Funeral Series

And yet, the scripture tells us that Jesus took our place in order to save us from everything we’ve consciously or even unconsciously done to offend God and in His suffering and death He experienced the eternal wrath of God.

So, compared to His spiritual suffering, His physical suffering would have been miniscule in comparison. And there are many who assume that the three hours of darkness that covered the world during the crucifixion was God’s way of turning out the lights so we wouldn’t be able to see what Jesus had to endure.

The second reason we weren’t told more is because there’s really no way that you or I could possibly comprehend or understand even a little of God’s wrath. Many of us have tried to imagine what heaven will be like and yet, no matter how hard we try or how far we let our imaginations run wild, our minds always fall far short of grasping anything of the glory or beauty of heaven. As 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” Listen, heaven is so wonderful; it’s simply beyond our comprehension.

I like how one theologian said, “I can’t describe all the furniture of heaven anymore than I can tell you the temperature of hell but I’m not going to let what I don’t understand affect my choice.”

They have quotes on the side of Starbucks coffee cups and one in particular was by a guy by the name of Joel Stein and he said, “Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring, all those fluffy clouds and listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go like a luxury hotel. Maybe blues skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century but heaven has to step it up a bit. They’re basically getting by because they only have to be a little better than hell.” And when I read that I thought, nothing could be farther from the truth because the writer is assuming things God hasn’t told anyone except, this verse says, “You’ve never seen anything like you’re going to see in heaven. You’re going to hear things you’ve never heard on earth and you’re mind can’t even get around the wonderful things God has in store for you.” So, why didn’t He tell us more? I think; if He did, our minds would be so pre-occupied with heaven that we’d never get anything done on earth.

Did you know that Jesus spoke about hell more than He did about heaven? And yet, there’s many people who’ll say, there’s no such thing as hell but either Jesus was telling the truth about hell or we can’t believe Him about heaven either. We can’t just say the truth is what we believe.

Listen, hell is real and it’s going to be filled with people who’ve ignored God’s invitation to enjoy heaven and do you know what the worst part is? You can only ignore it for so long and then you become oblivious to the message.

I remember when I lived in Cape Breton my Aunt Phemie used to have a house that was about 50 feet from the railroad tracks. And every night about 10:15 the train would go by and you could feel the whole house shake and because it was only about an eighth of a mile from the crossing at Main Street the conductor would pull the cord and the big horns would almost blow you out of your chair. But, do you know what the strange part was? After you were there for about two weeks you didn’t even notice the train. You learned to ignore it.