CHRISTIAN MESSAGE
By WARD PIMLEY
Pastor, Journalist, Author
- Do you ever think about the promises God has made to us about an eternal kingdom in Heaven?
- Do you ever wonder what it takes to qualify, to pass the *entry* test, to get into Heaven?
- Do you ever worry that your salvation is not secure, that when you prayed the Sinner’s Prayer, God wasn’t listening, or if He was, you could *backslide* and lose His favor?
- If your answer to any of those questions is “yes,” or even if you’re not sure what your answer is, then today’s message is for you.
- Fasten your pew belts, church. We’re about to take a ride into the most important promise God makes in the Bible – our salvation and its security.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In God’s great mercy, He has caused us to be born again into a living hope, because Jesus Christ rose from the dead. – 1 Peter 1:3 NCV
THE BIBLE REMINDS US that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has caused those of us who believe in Him to be born again; as a result, He has promised us an eternal inheritance with Him in Heaven.
WHAT CAN WE SAY ABOUT HEAVEN?
This will be a place where sadness and sickness and accidents and pain and discord and jealousy and all the other ills of our current lives will be taken away.
New bodies, right! New minds! New spirits!
Yet, we’ll still be “us,” with our emotions, our memories, our individual likes and skills, and our “circle” of family and friends, as well as our desire to meet new people, some of them from other parts of the world or who lived at a far different time in human history from us.
WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO MEET?
Who do you want to meet from the past? What questions would you like to ask that person?
- How about asking Sarah what it was like to have a baby at the age of 90?
- Or maybe ask Isaac what he was thinking when Father Abraham tied him to the offering pile, just before he heard the sacrificial lamb’s bleating?
- Maybe you want to peer into David’s heart when he realized Bathsheba was pregnant and he had her husband killed in war?
- Would you like a trip to the Lion’s Den with Daniel or being dumped into a vat of boiling oil with John, or face your own execution, like Paul and James, the half-brother of Jesus, or John’s brother James, the first apostle martyred. Or Peter and Andrew, also martyred.
- Maybe, like me, you long to talk with those who come to us from the future, who saw the completion of things we saw started, or who saw the development of new technologies that made our current knowledge seem so primitive.
WE’LL SEE GOD FACE-TO-FACE!
HEAVEN WILL BE A PLACE of worship, of seeing God face-to-face, of sitting down with Jesus for a heart-to-heart talk.
Park your imagination on that spot for a while and do yourself a huge favor: pledge to go back to it frequently. It’s worth the trip.
In the place of all the evil that we experience in this world will be an oasis of peace and love and joy.
How can you possibly go through this life without experiencing even for a few moments the sheer excitement of anticipating that glorious future God has prepared for us?
We will worship our Creator, we will enjoy fellowship with believers from the fullest extent of time, past and future, of every race, color, language, era – a sea of loving, compassionate, and faithful believers.
They – the world’s believers – will be our family and friends.
MY RESIDENCE
WE WILL ALL HAVE A RESIDENCE.
Call it a “mansion” or a “room,” depending on your Bible translation. I like to think of it as an apartment or condominium. All the comforts of home without any outdoor maintenance.
As for eating, I don’t know. I’d like to know I could score a big breakfast readymade for me … as well as a dynamic dinner and an over-the-top Sunday mid-day brunch/buffet.
The rest of the meals I can fix for myself in my mansion – sandwiches, soup, crackers, potato chips, popcorn – nothing will be harmful for us.
There’ll be plenty of ice cream, maybe one of those soft-serve dispensers with 3 flavors – vanilla, chocolate, and flavor-of-the-month.
As for work, yes, I know our Creator values work, and frankly, I’m good with work. I’m also good with rest and relaxion; so, I guess I like plenty of both.
What about companionship?
Introverts don’t require as much companionship as extroverts do, but I imagine we’ll all have plenty of time to ourselves, just as we’ll have time to fellowship and enjoy the presence of other believers.
We’ll learn. We’ll learn about God, and we’ll have all of eternity to learn about Him, even if we never learn everything there is about Him.
PIVOT
ALL OF THIS is fine, you say, but what does any of that mean for me? How can I use any of what we might imagine Heaven will be like for my life now? How does this apply to my here-and-now?
The apostle Peter, in our text verse, encourages us with the reminder that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, God has caused us to be born again; that is, for those of us who believe.
2 Corinthian 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is past; behold the new has come.”
That means we were “reborn,” or “remade,” our old, sinful selves replaced with new selves through the blood of Jesus. Our new selves still sin, but we don’t live steeped in sin; we’re no longer slaves to sin, but we strive, with His help, to live without sin.
