This is the Sunday before Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Sunday and it is customary that the pastor bring a message on Thanksgiving, on giving thanks. So as I considered what the Lord would have me share with you today, I began to ask myself the question: what am I thankful for?
Obviously this has been the most difficult year of my 47 years of life with Elizabeth’s going to be with the Lord this past April. I remember thinking so clearly upon seeing her in the casket (and I’ll attempt to put this into words for you but I don’t know if I can convey it) – but I remember as I took in that scene thinking, “This is unnatural” and I didn’t mean by that death so much but rather this was not the way it is suppose to be for a parent to have their still young 15 year old child dead and lying in a casket. It just was and is a feeling that is hard to describe. We are familiar with grandparents dying, with parents dying and even with older children dying, but it just seemed so unnatural, and maybe that is not the best word to use but that is what I felt, it seemed so unnatural to have a 15 year girl, MY 15 year old girl dead and lying in that casket. And so as I said, this has been the most difficult year of my life.
So in light of this tremendous pain, what am I thankful for this Thanksgiving?
I think the deepest form of thankfulness flows not out of having everything go wonderfully for you. It comes not from having an abundance of material blessings and everything being rosy. Rather the deepest level of thankfulness comes out of struggles and pain, trials & suffering. Why - because it gives one perspective. It gives one a new and deeper appreciation for those true blessings, for what really matters.
For many people around the world I think it would be very difficult to be and to express thankfulness if they had experienced what our family did this year. And many people have. We are not unique, but many people would find it difficult to be thankful.
So I come back to my question: what am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? If I made a list of all the things I could think of (and it would be quite a long list) - is there 1 thing that would stand out above all the rest as I think back over the year? And I think there is. You might say it is 2 things in combination with each other but I’m going to refer to is as 1 thing.
What am I most thankful for this Thanksgiving? It is this - I’m thankful there is a real place called Heaven. And because there is, even though I have a 15 year old daughter who is dead - she lives and she lives in Heaven because she had put her trust in the sacrifice and payment made on her behalf by her Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I have done the same thing therefore I know I will be with her again. This would be a most difficult Thanksgiving if there was no Heaven but because there is, I can be thankful even though there is this void and emptiness for a short while.
John 14:1-3 -
Heaven is a Place
Heaven is a Prepared Place
Heaven is a Prepared Place for Prepared People
1. Heaven is a Place!
As we look closely at these words, the first thing we notice is that, according to Jesus, Heaven is a genuine place. Notice that Jesus did not go into a lot of details here describing Heaven, but He did call it:
-a place to which He was going,
-a place from which He would return,
-and a place to which He would one day take all whom the Father had given him.
It is a real place. This is reinforced by other verses. For instance, Jesus earlier said that He “came down from heaven” (Jn.6:38). He taught His disciples to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven” (Matt. 6:9). Hebrews tells us that Jesus, after He had performed the work of our redemption, sat down “on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens” (Heb.8:1). Luke writes of the Ascension saying that “while he blessed them, he was...carried up into heaven” (24:51). In the OT we read, “If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, & pray, & seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chr.7:14).
Some say that heaven will simply be a state of mind. I am here to tell you this morning that Heaven is real. It is not an imaginary "pie in the sky" for those who are weak minded. Heaven is spoken of in Scripture as a house, as a city, as a country.
It is a place, a real literal place. And we need to think a lot more about it. I shared on a Sunday night back in September some things about Heaven which I would like to share a little bit of again this morning. One of the things I brought out is how little Christians think about Heaven which is too bad for it can be 1 of the greatest motivating forces for living a godly life today.
C.S. Lewis – "It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one."
The problem is many Christians don’t think much about Heaven and when they do it is a very inaccurate picture.
May I suggest 1 key explanation for this wrong attitude: Satanic deception! We know Satan is a deceiver and liar. Then we are told in Revelation 13:6 (NIV) – “And he (the beast) opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven.” He will slander 3 things: God’s person, God’s people and God’s place – heaven.
Remember, heaven use to be Satan’s home. And I would suggest that after being forcibly evicted from heaven, the devil is bitter not only toward God, but toward us and the place that’s no longer his. Do you not think it must enrage Satan to realize we, as God’s people, are now entitled to the home he was kicked out of? So what better way for he and his demons to attack than to whisper lies about the very place God tells us to set our hearts and minds on (Col.3:1-2)? So should it not surprise us to learn that one of Satan’s favorite tactics is feeding us an unworthy, dull, and distorted view of heaven?
Randy Alcorn – "Think about it – we have the very answers the world is crying out for, yet our wrong views of God’s person and God’s place silence and distort our message. What a triumph for Satan that we would actually pass on to our churches, our children, and our world a dreary view of heaven – and by implications a dreary view of our God."
If you lack a passion for heaven, I can almost guarantee it’s because you have a weak, deficient, and distorted theology of heaven.
