Pastor Stephen Pierce preached Philippians 3:20-21. Heaven is a new earth where God dwells with his people, and we will have resurrected bodies like Jesus’ body. Lector: Kara Tichenor
Pastor Stephen Pierce preached Philippians 3:20-21. Heaven is a new earth where God dwells with his people, and we will have resurrected bodies like Jesus’ body.
Lector: Kara Tichenor
Philippians 3:20-21
The One That Changed Me Series - The One That Gave Me Hope
I can remember one day when I was around 8 or 10 I heard my dad say, “For the longest time, I didn’t really want to go to heaven.” And I was like, “What?” And he said, “Yeah, I thought it would be one giant super long worship services singing songs all day long and that didn’t sound that great to me.” And we’re not talking an exciting worship service. The idea was the “frozen chosen” type of worship service where people sing about being saved from death to eternal life like, “How great is our God.”
And to that point in my life. I hadn’t really considered heaven. I thought of it as somewhere like Candy Land but with Gold and jewels everywhere. I knew it was a perfect place, but I didn’t consider what “perfect” meant. But an eternally long worship service did not sound like what I would call heaven.
And so I was like, “Well, are you excited to go now?” And he said, “Yeah! I’m not sure what it will be like, but I know it will be better than I can imagine.”
And that sort of relieved me that my dad at least wanted to be in heaven and I kind of threw the idea of it back on the back burner just trusting that heaven would be good but didn’t consider why.
And as I got older I started hearing things about heaven that made me think it was wrong to think about it. People would say things like, “Don’t be so heavenly-minded that you’re no earthly good.” And then I would hear things about how slaves were treated and were told, “Yeah you’re treated poorly now, but your reward will be great in heaven.” And then I heard quotes from Karl Marx who told people, “Religion is the opium of the people.” His point being that faith had no real substance and talking of heaven was a way to trick people whose lives were miserable into thinking that they didn’t and shouldn’t change things now.
And so I focused my faith on the difference that Christianity makes here and now. The way that Jesus changes the world today. The way he gives peace. The way he says to take care of widows and orphans. The way he sends out people to heal.
But I came to a point where no matter how hard I was working and no matter what change I was trying to bring to the world, the world was still a broken place. My friends who stopped taking drugs and getting drunk were back on their pills and drinking. The love I saw in the marriage of friends and family was wracked by infidelity and divorce. The widows died alone and the orphans preferred the streets to holiness.
And I felt like I should be saying, “But at least one day it will be made right.” But then that thought brought me right back to what my dad said and that was, “Heaven will be a giant worship service.” That didn’t seem to make it right. That just seemed to be opium for the masses and a bad one at that. How was a giant worship service that was super lame going to “make it all right”?
And honestly, I don’t remember the timeline. But I do remember I read the book, Heaven, by Randy Alcorn. And it shifted the way I thought about Heaven, about redemption, and about how heaven would make things right. Ultimately, you can see this idea summed up in this passage from Philippians.
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
From this passage I want you to see three reasons heaven should give us hope. Real hope that doesn’t cause you to say, “It’ll be fixed later so don’t worry about it now” but hope that will change your life and drive you to follow Jesus more closely and make you excited about the age to come.
First I want you to see that “forever heaven” is on Earth and that should give you hope. That hope of a forever heaven on earth will drive you to action. And that action will lead to your satisfaction.
So the first thing is that forever heaven is on earth. Here’s what I mean. When we say heaven, what people usually think of is something out of a Tom and Jerry Cartoon or Hercules. It’s a place on the clouds with harps and sunshine and we don’t have bodies but we sort of float around like ghosts. And eternally long boring worship services. It seems kind of boring, to be honest with you. Thank the Lord that that isn’t the Biblical picture of heaven.
First off, you’ve got to understand the timeline that the Bible presents in regards to heaven. Heaven is the realm where God is now. A sort of different reality. And the Bible says to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ. And so there is this understanding that when you die, you go to this realm called “heaven” and you’re there with God forever. But that actually misses the whole idea of where we will be forever.
Listen to what Revelation says, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
Big idea: there is a new Earth and God dwells on earth with his people.
First Corinthians 15 says this, “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.
Big idea: Jesus doesn’t just resurrect souls, he resurrects bodies.
And then the passage this morning. “By the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
Big idea: our resurrected bodies will be like Jesus’s body.
Put that all together and what do you get? You get that heaven is not floating on the cloud as spirits but that the idea of being in heaven with God is the intermediate stage before the final stage which is where God comes back to earth and dwells with humans here not as spirits, but with bodies. That means our final eternal state will be as people with bodies. If you haven’t heard that idea before or if you’ve never really considered it, I want it to sink in. Heaven as a place is not your final destination. Earth is. The new earth with new resurrected bodies.
