Intro – Let me give you a warning: this message today is going to get very personal very quickly. I know it is for me. The older you are, the faster this will happen. Let me tell you about some people who I’ve known through the years.
(went through several names and pictures of people, significant in my life, who have died)
These people are just a few of the reasons that Heaven is an important place to me. You have a list much like it this morning.
Sometimes I wonder. Don’t you? I wonder if Dad is proud of how I’m doing. I wonder if Emmit would like to tell me, “Well, now let’s think about that…” I wonder if Stan Bouchard has some one-liner that he’s telling around Heaven that was prompted by my situation. I wonder how Shannon felt about when her husband Jeff turned his life around and got it right, and what was it like for her when he was suddenly struck down in an accident and headed for Heaven. I wonder if Dad Sills still makes that sound by sucking air in through the cracks between his teeth while he chews a toothpick, and if he still would encourage me to get a pilot’s license just because it would be a neat accomplishment. I wonder if my two sons are watching us, and if they appreciate each year when we acknowledge their birthdays.
Other times, I don’t just wonder; I long for them. I wish I could call Dad up on the phone, like I could 15 years ago, and seek his advice about parenting and about the ministry. I wish I could get Dad Sill’s slant on world politics, and Emmit’s take on our nation’s finances. I miss those people.
I’m going to guess that most every one of us here today has someone dear that is no longer in this world – someone who died in Christ, who’s in Heaven today, and whom you miss sorely.
And I’m going to guess that, more than once, you’ve thought about that person and wondered how you still relate to that person, and how he or she relates to you. You can’t see them – they’re so far removed from this situation…or are they? Just how far away are those people we know and loved? How do we relate to them, or do we at all?
We’re talking about Heaven’s current citizens. Now, to understand them, and how we relate to them, let’s make a short list of things they can’t do, then we’ll address what they do:
1. They can’t assume the roles of angels – because they aren’t!
There are some things we have in common with angels: Jesus said that, like the angels, we won’t be married in Heaven, and we won’t die. An angel told John he was just a fellow-servant of the Lord. We’re going to engage in worship around the throne of God, like the angels. But angels are a different creature than us. They’re serving spirits, sent to help God’s people. One day, Paul told the Corinthians, we’ll judge angels. I’m not exactly sure what that means – maybe we’ll get to watch videos of all they did and we’ll score them on how well they helped us or didn’t! I just know that we’re different from angels and our roles are different.
People who have died before us haven’t become angels, and neither will we. Sorry, Clarence the Angel, in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” You don’t die and then, “earn your wings.” What we understand about the residents of Heaven needs to come from God’s word and not books and movies.
2. They can’t continue to communicate with the living
There are only 2 exceptions to this, and in light of the number of people who are thinking they can communicate with the dead today, we’re going to spend a little time on this in just a couple of minutes.
Just for a moment, assume I’m right about this – assume that once you die, you won’t be able to communicate with the people who remain on earth. What does that mean? It means that you need to say what needs to be said now, while you have the opportunity! Get your words in! Tell your wife why she’s the greatest woman who ever lived. Tell you child that you’re proud of him or her! Tell your parents if you appreciate all they invested in you. Thank your teacher.
Too many people are trying to contact their dead loved ones because they failed to say what needed to be said to them while they were still alive. Make a note today and say what needs to be said before it’s too late to say it.
3. They can’t return
Remember for a moment the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Lk 16. The rich man is in the suffering part of Hades, Lazarus is in the place in Hades where there is comfort. Not only is there a great gulf between those 2 places, but remember also that no one would be sent back to earth to warn them there. No one was going to travel from being dead back to earth to help them. There just isn’t any account of that in Scripture, except for 2, Moses and Elijah on the Mt. of Transfiguration, and Samuel at Endor. We’re going to look into one of those in particular. With those appearances, no one apart from the resurrected Jesus comes back to earth and interacts with humans.
I know, I know, in “A Christmas Carol” the ghost of Jacob Marley returns to warn Ebenezer Scrooge that he needs to change, and in “Star Wars,” Obiwon Konobi comes back to give advice and guidance to Luke, and in the 6th Sense the Haily Joel Ozmit “sees dead people walking around.” Again, our understanding of life and afterlife needs to come from something other than movies or books.
