BIBLE MESSAGES ON EASTER
Bob Marcaurelle
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Message 7
Annual Sermons: Vol. 11 Sermon 9
Bob Marcaurelle: 1998 Rev. 14:13
THREE THINGS WE TAKE TO HEAVEN
There’s an amusing story of the Christian who served God well but had a deep love for his collection of gold coins. He apologized for doing it, but about once a week in his prayers he begged God to let him take his gold coins to heaven. He was so faithful in other areas that God decided to let him do it. When he died his coin collection vanished and the family thought it had been stolen while they were at the funeral.
The man found himself standing before heaven’s gates and sure enough, there around his feet were his 200 gold coins. He saw Peter and thanked him over and over. Peter said, “Thank you!” but added that his prayer had most people in heaven confused. When the man asked, why, Peter said, “We can’t figure why you wanted to bring PAVEMENT to heaven!” Well, WE CAN’T TAKE a lot of things to heaven and money is one of them but today I want to share with you three things we do take to heaven. One is. . .
I. OUR CHARACTER (Ps. 24:3-4)
Remember last week’s text, “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord. Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps. 24:3-4). Well, those clean hands (CONDUCT) and clean heart (CHARACTER) go to heaven with us. We take our character. . .
1. Humanly Speaking (Lk. 20:37)
We will live with ourselves, who and what we are, humanly speaking. Jesus said His Father was the “God of the living” and called Himself “the God of Abraham. . . Isaac. . .and Jacob” (Lk. 20:37). Read the OT and you will see these three men were different. Abraham is still Abraham, the quiet friend of God and Jacob is still the anything but quiet prince with God, but they are free from sin and developing in love the unique personalities given and fashioned on earth.
Illustration: In the movie “Return Of The Living Dead” the dead, with different but expressionless faces walked alike, looked alike and acted alike. It will not be that way in glory. God doesn’t mass produce “clones” He creates human beings. Moses was a statesman who ruled. Elijah was a “Tazmanian Devil” who never wrote a book and never made a long speech like Moses but he stuck his finger in the nose of kings and told them dogs would lick their blood because of their sins.
Everything good and bad that has happened to you and me has gone into making you-you and me-me. God is not going to waste that. We will be, I believe, much the same as we are now, but rid of sin, rid of all impurity, jealousy, competition and pride.
Illustration: The grand old African American preacher, John Jasper, used to say he would know where his mother lived in heaven, BY THE ROSES IN HER YARD. The mother he sent away was the mother he was looking for, only better.
2. Spiritually Speaking (Ps. 24:3-4; Ph. 2:5). But more important, we will take what we are spiritually and God’s standard and goal for us is Jesus Christ. To be like him is why we are here. Paul says, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Jesus Christ “ (Phil. 2:5). Max Lucado in his marvelous new book, “Just Like Jesus”, tells us what this means and next Sunday I hope to preach on just this.
Today I give the outline. He says Jesus had a pure, a peaceful, a pleasant, and a pious (God oriented) life. To that I add two more. Jesus had a very painful and private life - He was never alone but He was often lonely, when His disciples bickered in His presence (Lk. 22:24), when Judas sold Him (Mt. 26:25), when Peter denied Him (Lk. 22:34), He was lonely. And this, to Him was every bit as painful as the whip and the nails. Zech. 13:6 says the Messiah was wounded in the “house of his friends”. And so if we are willing to be made like Christ we must be willing to pay the price like Christ.
II. OUR CAPACITY (1 Cor. 3:8-15)
The second thing we take to heaven, and it is based upon our faithfulness and perseverance in being made more like Jesus, is our CAPACITY to receive the blessings and responsibilities of heaven, what the Bible calls REWARDS. This whole idea of reward is confusing. Sometimes HEAVEN ITSELF, the fact that we go there, is seen as a reward.
For example the Bible says, “Moses. . .regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as a greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward” (Heb. 10:26).
What is confusing however are differences and degrees of reward. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said to persecuted believers, “Great is your reward. . .” (Mt. 5:12). And He says in the Bible’s last chapter, “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done” (Rev. 22:12). And Paul says of Christians, “. . . each will be rewarded according to his own labor” (I Cor. 3:8). Then he goes on to say some Christian’s “works”, not done for the right reason, will be burned up and they themselves will be saved like one “escaping though the flames” (1 Cor. 3:15).
What does this mean? If some are higher and some lower, does this mean we will have jealousy and competition and pouting and feeling left out in heaven? Oh no my friends - sin will be gone, I believe, even from our memories.