J.C. Ryle said, “I pity the man who never thinks about heaven.” We could also say, “Pity the man who never thinks accurately about Heaven.”
Heaven is a real place but in addition to that...
2. Heaven is a Prepared Place!
In John 14 Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am you may be also." Do you realize what a great compliment he pays us?! He wants to be with us! Think about it. The Carpenter from Nazareth, the Creator of the universe has gone to prepare a place for us!
When Jesus said “IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY DWELLING PLACES…” the Greek word that He used for “dwelling places” also means “abiding places.”
A very familiar image from the days of Jesus underlies these words. It was customary for travelers in those days to send some of their party on in advance to find lodging & make arrangements for them in distant cities. We see that with the disciples as they went ahead of Christ to make arrangements before He arrived for a gathering. That is what happened on the night of the Lord’s Supper as 2 of the disciples, at Christ’s bidding, went before Him to make the arrangements.
The meaning of this passage is clear: Christ has gone before us to prepare an abiding place for us in heaven.
And what a place it is going to be! Just the beauty of it by itself is beyond imagination. I recently read of a man who visited a distinguished artist at his studio. He found the artist there with an open Bible in front of him turned to Revelation 21:19-20 while at the same time he was arranging squares of colored glass. "I have made a singular discovery," he said, "these are the precious stones in the foundation of the New Jerusalem, and when placed in the order described in the vision they form a perfect harmony of color. Were a convention of artists called to produce a perfect color-scheme, they could not improve upon it."
God loves beauty or He wouldn’t have put so much of it in this world. Who painted the butterfly’s wing with all those gorgeous hues? Who thought up sunrises and sunsets? Who put the blue in the bluebird? Who taught the raindrop to take a ray of light from the sun and pencil it on the sky in one huge arch of bewildering elegance? Who made maple trees that look like they are on fire in the Fall? Who made all the brilliant colors found in fish, some fish so deep man does not even see them, but God stuck them down there anyway.
Earth contains some incredibly beautiful places. I’ve said before that 1 of the things I would do if I was rich would be to simply travel and see the beautiful places of this world.
I read about a man who visited the Grand Canyon for the first time and when he saw it he immediately cried because he was so overwhelmed by its beauty and awesomeness.
Who pictured all this in His mind and brought it into being? God did it all!
A little girl was taking an evening walk with her father. As she looked up amazed at the beauty of the stars she exclaimed; "Oh, Daddy, if the wrong side of heaven is so beautiful, what must the right side be like!"
Question: we live in a world under the curse of sin, do you think the colors and beauty of Heaven will be less or more intense than what is on earth?
Heaven is a prepared placed. If God could create such beauty here, just think what heaven will be like!
One the big problems people have when it comes to thinking about Heaven is they think it will be boring. It is going to be some endless church service and they have a hard enough time sitting through a 1 hour service now or they think they will be floating around on the clouds playing a harp 24/7.
A Far Side cartoon captures these misconceptions. A man with angel wings and a halo sits on a cloud, doing nothing, with no one nearby. He has the expression of someone marooned on a desert island, with absolutely nothing to do. A caption shows his inner thoughts: "Wish I’d brought a magazine."
Listen, if you are tempted to think Heaven will be boring then that must flow out of 2 assumptions:
1) the first is that God is boring. Correct? If Heaven is boring it would have to be because God is boring. That is utter nonsense. Our desire for pleasure and the experience of joy come directly from God’s hand. He made our taste buds, adrenaline, sex drives, and the nerve endings that convey pleasure to our brains. Likewise, our imaginations and our capacity for joy and exhilaration where made by the very God we accuse of being boring. Are we so arrogant as to imagine that human beings came up with the idea of having fun, of enjoyment?
Listen, when an omnipotent being creates the ultimate place, if he is exciting, it will be exciting. If the place is dull, it’s because he is dull.
2) The 2nd assumption is that life without sin would not be interesting. The idea is, “What will we do for entertainment if there’s no sin? Won’t it be boring to be good all the time?”
The fact that such notions would even occur to Christians demonstrates the extent to which they have been successfully blinded by Satan. Note the assumption: sin is exciting and righteousness is boring. We’ve fallen for the devil’s lie. His most basic strategy is to make us believe that sin brings fulfillment. Sin is not what bring us fulfillment – it’s what robs us of fulfillment. Some of you know that more than others. Sin isn’t what makes life interesting; it’s what makes life empty. And this emptiness is what leads to boredom. When there is fulfillment, when there’s beauty, when we see God as he truly is – an endless reservoir of fascination -- boredom becomes impossible. In Heaven, we will be amazed that people once imagined temptation and sin were the allies of excitement and fulfillment, when in fact they were their greatest enemies.
