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    Aug 07, 2022

    This Is Not Our Home

    Preacher: John Southwick

    Keywords: heaven, motivation, rewards, eternal kingdom

    Summary:

    What does it mean to keep a heavenly perspective while living on earth? What is the right motivation and outworking of such a perspective? Why is it so important to a Christian? Will everyone experience the same thing in heaven, a sort of celestial communism? What is treasure in heaven all about? This message addresses these and other questions related to the eternal future God has promised to us.

    Detail:

    This Is Not our Home     

    Colossians 3:1-4

    Rev. John Southwick

     

                   I don’t know about you folks, but much that is happening in today’s world concerns me.  It seems as though the powers of darkness are advancing much faster than the Kingdom of God.  I don’t need to elaborate on this, and it’s depressing to do so, so I won’t.  I will focus, rather, on a perspective we can maintain as Christians, to help us navigate these times, even if they get much worse.  I confess that while I hold strongly to this perspective, I will often find that I allow the goings on around me to distract me from keeping this in mind, so I need this message for myself too.

                   I won’t keep you in suspense.  You all know this too.  I just hope that something I say today will help us all to maintain this perspective more actively in days ahead.  Simply put, this is not our home.  For the born again believer, our home for all eternity, save for a few short years here, is in heaven.  Yes, our lives here matter greatly now, and also influence our lives after we leave this world, but even so, to say that our lives here are a drop in the bucket compared to eternity would be a gross understatement.

                   Hebrews 12:1 and 2, remind us to look to Jesus as our example, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross and despised the shame, and is seated on the right hand of the Throne of God.  Paul writes in 2 Cor. 4:17:”For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”   In other words, no matter how rotten things get here, what awaits the believer after this life is immeasurably better.  The problem is we can understand the here and now, but the hereafter is unknown to us.  It wasn’t to Paul.  In 2 Cor. 12 he tells of getting caught up to the third heaven and seeing things that cannot be uttered.  These were so profoundly impacting that he had to have a thorn in the flesh to keep him dialed into the earthly reality.  We have to get past only using projection of what we know to inform our understanding of what lies ahead.  CS Lewis called this life the shadowlands in comparison.  To someone who has never seen color before, we can’t even comprehend the difference.

                   Anyway, we need to reflect more on this eternal reality and invite God to open the eyes of our heart, as Ephesians 1:18.  This is praying for sanctified imagination.  Paul gets even more urgent in this regard in Col. 3:1,2.  “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”  I don’t know if I need to expound on this anymore.  Scripture is very clear that we are to do this.

                   This morning I am going to dwell for the rest of our time together on another motivation to keep the heavenly perspective during our time here on earth.  Stated simply, what we do here impacts greatly what our eternity will be like.  To be very clear, I am not talking about whether we are in heaven or the other place after we die.  I am talking about what heaven will be like for each believer when we get there.  For some reason, and for decades I was guilty of this, so many Christians have the idea that heaven is some sort of celestial communism.  In other words it’s the same for everyone.  I don’t know where we get this, but it’s pervasive.  It’s also not scriptural.

                   I use a metaphor for this which is flawed, so don’t take it too far.  Nevertheless it makes a point.  The celestial communism view is sort of like an amusement park.  Once a person secures their ticket they get in and can ride al the rides and see all the sights.  An alternate experience is a cruise ship.  Patty and I have only been on one cruise but think it was representative of others.  We got the absolute cheapest tickets we could so had a tiny room in the bowels of the ship with no windows.   Other passengers had nice large balcony rooms overlooking the ocean and land, when near enough.  We ate only in the basic restaurants while others ate in fancier ones.  We had very limited shore experiences, while others had elaborate outings.  In like manner the believers experience in heaven will vary greatly depending on what we have done to prepare for it.

                   There are an abundance of scriptures which support this understanding.  I will just highlight a few.  The sermon on the Mount has a number of them.   This is the famous sermon Jesus preached in Matthew 5-7.   For example in Matthew 6:19+ Jesus says to lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven…  He goes on to contrast this to earthly treasures which are subject to corrosion and theft.  He clarifies a few verses later referring to mammon, or money/wealth.   As you have heard we can’t take these with us.  There are no U-Haul trailers hitched to hearses. 

