(Show clip from BluefishTV – “Spiritual tots, Colonik’s got ‘em!”)
Even if they’re unsure of it, most people want to believe in Heaven, and most people have some concept of it.
TIME took a poll 10 years ago, and 81% of the people they surveyed said they believed in the existence of Heaven, where people lived forever with God after they die.
Still, there’s that other 19%...
Robert Ingersoll was an atheist. He was a famous anti-Christian propagandist and orator in the days after the Civil War. Once, in front of a large crowd, Ingersoll pulled out his pocket-watch and gave God 5 minutes. “Strike me dead, or be disproved,” he said. After all, didn’t the Bible record where God struck men dead for blasphemy? "Then let me do that now!" Holding his watch, he blasphemed God, then counted off the minutes. The crowd counted too, as one minute went by; then 2,3,4,5... When nothing happened, Ingersoll snapped his watch shut. "There! You see! There is no God or I would be dead!" When a Joseph Parker, a British preacher heard about it, he said, “And did the American gentleman think he could exhaust the patience of God in 5 minutes?"
Ingersoll was a friend of Phillips Brooks, the man who wrote “O, Little Town of Bethlehem.” When Brooks became seriously ill, he requested that none of his friends come to visit him. But, when his friend Robert Ingersoll, the atheist, came to see him, he let him come in right away. Ingersoll told him, “I appreciate this very much. Especially when you aren’t letting any of your close friends see you.” Brooks said, “Oh, I’m confident of seeing them in the next world, but this may be my last chance to see you.”
Robert Ingersoll died at the age of 65, 1899. Notices of his death were printed in all the major newspapers of New England, and in every one, as part of the funeral notice, there was a single, very ironic, line: "There will be no music."
I’m confident, Robert Ingersoll is now a believer.
I’m going to keep reminding us – understanding about Heaven, and meditating on Heaven, will affect the way we live our entire lives!
The discussion of Heaven we’re engaging in this morning has to do with one of the important basics. The reality of Heaven has been challenged by people for centuries. I hope to present some helps for that. I feel challenged by the enormity of the task. But, if I completely fail at this, there’s still good news: one day, the question of the reality of Heaven is going to be settled for everyone.
Alfred North Whitehead, former Harvard professor - “Can you imagine anything more appallingly idiotic than the Christian idea of heaven?”
Whitehead is now a believer.
Bertrand Russell, was an atheist and a Nobel literature prize winner in 1950 - “There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere; only triviality for a moment – then nothing.”
Russell is now a believer.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair - "There is no God. There’s no heaven. There’s no hell. There are no angels. When you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you."
“[Heaven is] a delusional dream of the unsophisticated minds of the ill-educated clergy.” Madalyn Murray O’Hair is now a believer.
Maybe you’re not as abrupt about it as past atheists, but maybe you or someone close to you struggles with the reality of Heaven. “It’s invisible. No one has ever seen it. I haven’t seen Heaven, so it can’t be real.” OK. Do you believe in the existence of your brain? You’ve never seen it. But you still think it exists, don’t you? So, that doesn’t need to prevent us from accepting the reality of Heaven or anything else we haven’t personally seen.
Every culture of man has traditionally had some concept of life after death. Right away, that should tell us something about the existence of Heaven – that at the very least, mankind, as a race, has some interest in it. And since we do, I want to affirm to you this morning, Heaven is real, and I want you to see several reasons for accepting that reality.
One evidence is by what we can know about…
1. The nature of God, creation, and man
Let’s break that down.
• the Nature of God
If we simply take God at His word in the Scriptures, then we understand that He’s a God of justice, holiness, perfection, and power. It’s not just Him choosing to be just and holy and perfect and powerful. It’s His very nature. He cannot deny Himself. That means He not only wants there to be justice and perfection, but that He’s able to bring it about. Everything about creation that isn’t as it should be today, God is able to fix, and until it is fixed, it doesn’t fit Who He is. It’s really not a question of if He’ll change it, but of when and where. He answers that for us too:
Revelation 21:4
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
That’s coming. The clock is ticking. Right now, God is waiting. The Bible describes this interim time, before Heaven is finalized, as God’s patience – patience because He’s wanting others to repent and accept Him.
• The Nature of Creation
Nature teaches us some of the most basic facts about God. His eternal power and divine nature can be clearly seen and can be understood from what has been made, Paul writes in Romans 1:20. So, why would we be resistant to the idea that nature also teaches us about the place where God is – about Heaven as well?
