singing “Holy Holy Holy” all day up in the clouds. When Jesus told
His disciples, “In my Father’s house are many rooms…I am going there to
prepare a place for you” He deliberately chose common, physical terms to
describe where He was going and what He was preparing for us. He wanted to give
His disciples and us something tangible to look forward to – an actual place
where they and we would go to be with Him.
He did this because
of the fact that Heaven is a place. It is not a state of mind. It is not some
spooky, spiritual spectrum of consciousness. People often say things like,
“Well, we just can’t know much about Heaven until we get there.” Or,“She’s in a
better place; a place of the great unknown.” “We can’t even imagine what Heaven
is going to be like!”
Well, actually we
can imagine it. We might not be able to do it complete justice but we have an
idea because it is going to be similar to how we live right now. When Marco
Polo returned to Italy from China he described China as a world that his
audience had never seen. They felt he was making it up but it wasn’t that China
was a fairy tale or a lie. It was similar to Italy in that it had streets and
mountains and trees and people but it was just different.
The Bible teaches
that Heaven is a familiar, physical, tangible place; a place that we will be
very similar to what we know here on earth. Heaven is described as having
streets, buildings, cities and countries. It is said to have walls, gates, real
gardens, banquets and bodies. Yes, we will have physical bodies. Just as Jesus
was resurrected and then came back in His physical body in Acts 1, so
will we. Moses and Elijah appeared physically with Jesus at the Transfiguration
and so it makes sense that we, too, will have physical bodies in a physical
world.
The Bible teaches
that we will be known in Heaven as we are known on earth. Jesus says in Matthew
8:11, “many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down
with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven”.
Obviously we will
somehow recognize each other even though we will have perfect bodies as it says
in Philippians 3:21, in heaven Christ “will transform our lowly
bodies so that they will be like his glorious body”. So, while we can’t
know everything about Heaven we can know that it is a real place.
And not only is it a place but it is a prepared place. In verse 2Jesus
says that He is going to prepare a place for you. I wanted to know exactly what
that meant so I looked it up in the giant concordance I have of biblical words.
I looked up “prepare” and “place” and do you know what? I didn’t learn a thing.
It means to prepare a place, just like we would use those words.
I’ve told you before about going up to Wyoming to see Yellowstone Park a
few years ago. It is an incredibly beautiful place and I would love to go back
there some time. In some places it feels like another world because it is so
different than anything I’ve ever seen. I stopped at some point just along the
side of the road to look over a mountain range and I decided to walk down the
mountain I was on just a little ways. There was no path and this wasn’t a rest
stop. Nobody else was around and I’m quite sure nobody would ever find me if I
fell down the mountain into the heavy brush. (That may be why there was a fence
with a warning sign right there now that I think about it.) But anyhow, I
walked down a little ways and looked around and then started back up and I saw
on the backside, the downhill side, of one of the trees was a vine growing with
a big, beautiful flower growing on it. It was a huge flower with bright yellow
and orange and red and green. And it was growing way down the mountain on the
backside of a tree.
I stared at that flower for a long time and I wondered if God had put that
flower there just for me because He knew I would be the only one dumb enough to
walk down there…or if He made it just for Him and I just happened to see it. At
another solitary place out in the desert with nobody around for miles and miles
he prepared an incredible sunset and it was like God said, “Here, Todd, this is
for you.” And those were just fleeting moments of God showing me His handiwork.
Can you imagine what Heaven is going to be like? He has prepared a place for
you; just for you, customized by Jesus just for you.
Hebrews 11:10 says that Abraham “was looking forward
to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Can you imagine what the buildings are going to look like in
Heaven? But there will be more than just buildings he is preparing for us. In
I Timothy 6:17 we are told to “put our hope in God, who richly provides
us with everything for our enjoyment.” I believe we can expect to find continued enjoyment in Heaven.
In Isaiah 25:6 it says, “On this mountain theLord
Almighty will prepare a feast
of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine— the best of meats and the
finest of wines.” I would like to
point out what is not mentioned here. There is no mention of vegetables! No
veggies. There’s no broccoli in Heaven. Nope.
