Our Final Freedom--What Will The Future Of Eternity Be Like?-- Part Ii Series

We have difficulty not imagining heaven as potentially boring… eternally boring. We initially imagine heaven without the challenges that make us feel alive… without the attachments that make life meaningful… without the tastes of sin that make it flavorful…. and without the earthly vices that offer us comfort.

Similarly many people today have become quite cavalier in regards to their eternal destiny. As they look at religious people…often uptight or self-righteous…they find consolation in their friends who try hard to have a good time and determine, “If my friends are going to be in hell…I’d rather party in hell with my friends.”

Such a cavalier approach neither understands hell, nor heaven.

There is indeed a party that awaits us, but it’s not in hell, it’s in heaven.

Matt. 22:2… “The Kingdom of heaven is like a King who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.”

Jesus loved a party…got in trouble for having too much fun with sinners…sinners who found joy of forgiveness and were willing to follow him.

Last week we caught a glimpse of the freedom that awaits us-a new heaven and earth (Rev.21: 4). Let’s look further into “our final freedom.”

I John 3:1-2. “How great is the love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

Dear friends now we are children of God and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

What has God revealed of our Final Freedom?

1. Our future eternity is one of UNRESTRICTED BODIES!

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits f the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Romans 8:22-23

Anybody groaning?…I may still have a lot of years on earth…but every year…I find myself more ready for a trade in. Paul says every groan is a reminder we are not home.

II Cor. 5:1-5 “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

1 Cor. 15:35-40, 42-44, 49-55

But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. …So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

50I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed-- 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

55"Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?"

What is revealed of our future bodies??

1. These bodies are but seeds of what is to come. An acorn doesn’t simply produce an acorn but an oak tree…something of vastly greater proportion.

2. Nature itself reveals there are different kinds of bodies…so it shouldn’t surprise us at all that there will be a great distinction between our earthly bodies and our eternal bodies.

3. Just as we have born the likeness of the earthly man so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven JESUS. Our future bodies in the new heaven and earth will be like his. And what do we know of the resurrected Christ?