As a result of this new birth, we, as believers, are promised an eternal inheritance reserved for us in Heaven. That’s only for those who believe.
The Bible says …
- God planned long ago to choose you by making you his holy people, which is the Spirit’s work. God wanted you to obey him and to be made clean by the blood of the death of Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be yours more and more. – 1 Peter 1:2 NCV
- There are many rooms in my Father’s house. I would not tell you this, unless it were true. I am going there to prepare a place for each of you. After I have done this, I will come back and take you with me. Then we will be together. – John 14:2-3 CEV
- Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. – Ephesians 4:30 NASB
- He has also put His seal on us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment. – 2 Corinthians 1:22 CSB
- And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. – 1 John 5:11-12 NIV
We know that the term “down payment” means a good faith offering that seals the promise of future payment for the desired good or service.
MORE TO THE STORY
BUT WAIT! There’s more!
GOD says our earth-bound lives are not the whole story.
There is much more for us, and it will be glorious! God does not give us many details about Heaven, but He does tell us in Eph. 3:20, and other places, that our lives with Him will be better and more rewarding than we could ever imagine.
WHY DOESN’T GOD GIVE US MORE DETAIL?
Could this be the answer?
- The secret things belong to the Lord our God. – Deuteronomy 29:29a ESV
- It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. – Acts 1:7 BSB
When the apostles/disciples asked Jesus if this was when He would restore the kingdom to Israel, He said, “NO.”
>You have a job to do in this world. You are to leave the end times stuff to My Father in Heaven, and you carry the Word to your neighbors, your surrounding region, and to the ends of the earth. My Father will take care of the rest.<
Perhaps God knew that giving us more information about Heaven would be like telling a young child, who needs to eat his dinner first, what dessert will be. The child’s attention will shift from the vegetables to the ice cream, and that is not the mother’s intent.
Revelation 21 and 22 give us a brief description of the New Heaven and the New Earth:
- Crystal-clear streets of fine gold,
- Precious stones along the walls,
- Gates and pillars with the names of the 12 Apostles and the 12 Patriarchs,
- Everlasting light of Jesus,
- Worship with the saints, along with angels and the four living things,
- The gates will never be closed.
Randy Alcorn in his book Heaven says we’ll be ourselves with our personalities and our memories – without our memories we wouldn’t be ourselves, would we? We wouldn’t recognize anyone because we wouldn’t know them.
So, we’ll know who we are and who others are.
Our bodies will be young and healthy, yet we’ll still – somehow – recognize everyone, even those we only knew when they were old or sick. Children who die before maturity will grow to adulthood, and babies who were aborted might well be present.
We’ll have our individual skills. If you could play the piano on earth, you should be able to play the piano even better in heaven. Let’s hope so, anyway. If you don’t know how to play the piano, you’ll have all of Eternity to learn.
CLOSING WORDS
YES, TODAY WILL BRING with it many moments of joy, of peace, of kindness, of pleasantness – but today also will bring reminders of our loss, the loss that became our heritage in the Garden of Eden. God did not create this world to be experienced the way we experience it.
Remember, we – in the persons of our ancestors, Adam and Eve – defied God by tasting the forbidden fruit. God told us there would be consequences if we disobeyed him. We did it, anyway, and we experience that punishment every day.
You remember when Jesus cried? It’s in the Bible. John 11:35. “Jesus wept.” (See also Luke 19:41-42 ESV.) Why do you suppose He wept?
Perhaps for at least three reasons:
- He felt a personal sorrow for the loss of His friend Lazarus.
- He felt the sorrow experienced by Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha, who also were friends of Jesus.
- He felt sorrow for the heartache of humanity’s self-inflected grief.
The Good News is that God sees our pain and our hopeless condition, and He has promised us a Savior – Jesus the Christ – who paid the penalty for our sin, which satisfied God’s wrath so He could restore us to full fellowship with Him.
The Bible reassures us by emphasizing God’s faithfulness, even when we are faithless; He fulfills His promises, even when we break ours.
God keeps His promises. You will not lose your salvation. The biggest reason? Because you did not earn it. God gave it to you as a gift. This gift is because of His grace and His desire that you will live in Eternity with Him.
PRAYER
Thank You, Lord, for Your goodness, Your grace, Your mercy, and Your love. We deserve none of it, but we are grateful, eternally grateful, for all of it. In Jesus’ name, AMEN.
Ward's Words | BY WARD PIMLEY 