Joke - A couple had been married for 50 years. The wife was a spiritualist – she believed in Heaven, and that we who are living can communicate with the dead. The husband believed in reincarnation – that everyone who dies just returns to this world in some different form. After the husband died, the wife began attending a number of séances, hoping to make contact with her husband. One night his voice came through very clearly. She was thrilled, but also had a certain, “I told you so” tone in her voice because her husband had doubted her beliefs. She said, “Well, I guess you figured out I was right after all! So, what’s it like there?” He said, “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s beautiful. The sky is big, the water is clear blue, and the place is full of young creatures with lovely big, brown eyes.” She said, “Well, I never expected heaven would be like that!” “Heaven?” he said, “Who said anything about heaven? I’m a bull in Montana.”
It’s estimated that over 70 million people in the world are followers of spiritism or spiritualism, or necromancy. That’s the belief that the spirits of the dead communicate with the living through a “medium” or a “channel.”
Spiritism was introduced to the US in 1848 by 2 sisters, Margaret and Kate Fox. They claimed to have communicated with the dead and established the Spiritist Church in New York. This cult denies the inspiration of the Bible, the deity of Jesus, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the existence of the devil, and the blood atonement of Jesus. Other than that, they’re just swell!!
A few years ago there was a show on prime time called “Crossing Over” where John Edward supposedly brought messages from the “world beyond” to people in his audience. Right now, we have shows like “Medium” and “Ghost Whisperer,” where the premise of the show is the involvement of messages and people from the world of the dead in the world of the living.
Now, it makes sense that a bereaved spouse or a grief-stricken parent would want to hear something from a departed loved one as a way of providing some kind of hope from “the world beyond.” I can understand where regret or worry might lead a person, who would otherwise never consider trying such a thing, to try to contact the dead. So what’s so bad about it?
1. Spiritism is the only false cult specifically named and condemned in the Bible
Isaiah 8:19-20
When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.
Leviticus 19:31
Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God.
Part of Israel’s downfall was a turn to spiritism for answers for their life. Imagine how much harm it can do in the life of people today.
2. Spiritism is a search for comfort in the wrong place
Paul begins the letter we call 2 Co with the words, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles…”
Why, instead of receiving the help of the God Who will never leave or forsake us, should we attempt to hear from people who are currently not with us? Why try to connect with people who are created beings with limited knowledge, when we have a direct line with the Almighty Who knows everything? It’s looking in the wrong place for help.
3. The religion of Spiritism is traced directly to Satan
That would explain the reason that God speaks so strongly against it
Deuteronomy 18:9-12
When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you.
Leviticus 20:6
I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.
In the original language, a medium is a person who would imitate the voice of a dead person – like a ventriloquist with a dummy. There certainly is a lot of trickery associated with this whole scene – there always has been – but it’s also a scene that Satan uses for his own ends. In other words, it’s likely that there’s a combination of both the phony and the demonic involved in spiritism.
I Sam 28 is the other place in Scripture where the spirit of a dead person visits the world of the living. Saul is scared. The Philistines have set up camp getting ready to attack. He had turned his back on the Lord, and there was no answer when he prayed. So he told his men to find a medium. They found a woman at Endor. She’s usually remembered as “the witch at Endor – she was a spiritist-medium. King Saul went and asked her to contact the spirit of Samuel, who was dead. Now, just to help reinforce that she was a fake, when Samuel actually did appear, she was terrified. The text says she cried out at the top of her voice! Can you imagine, she goes through her little incantation, and suddenly there’s Samuel? “Aaahhh! It worked! It wasn’t supposed to really happen!” In other words, she was a fake. She didn’t really contact the spirits of dead people, so it scared her to death when it actually worked. Now, this story is the other exception in the Bible. It was God Who arranged Samuel’s curtain call in the tent of the woman at Endor, and the story says again and again how being a medium, even a phony one, was against God’s command.
As the Chronicles look back on the life of Saul, it says,
1 Chronicles 10:13-14
Saul died because he was unfaithful to the LORD; he did not keep the word of the LORD and even consulted a medium for guidance, and did not inquire of the LORD. So the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse.
This cult of Satan, this attempt to find help or insight by consulting the dead, is no place that the follower of God should be messing around. It is, in fact, Satan’s playground, and it shouldn’t surprise us to find him at work in the middle of all of it. If there is any supernatural element involved in spiritism, it sure isn’t from God.