And Paul says that our bodies will be like Jesus’s resurrected body. What was Jesus’ resurrected body like? Well, he apparently could turn invisible according to John 20 and in Acts 1 he flies. Not saying that we will for sure be able to do that, but I’m saying there’s a chance. And God says in Isaiah 40:31 that his people soar like eagles and run and not grow tired. Again, you have to take this all with context but there is a sense that our new resurrected bodies can do some amazing stuff.
And so we should be excited! Heaven (which will be on earth) will be a place where we will continue to learn about and explore the universe. Think about all the cool things we could do in 5000 years from now. 10,000 years from now. We’ll get to do that. Then think about all places you’d like to travel and see. You’ll have forever to do that. Think about all the people you want to know or the relationships that you’ve lost to death. You’ll get to know those people!
If you want more of the details on all the implications of an embodied resurrection, go read Heaven by Randy Alcorn, but he makes a compelling argument that we’ll continue to learn in heaven, we’ll continue to travel, we’ll explore the universe, and we’ll continue and build relationships.
And if you only focused on this, it would be easy to say, “Just muscle through this life, ignore all the pain, and the next life will be better.”
But that’s not what we’re taught to do because we know that the power that God will use to transform our lowly bodies isn’t a power that he uses later on us. It’s a power that gives us now as he lives in us. Forever power is yours now.
Let’s look back at the passage: the first part says, “By the power that enables him to bring everything under his control.”
What power are we talking about? The power to bring everything in the universe under his control. God has the power to do that in the future in heaven, but he also has to the power to do that right this very second if he wants. And where does the Bible say he dwells? In you!
1 Corinthians 3:16 says, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”
If you believe in and follow Jesus that means you are a Christians which means you are currently housing the power that can bring the universe to under control. I am not saying that power is yours to command because we’re not talking about the force or some voodoo magic. God lives in you and through you. The power that will transform you completely in the future is at work in you right now. That means you can work on transforming earth to be like heaven right now. We pray this every week when we say, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
And it’s exciting but then you look around and you’re like, “Well, why is the world still going bad? If God’s power is in me, then why am I going through this divorce? Why are my kids such a mess? Why are all the good things I’m trying to do getting undone?”
And we know that sin and evil and death is still in play so that’s the “big answer.” And we don’t know why God hasn’t just “ended it.” Why not just come back and make it all better right this very second? We don’t know. And often times God doesn’t answer why questions as much as he answers what questions. I mean that he doesn’t tell us why the earth is still this way, but he does tell us what we should do. And he tells us we should fully give ourselves to making the world a better place.
James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Galatians 6:2 “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
In the midst of a broken world that we cannot fix, that’s what we’re called to do. And why?
2 Tim 1:7. “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”
The power that Jesus will use to recreate your new body is at work in you right now. You can throw yourself into this work and know that even if it fails, it will be redeemed like your new body. The way I think about it is like that scene from Robin Hood, the cartoon one, where there’s a big old fight going on and the bear, Little John, gets booted out of a tent where the fight is and he gets this big smile on his face and is like, “What a beautiful brawl” and goes rumbling back in. We are in the middle of a beautiful brawl knowing that in the end, we win. Everything we do will be redeemed.
And we will get knocked around. And we’ll get hurt. And there will be real pain. Divorces will still happen. Children will still rebel. Cancer will take the lives of our loved ones. We will be accused falsely. We will be pressed on every side. We will be persecuted. But we have a spirit of power and love and self-discipline that is not from ourselves but is a gift from God that will empower us to keep going and to fight the good fight. And that power we have is just a foretaste of the power that God will unleash when he comes back to dwell with us as he dwelt with Adam and Eve in the Garden.
And that leads us to our last point which is ultimately what makes heaven heaven and what makes living with the power that we have so good is not the pleasure and joy of heaven or the power. What makes heaven heaven is God. The joy of heaven and the joy of now is that we get to live with God being on mission with him.
Our hope leads to action. Our action leads to satisfaction.
The Bible tells us in Psalm 16:11, “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
What made the Garden of Eden so wonderful and what will make the new earth so wonderful is that we get to be with God fully.
1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “For now we see only a 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.”
Our souls will thirst and be filled all at that same time.
And so my encouragement to you this week is simply to think about heaven. Think about the perfect body you’ll have. Think about going to those places you’ve always wanted to go. Think about how every evil, wicked deed will be judged and we will say, “Justice was finally done.” May your thoughts fill you with hope and may your hope drive you to action and may that action lead to your satisfaction in your oneness with Christ starting now and lasting forever.
And we remember what made all of our hope for our future possible is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
On the night he was betrayed…