Heavenly Hope Ii

HEAVENLY HOPE II

TITUS 1:2

Throughout our lives we are always beginning told that we just do not how good we have it. When we were kids our parents use to tell us how they would have to walk to school 3 miles, uphill both ways, with no shoes, in the middle of winters. Winters then of course consisted of hundreds of inches of snow, with temperatures so cold that poplar bears would freeze to the death. You know the stories I am referring to.

For my dad who was raised in Boston you had many of the "city" tales. Orange crates for furniture, stealing sheets of cloths lines to make money. Live was terrible back then, and I as kid never knew just how go I had it.

Just like the old saying, "Everyone thinks the grass is greener on the other side".

Today I want to look at the other side of the coin. Because I believe that in regards to our eternal home, that is if you have trusted in Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord, you do not realize how bad you really do have it.

I want to use my computer to illustrate my point. My first computer was know as an XT, it was slow as anything. But I did not know that it was slow until I got my 286. Boy was that fast. Well, I failed to realize how slow that was until I got my 386. Now I was cooking. But I’ll tell you what, that 386 was going in slow motion when I upgraded to a 586. I thought I was not going to need another computer for the rest of my life that 586 was so fast.

Well guess what? They come out with a Pentium and it put to shame my 586. Now I have a Pentium II and my daughters have the Pentium on which I use on occasion. I can’t get over how slow the Pentium I is! Now of course this as all taken place over the course of a least ten years.

But my point is that I never knew how slow my computers were until I got the next generation of computers. I never new how bad I had it until I got something faster and more powerful.

Life is like that. When we get to heaven, when we stand before the throne of almighty God, singing with the angels and the millions of other countless saints I believe we are going to realize how bad life on earth really was. We are going to wonder why earthly life held such a grip on us.

Eternal life with the Lord God in heaven is beyond our comprehension, beyond description, beyond what we can imagine. And that is a good thing, because if we did realize and comprehend how much better it really was, we would all commit suicide to get there quicker.

God leave it as it is so that we will continue the work He as for us on the this old earth.

Please turn with me to the passage for this morning. Tutus chapter 1 verse 2, that would be page 1032 in your pew Bibles this morning. I will read both the first and second verses,

"Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began,"

Here is a wonderful promise of God. Last week we took at look at hope and what it means to the Christian. We made not of how our hope in God is a hope of certainty. Hope is that which is desired and expected. We saw some reasons for hope. The Word of God was a reason for our hope. The cross of Christ and the completed work of atonement which was accomplished on the cross was a reason for Christian hope. The resurrection of Christ was reason for hope. By it was know that we can change just as God changed the body of Christ into a glorified body, He can change us into new creations, no longer slaves to sin.

And the resurrection of Jesus Christ give us hope of eternal life, because their was victory over death though the resurrection.

Today I want us to focus on the object and sum of Christian hope as stated in our passage this morning, and this is eternal life. What a great promise that is, what a great hope that is. There are three things I want to point out concerning this promise.

First of all, this promise is priceless in value. I would challenge you to think of one thing that would be greater then eternal life with God in heaven. What could be greater? What could be more valuable.