We won’t even know what sin is. Love will be the order of the day. The Bible says “the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4). We will rejoice for our brothers and sisters who have greater responsibilities than us as though they were our own children. We will never feel better that those below us, but will rejoice with them at their joy of service as though they were our aged parents.
Dr. Hendricks, my seminary professor, used to say we will all have our cups full and says, “my cup runneth over!” but some of us will have BIGGER CUPS. We, in this life are building, through likeness to Christ, our CAPACITY, our CUPS, God will fill in heaven.
Fear motivates and sometimes I wish God would use fear to get us to be more faithful in our pursuit of Christlikeness. We know we are going to heaven and we are too easily satisfied with less than our best. We even talk about not wanting a reward but being satisfied with a “cabin” in heaven just as long as we get in. We should be ashamed of ourselves. But there’s something that might motivate us - the third thing we can take to heaven. . .
III. OUR CONTRIBUTION (Rev. 14:13)
The Book of Revelation says “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on . . . they will rest from their labor for their deeds will follow them” (Rev. 14:13). What we leave behind us is the influence of our lives for good or bad and as that influence continues it will one day catch up with us in heaven. This is the motivating side of rewards especially if what we see coming are CONVERTS. Paul called his Philippian converts his “crown” (4:1).
Think about Billy Graham’s parents. We don’t even know their names but they built a godly home on a farm in North Carolina and every convert Billy has, and I am one of them, is credited to their account and so is every convert that comes out of my ministry. I want to walk up to Billy in heaven and thank him but I need to walk up to his mom and dad too and thank them for him. What about you? Will there be any converts in heaven because of you?
Illustration: I never knew Ansell Pruitt, long time pastor in this area, but I heard a taped sermon of his. He told of a middle-aged lady who asked Bill Parham, the song leader and the revival preacher to come to her home and tell her how to be saved. They did and she was. Jokingly, Bill Parham asked her if it was the singing or the preaching that got to her.
“Neither one” she said, “it was the young man down the street who became a Christian. He works third shift at the mill and every night he walks by my house on the way to work whistling, ‘Heavenly Sunlight.’ I want what he has.” That boy was Ansell Pruitt. Before he ever answered the call to preach and stepped in a pulpit, by his life, he was drawing people to the Lord who put a song in his heart.
Think about this beautiful new sanctuary we have built. It is a tool to win souls and build Christ like Christians. If we don’t do that we are like a sock factory that doesn’t make socks or a fire engine that never goes to a fire. I thank God the breath of soul winning and evangelism is beginning to blow through our church. I thank God 10 young people raised their hands in Robbie’s Wed. Night class wanting salvation.
I thank God that same week two teen age boys came to talk to me about the Lord. I thank God, the young man who spoke to our Men’s Ministry meeting and told of taking Bibles to China, was here because one of our men sat beside him on the plane and had the nerve to ask him, “Are you a Christian?”
Not only that but before our member got on that plane he asked God to seat him beside the right person. The breath of soul winning is starting to blow across this church and we’d better lift our sails in obedience and say, “I’ll be your witness, Lord.” If we don’t, the Spirit will go somewhere else and leave us to play our little church games.
Illustration: Dr. George Truett of Dallas told of a lady in his church. Her husband died young so she worked hard to support herself and her boy. She took him to church and Sunday School but when he hit his high school years, the boys of the street got him. In and out of trouble, he became a drunk and killed his mother a little every day.
One night he woke up to find his mother by his bed praying and weeping. Angrily he ordered her from his room but she pleaded, “I was praying you would go to church with me in the morning.” Still angry, he said, “I’ll go this once if you promise never to say anything else to me about church.” She said, “Son, I promise, but one thing I’ll still do. I’ll pray for you until the day I die.” They went to church. The boy walked in and quickly sat on the back row. His mother nudged him over and sat on the end of the pew.
I want you to stop and look at this picture. The people are beautifully dressed. The choir and congregation sing about Jesus. George Truett preached as only he could. Now look at that back row! Don’t look at the crowd. There is the boy on the back seat with his mother between him and the door. That door leads to the street and that street leads to the beer joints and the beer joint leads to hell. Between him and all that is his mother. Who has God given you to stand between them and the outer darkness, the hopelessness, the unending misery of a Christless eternity? Pray for them, weep for them, beg them, plead with them.
You ask, “Was the young man saved?” He was! But whether he was or wasn’t, that mother was faithful, that mother stood in the gap, that mother sowed love and tears and prayers in that boy’s life. Are you sowing seed like that? If you do and you see one person in heaven because of you, next to Jesus and your loved ones that will be the most beautiful sight you will see. You can take converts to heaven. Take one!