Every fall, as long as there have been seasons, the trees and other vegetation have “died” in a way. And every spring, new life comes shooting out of the earth. That has been happening since the great flood, and it’s going to happen until the Lord returns. Every spring, there’s a rehearsal by nature to remind us that there’s more than just this physical life. These bodies, that we watch die and place into the earth, will one day be given new life. Jesus was talking about His own death and resurrection, but He used facts from creation to explain:
John 12:24
I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
• The Nature of Man
There’s something about the nature of mankind that ought to have us believing in the reality of Heaven. It’s progressive.
It’s our nature to start out with almost nothing and to develop, to mature. That goes on for years and years, and really continues for most of our lives. We learn the basics of speech and mobility. We learn about socialization, and then we study history and technology, and we keep growing. Hopefully, long after school years, we keep totaling up our life experiences into a personal pool of life wisdom that we’re able to keep adding to.
Now, if this life is all there is - if there’s no further development, nothing to look forward to, nothing more to do after we die, does it make any sense at all that we spend our lifetime developing all that, and then we just drop it and it’s over?
But of this life time is all about preparation for the next, it all makes sense. If Heaven is real, then it gives us a reason to mature and to grow just as much as we possibly can in this life. If Heaven is real, then what Paul describes in Phil 3:12-14 makes sense:
Philippians 3:12-14
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
There’s another part of our nature that matters here, and the Bible refers to it in
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
“Eternity in the hearts of men.” What’s that. Let me try to illustrate:
Ill – You’re living in Western Africa. You can’t remember any other place you’ve been. Every morning, you wake up, and you, along with all the other people you’ve ever known, go out and move rocks. It’s how you make a living, and how they make a living, and it’s all everyone in your whole circle of acquaintance ever does. Some people are better at it than others. Some move the rocks and restack them in interesting shapes. Some are able to move huge rocks. Some break the rocks to move them. Some seem happy moving the rocks. Others seem a little dissatisfied with life, but it’s the only life you’ve ever lived. Then there’s the day that someone brings a TV to your little world. You watch the Olympics, and you see people who are able to run, to tumble, to play ball, to swim – things you’ve never done, or even seen, and it does something to you. You begin to realize that there’s another world to be experienced – one of surprise and challenge and motion and triumph. It places something new in your heart. Rock moving changes in your eyes. Now, you find yourself seeing how much moving rocks can build your strength. You try throwing rocks, making rocks into an obstacle course to run through, figuring out ingenious ways to crush rocks, you even start fashioning awards out of the shiny metallic rocks you find. Where you were once satisfied, you no longer are, because you know there’s something desirable beyond the life you currently know.
C. S. Lewis – “The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist.’…If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
That dissatisfied feeling you sometimes wrestle with – has it ever occurred to you that God placed that in you because you aren’t supposed to be satisfied with this world as it is? that you have actually been created for some other purpose? Has it ever occurred to you that understanding more about Heaven will loosen your grip on this world because you’ll understand that you have been made for something more?
Now, let’s move on to some more reasons to understand that Heaven really is really real!
1. Because of those who have been there and tell us about it
It’s true! There have been some people who have been to Heaven, come to earth, and tell us about it. Paul talks about his experience in II Co 12. John, in Revelation, starts that book by saying it is the testimony of all that he saw, that God revealed to him. Most importantly, Jesus said He had come from Heaven, in John 3. At that time, He said, No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven--the Son of Man. In Ch 14, He says He is going there again, and that He’ll eventually take His disciples there too.
Heaven is a real place, and it has been visited by people who lived to tell about the experience of seeing it.
2. Because of the way it is described in the Scriptures
We live in a fallen world. All around us are reminders that this earth isn’t the way it was created to be. But we’re too quick to forget that this material world was once looked upon by God and He said it was “good.” Sure enough, in Genesis 2:12 we read about the land of Havilah:
Genesis 2:12
The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.
Whether or not you’ve studied Plato, your thinking has probably been affected by him. Plato taught that the ultimate good had to be free from all things material. But “material” isn’t the same as evil. And “good” doesn’t mean non-material.
Judson Cornwall said,
“Our thinking is shaped by Greek philosophy, suggesting that all things material cannot be wholly good. This is a mistake because it is materialism, not material itself that is evil. There was matter long before there was sin; and long after this earth has been purged from all sin by divine fire there will still be matter.”
In other words, God is the source of all things material, and God doesn’t make junk. Man is the one who junks things up.