                   So what is treasure in heaven?  Good question.  I don’t know, but that is not the point.  The point is that those who store them up will have them and those who don’t, won’t.  Those who do will have a different experience.  We can see clearly that this has a lot to do with stewardship.  No wonder Jesus talked so much about this topic, with between ¼th and 1/3rd of his words devoted to this topic.  How we manage what God has entrusted us with here greatly impacts what is stored up in the next life.

                   This is also true of our time and talents, of course.  Twice in the New Testament we see a reference to the judgment seat of Christ.  2 Cor. 5:10 says, “10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”  This is not about salvation, but rather how we lived out our salvation on earth.  The Greek word for judgment seat is Bema, meaning a place where athletes are judged on how well they ran the race, not just if they finished. 

                   We get the same sense from 1 Cor. 3 where Paul describes our works on earth being reviewed at the end of our lives.  The fluff will be burned up but the aspects of our lives that impacted God’s calling and ministry to others will result in reward.

                   Speaking of rewards, do a word study on that one sometime.  Very telling for eternity.  Let’s go back to the sermon on the mount for a moment.  In Matthew 5 we find what we call the Beatitudes.  The last one is in verse 11: ““Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”  In other words those who suffer persecution for their faith get rewards that those of us who don’t, won’t.  What are these rewards?  I don’t know, of course, but I think it’s reasonable to anticipate that they are significant.

                   Interestingly Revelation may give some insight to this.  Chapter 7:9+ tells of a great multitude before the throne in Heaven worshipping and praising Jesus.  John asks who they are and he says they are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.  I could go into much more detail.  The point is that those who do not go through the great tribulation will not be in this particular group so will have a different experience in heaven.

                   For another promise of the hereafter, let’s look at the familiar passage from John 14, where Jesus says to his disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you.”  Without going into a word study on rooms and place, suffice it to say that Jesus is not likely referring to celestial communism.  I’ve been to Russia and been in some of the endless apartments in endless sky rises.  It is entirely reasonable to expect Jesus to personalize our place according to who we are and how we have lived out our lives in His service.  He sounds like he is speaking to each individual disciple.

                   So, assuming I’m on to something here, how do we live this out?  First let’s discipline ourselves to think more about heaven.  Pay attention to scriptural references.  Ask God for sanctified imagination to get a sense of how much greater that place is than even the best of life here.  Remind ourselves that this life is so transitory, unlike inflation, and eternity is, well, forever.  Have these concepts so real to us that when hard times hit, we can call upon these realities to help us persevere, as Jesus did.

                   Secondly, practice whole life stewardship with an emphasis on investing in eternity.  Sacrifices made in this world for God can store up treasures we can enjoy for eternity.  I’m a second career pastor.  My first career paid a lot more than my second one.  My father, a recession era survivor thought I was nuts making that move.  I have never looked back.  This isn’t just about finances.  It is about all of who we are and how God has gifted us.  Again: big topic.  Just keep eternity in mind when facing life decisions.

                   Stewardship with an eye to eternity also impacts how we spend our time: what we read, what and how much media we partake of, who and how we relate to others, and so much more.  Most of us are oriented to maximizing our own comfort and pleasure.  While some of this is ok, of course, a heavy, ongoing dose is in the realm of wood, hay and stubble (I Cor. 2:12-15).  Just saying.

                   I’ve heard it said of some people that they were so heavenly minded they were no earthly good.  I have not met such a person, unless heavenly minded in that saying refers to self-righteous, arrogant, religious jerks, which is not really what heavenly minded means.   Most truly heavenly minded folks are also focused on the chief resident of Heaven and have devoted their lives to serving Him, which usually means they are becoming more Christ-like and have genuinely positive impact on the word around them.  May we be those kind of people in this present reality we live in, living lives with an eternal impact.