There’s a widely-read book on this subject by James Pike called The Other Side. He talks about what he calls conversations through a medium with his “deceased son.” In one conversation, he talks about Jesus. I want to read you what he said, because I think that these words are not only not the words of James Pike Jr., but are from a demonic impersonator. Listen to what he said about Jesus…
“I haven’t met him. They talk about him – a mystic, a seer, yes, a seer. Oh, but Dad, they don’t talk about him as a savior. As an example, you see?...You see, I want to tell you, I would like to tell you, Jesus is triumphant, you know? But it’s not like that. I don’t understand it yet. I don’t understand it yet. I may, sometime I may, but right now I have got as much to comprehend as I can . You don’t want me to tell you what I don’t know…not a savior, that’s the important thing – an example…”
Satan is all about deceit. Don’t these words just ooze with the subtle denial of the person of Jesus that typifies the devil? As G. K. Chesterton once said, “When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing – he believes in anything.”
I want to tell you this morning that spiritism is no place that the believer in Jesus should fool around.
Now, that’s a lot of words to say that the distance from Heaven to earth can look pretty great. There are a lot of wrong ideas about the involvement of the righteous dead on the earth. It just isn’t so. Now I want to turn it around and talk about what they can do.
In general, I think that we can all be encouraged that the current citizens of Heaven care about God’s plan and they care about what’s going on here.
Here’s something to think about: when we get to Heaven, will we pray less, or more than we do now? If prayer is conversation with God, will we be doing more or less of it in Heaven? So, will godly people, who were continually interceding on behalf of fellow believers during life here suddenly stop interceding? Why would they? I expect they still do pray, because I see that they still know and care about this life.
1. They’ll know each other
There’s no reason to assume that everyone won’t know anyone anymore in Heaven. Our identities won’t be erased. Our deeds in this life will somehow go before us. The Sherm Nichols I am now is going to be greatly improved and perfected, but I’ll still be who I am. That means you’ll be able to know me in Heaven, and I expect to be able to know you too.
2. They know when a sinner repents
You’ve read these words before. Read them again this morning, with a little more attention to detail.
Luke 15:7
I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
Luke 15:10
In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
“…more rejoicing in heaven,” “rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God…” the way Jesus said these wasn’t by accident. Do you see it? Who is rejoicing over the one sinner who repents? It’s not the angels who are said to rejoice. It’s someone in their presence. I believe this is speaking about the believers who are in Heaven today. That great celebration in Heaven that happens when someone gives his life to the Lord is a celebration by people who once made that decision themselves.
I’m not sure of all they know, but I do see here that the righteous dead know when a sinner repents.
3. They watch Christians running the race
Bear in mind how the 11th ch of Heb. is all about the heroes of the faith who have died and gone to be with the Lord. The writer gets to the end, talks about how they didn’t receive what was promised when they died…not yet, but it was coming. Then he says,
Hebrews 12:1-3
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. Now, it could mean that they are a witness, a testimony to us of God’s faithfulness – that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Or, it could mean that these people who have died and gone before us are now witnessing us as we live out our days. I believe it’s most likely the later of those 2 choices – first, because it says “we are surrounded.” The picture is one of a large group, around us, not just some roster of people that we can read about. But 2nd, the whole command carries a whole lot more strength if it means they’re watching us.
It’s one thing to say that I have a good example set in front of me – that there are trophies in the case in the hallway – that people before me did a great job. But it’s another thing to tell me that those people not only preceded me but they’re watching me now! To think that they are cheering me on, just like they rejoice when someone accepts Jesus! I just imagine, my dad, in the stands, saying to someone next to him, “That’s my son!” Therefore, let us run!
4. They know when the Church is persecuted
We keep referring to Rev. 6, but it’s an important text because it gives us a glimpse into the minds of people who have died for their faith.
Revelation 6:9-11 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.
These people not only remember about their own lives on earth, but they are also aware of what has and hasn’t yet happened on earth. They converse with God, and they have a strong sense of justice for their brothers in Christ. They are called “their fellow servants and brothers.”
Conclusion:
Some of you have seen the license plates on my car. My kids got me those for Father’s Day several years ago. MO limits you to 6 letters, so I worked on several ideas and ended up with judag8. I wanted something that had some meaning – something that would start conversations. It has. When someone asks me what that’s all about, I tell them. The new Jer. Has 12 gates, each with the name of a tribe of Israel on it. My family members and I are going to meet at the Judah Gate. I have that on my car, because I want people to know that’s my great hope! I have that on my car, because that’s what I really value in life. We remind each other when we go on trips that we’re going to meet at the Judah Gate, because no matter what happens, that’s where we’ll end up.
It’s not a private gathering! In fact, I’ve invited several other people along to join us there too. We just wanted to be sure we’d find each other in Heaven. We’d love for you to be there too…