We think of ourselves as fun-loving, and of God as a humorless killjoy. But we’ve got it backward. It’s not God who’s boring; it’s us! Did we invent wit, humor, and laughter? No. God did! We’ll never begin to exhaust God’s sense of humor and his love for adventure. The real question is this: How could God not be bored with us?
Heaven is God’s home, the dwelling place of the One who is infinite in creativity, goodness, beauty, and power. How could the home of someone like that be anything less than thrilling?
But in spite of all this the greatest thing about Heaven is we will see God. Being with God is the heart and soul of Heaven. Every other heavenly pleasure will derive from and be secondary to Him. God’s greatest gift to us is, and always will be, himself!
In fact, we will wonder if we ever lived before we saw His face! To see God will be our greatest joy, the joy by which all other joys will be measure. Seeing God will be like seeing everything else for the 1st time. Why? Because not only will we see God, he will be the lens through which we see everything else.
All secondary joys are derivative in nature. They cannot be separated from God. Flowers are beautiful for 1 reason – God is beautiful. Rainbows are stunning because God is stunning. Puppies are delightful because God is delightful. Sports are fun because God is fun. Study is rewarding because God is rewarding. Work is fulfilling because God is fulfilling. Every other joy will be derivative, flowing from the fountain of our relationship with God.
Theologian Sam Storm writes, “We will constantly be more amazed with God, more in love with God, and thus ever more relishing his presence and our relationship with him. Our experience of God will never reach its consummation. We will never finally arrive, as if upon reaching a peak we discover there is nothing beyond. Our experience of God will never become stale. It will deepen and develop, intensify and amplify, unfold and increase, broaden and balloon.”
There will be no higher privilege, no greater thrill than seeing God. All our explorations and adventures and projects in Heaven – and I believer there will be many – will pale in comparison to the wonder of seeing and being with God. And yet everything else we do will help us to see God better, to know him & worship him better.
John Donne said, “No man ever saw God and lived. And yet, I shall not live till I see God.”
Or as Randy Alcorn puts it, “The day I die will be the best day I’ve ever lived.”
Have you ever been in 1 of those moments [Christmas, Thanksgiving, a vacation, some simple time with family or friends, maybe a favorite meal] and the words came to your mind or maybe you even spoke them, “It doesn’t get any better than this!”
If you’ve ever thought that, it isn’t true. The most ordinary moment (if there is one), the most ordinary moment in Heaven will be greater than the most perfect moments in this life. Those scenes you wanted to bottle up and hang on to will pale in light of the most ordinary moment in Heaven. It can get better, far better, than this and it will.
Heaven is a place. It is a prepare place but 3rdly,
3. Heaven is a Prepared Place for Prepared People!
In v.6 of John 14, Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.!”
The only people who will be able to experience the joys and delights I have talked about this morning are those who have accepted the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the cross as a payment for their sins.
Heaven is not our default destination. No one goes there automatically. Unless our sin problem is resolved, the only place we will go is our true default destination – Hell. Just as Heaven is a real place, so is Hell. It is also a prepared place for the Bible says it was prepared for the devil & his angels (Matt.25:41).
But the Bible says that those who die without Jesus, “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power” (2 Thess.1:9).
For the Christian, this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For the non-Christian, this is the closest they will come to Heaven.
But Jesus so much wants us NOT to go to Hell that he paid a horrible price on the cross so that we would not have to. But it is a gift that requires a response.
Heaven is a place, a prepared place but also a prepared place for prepared people. Are you prepared? Elizabeth was, so am I!
All this that I have described for you this morning and so much more is awaiting the genuine follower of Christ. Heaven is real and Elizabeth is there experiencing it all. Because of her health condition, it was tough to experience things here on this earth. But now, PTL, she has no limitations and is with the One who has no limitations experiencing the limitless adventures He has created for her, for me and for all of you who have put their faith in Christ.
What am I most thankful for this Thanksgiving? I’m thankful there is a real place called Heaven.
H.S. Laird’s father, a Christ-loving man, lay in his bed dying. His son sat at his bedside knowing that shortly his father would be gone. He asked him, “Dad, how do you feel?” It wasn’t a question of how he felt physically but how did he feel about dying. This is the reply of his father, who loved God and knew where he was going. He said, “Son, I feel like a little boy on Christmas Eve!”
Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.457 – "If you know Jesus, I’ll be with you in that resurrected world. With the Lord we love and with the friends we cherish, we’ll embark together on the ultimate adventure, in a spectacular new universe awaiting our exploration and dominion. Jesus will be the center of all things, and joy will be the air we breathe. And right when we think ’it doesn’t get any better than this’ – IT WILL!"
Footnote: If you have been blessed by this message may I suggest you purchase the book "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn. It may be purchased through his website at Eternal Perspective Ministries - www.epm.org/ In addition, he has written several novels which contain scenes from Heaven interwoven into the story line. All these books have been a tremendous blessing to me since my 15 daughter went to be with the Lord in April 2004.