Look at John’s description of the New Jerusalem in Heaven, in Rev 21 and he speaks of a wall, 12 gates with names written on them, 12 foundations, with names on them, specific lengths and widths, jasper, gold, and then he names precious stones. They’re material things – good things that God created for us to see now, and that He says are going to be a part of Heaven.
Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms” – dwelling places – like the bedrooms in your house. You can go out from one, and into another – literal, material places.
Why describe Heaven in such detail and such literal terms if it’s not very real? Spend some time reading about that place, and wondering at it.
Another affirmation of the literal reality of Heaven has to do with what we’re going to be like. We’re going to have real, resurrected bodies, not just spirits
Philippians 3:20-21
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Now, if Heaven just going to be some kind of vaporous, ethereal existence, why speak about our resurrected bodies and not just our spirits. Paul says in I Co 15 there is a planted natural body and a raised spiritual body. He doesn’t say a “spiritual spirit”, but a spiritual body. That transformed body we’ll be given will by like Jesus’ glorious body – the same resurrected Jesus seen at least by Stephen, and Saul, and John. And remember that Jesus, after He rose, ate, walked and was seen by over 500 people at one time. Which means if there are tator tots in Heaven, we should be able to eat them!
One other way we can better understand the reality of Heaven is to read where the Bible tells us that much of this physical world is a shadow of things in Heaven.
When God had Moses build the tabernacle, He warned him to follow the plans just like he was told – not because God is obsessive compulsive, but because the parts of the tabernacle were to serve as a shadow or a copy of things in Heaven.
Hebrews 8:5
They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."
Hebrews 9:23-28
It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.
A shadow. A copy. When you study a shadow from something, you can learn some things about it, can’t you? You can look at a shadow, and maybe recognize where it’s from. (Lincoln silhouette)
I can show you a picture of Turipati, India. I can tell you about it, describe it to you, and you can become familiar with it, maybe even say, “I’d like to visit there someday.” But, until you go there, hear the sounds, see the sights in 3 dimensions, smell the smells, feel the atmosphere, taste it for yourself, you’ll never really appreciate what the real thing is like. Pictures are just a shadow, a copy, of the reality they portray.
So much of what Heaven is going to be like is described with things we already can see.
True science is about trying to learn all we can about creation because it’s a reflection of the God Who created it, and it’s also a preview of the ultimate reason for which we ourselves are created. George Washington Carver saw himself as a person who was given the task of finding out what God had made and what could be done with it. Listen to some of what he said:
“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”
“We get closer to God as we get more intimately and understandingly acquainted with the things He has created.”
" Please Mr. Creator, will you tell me why the peanut was made?" (then he developed some 300 products from it)
Heaven is going to be the ultimate reality – the one of which we can only know shadows and copies right now. I know that II Pt 3 says this current world is going to be destroyed, melted, with fervent heat. But it doesn’t say it’s going to cease to exist. It’s going to have an extreme makeover. It’s going to be liberated from its bondage to decay. It’s going to be completely redone. Jesus calls it “the renewal of all things” in M. 19. Peter in Acts 3, referred to the time when God would “restore everything.” In Rev 21 God says He is making everything new – new heaven, new earth. What could be more real?
OK, taking all these things in mind, what can w do about them?
Applications:
1. Learn to appreciate the reality by studying the “shadow.”
Of all people in the world, people whose citizenship is in Heaven have the greatest reason to study and appreciate this creation. We have the greatest reasons to admire sunsets, gaze at the stars, and walk barefoot through the grass. We have the greatest reason to responsibly take care of this creation.
It will help us to appropriately appreciate it now, and it ultimately, it will convince us that we don’t want just this world.
2. Make some preoccupation with Heaven a regular part of our lives.
Paul told the Colossians “…set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
While we’re learning about God and about the Heaven that is to come by looking closely at creation, we’re supposed to be more focused on what we can’t see.
Get your head in the clouds. Make some of that preoccupation a regular part of your life.
3. Don’t let the 2nd-rate quality of life’s current experience get you down
There’s a reason God tells us about Heaven: it’s to make life right now livable. Let’s be honest, this world lets us down. People disappoint us. Weather changes our plans. Accidents and sickness set us back. Death makes us grieve. Sin damages our relationships. Sometimes the only help to cope with those letdowns is that fact that Heaven is coming. Paul said he was hard-pressed because to go and be with Christ would be better. It’s OK to long for Heaven.
Conclusion:
4. Make sure that you’re going to experience the reality someday!...