God has prepared a
place for you; you personally; not one generic place for everybody but He has
hand-prepared a special place just for you. In other words, God loves you so
much that He wants you to enjoy your place in Heaven just like a good father
here on earth would want his kids to enjoy their place.
When my oven didn’t
survive “the bacon incident” a few months ago, my mom told me she wanted me to
have her little toaster oven. She said she got it at a garage sale but it
worked great and she had spent a long time cleaning it up. It was bigger than
most and she really wanted me to have it because it was so nice. She told me
she hardly ever used it and so I should take it. I knew she did use it but she
insisted and it has worked great ever since. I know that gave her great joy to
give that to me because she loves me and wanted me to have something that
worked well.
Can you imagine the
joy it will bring to Jesus to know that you are enjoying your place, your
mansion, your room, whatever it is? It is just the right color and has everything
you want and more. What kind of a father would welcome his child home saying,
“Well done my good and faithful child! Now here is your shed to crash in. Don’t
mind that old mower. Just push it over to the side but don’t step right there.
That board is loose.”
No! The same God who
loved you so much that He sent His only Son to die for you has prepared a place
for you in heaven close to Him for eternity.
That should bring
great joy and anticipation to all of us. Well, it should bring joy to those who
are prepared. Because just as Heaven is a prepared place, it is a prepared
place for prepared people. Last week in our study of Hell, we looked at
Revelation chapter 20. And the last verse of that chapter says, “Anyone
whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake
of fire.” Those who are not
prepared will not have their name written in the book.
Ruthanna Metzger, a
professional singer, tells a story that illustrates the importance of having
your name written in the book. Several years ago she was asked to sing at the
wedding of a very wealthy man. The invitation said the reception would be held
on the top two floors of Seattle ’s Columbia Tower . At the reception, waiters
in tuxedos offered luscious hors d’oeuvres and exotic beverages to the guests.
The bride and groom approached a beautiful glass and brass staircase that led
to the top floor. Someone ceremoniously cut a satin ribbon draped across the
bottom of the stairs. They announced the wedding feast was about to begin. Bride
and groom ascended the stairs, followed by their guests.
At the top of the
stairs, a maitre d’ with a bound book greeted the guests outside the doors and
asked for their names.
“I am Ruthanna
Metzger and this is my husband Roy”
“Would you spell it
please. I can’t find it.”
Searching some more,
the man said,“I’m sorry but your name isn’t here.”
There must be some
mistake. I am the singer. I sang for this wedding!”
The man said, “It
doesn’t matter who you are or what you did you cannot come in because your name
is not in the book.” “Waiter, please show these people to the service
elevator.”
She said she was
humiliated as they walked toward the elevator and passed by beautifully
decorated tables with shrimp, salmon, and incredible ice sculptures. They
passed through the area where the orchestra was practicing with all the
musicians dressed in dazzling tuxedos.
They made it to
their car and her husband asked her what happened. She told him she got busy
and didn’t think she would need to RSVP since she was the singer.
We learned last week
that to be cast out of Heaven won’t just mean having to go home. It will mean
being thrown into the lake of burning sulphur. And no explanation or excuse
will matter. You can explain that you were a member of a Baptist church and
that your Mama was a Sunday School teacher and Daddy was a preacher but God is
going to say,” You can’t come in. I never knew you.”
God has prepared a
place for you if you have prepared a place in your heart for Him. John said in
I John 5:13, “I write these things to you who believe in the name
of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” But
what does it mean to believe? It means that you have given your life to Him in
full faith and trust and that since your sins are now forgiven you have devoted
your life to Him. Does that describe you? If so, then you should be looking
forward to Heaven with all your heart. It is a real place that Jesus has
prepared for each one of us. But you have to be prepared. Why not do that right
now?
*Special credit to
Randy Alcorn’s book entitled Heaven for much of the information in this
message.
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