Heaven-According To Genesis Series

Title: Heaven- According To Genesis

Place: BLCC

Date: 5/7/17

Text: Genesis 1-3, Revelation 19-21

CT: Heaven is revealed in the Book of Genesis.

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FAS: In fall 2014, Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Stephen King, who has spent his career writing about death. When the interviewer asked, "Do you hope to go to heaven?" he responded, "I don't want to go to the heaven that I learned about when I was a kid. To me, it seems boring. The idea that you're going to lounge around on a cloud all day and listen to guys play harps? I don't want to listen to harps. I want to listen to Jerry Lee Lewis!"

Levi Lusko comments: "That's why it's a mistake to allow unbiblical imagery, perpetuated by cartoons, comic books, and well-intentioned but misinformed Sunday school teachers, to color our thinking. I am with Stephen King 100 percent. I don't want to go to such a heaven either! Fortunately no such heaven is actually to be found in the Bible."

Levi Lusko, Through the Eyes of a Lion (Thomas Nelson, 2015), page 73

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This is my second sermon in the series Heaven. In the first sermon we looked at what Jesus revealed to us about heaven in his famous “Don’t let your hearts be troubled scripture”, John 14. We discovered there was a place prepared for us as prepared people.

Today we are going to look at what we can learn about heaven and the afterlife from the first book of the Bible, Genesis.

I have talked about the Sadducees before. They are found in the Bible. Acts 23.8,

(The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)

Really sad bunch. The really sad thing is that we know they are wrong because the teaching of Jesus and the rest of the Bible. The Sadducees may not have had access to all we have to go on, but they did have the earliest books of the Bible, which have much that points to a life after death. Especially Genesis. With the advantage of hindsight we can look back from the rest of God’s Word to see many clues of the afterlife the Sadducees would have missed. [Screen 3]

IN THE BEGINNING…GOD

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning …God.

All truth is based on that truth.

All reality is based on that reality.

There is a God so there is a place where God exists. In other words there is a heaven because there is God and heaven is His throne.

In the beginning, (the earliest moment that man can comprehend) God was creating the heavens and earth.

God and heaven already existed. This is heaven as the dwelling of God not heaven as sky.

[Screen 4] Genesis 1.2, Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

This is where it started. The spirit of God hovering over total chaos and darkness.

Just envision this in your mind.

Something was about to happen. Something was about to come out of nothing. The Spirit of God hovering like a hen hatching her chicks. So was God about to hatch the universe. And here is how He did it.

Genesis 1.3, [Screen 5] Let there be light. God’s first act of creation was to bring light into darkness. That will be what God and Jesus will be doing from then on. A light in the darkness.

Second day. Genesis 1.6, Let there be a vault between waters to separate water from water. It was called sky.

Third day. Let there be dry land. Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear.

Fourth day. Let there be lights to guide the day and night. Sun and moon.

And God saw it was good.

Fifth day. Let the water teem with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth.

And God saw it was good.

Sixth day. Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds. All kinds of creatures. There was an amazing variety of creatures. There was wildlife and livestock. God saw it all was good.

I’ve got to ask a question here. Will there be animals in heaven?

It says in Isaiah 11.6-8, The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den,