Glory (8) “Our Future Glory”
1. Recap
a. Glory of God is defined as the Visible Majesty of the Divine Presence.
b. Why are we discussing His glory?
i. We take for granted all the places in the bible we read the word “glory of God.”
ii. His glory….that is, His Majesty made visible, if not to our human eyes, at least to the eyes of our heart results in two things:
1. Worship
2. Transformation
iii. We need transforming encounters with God’s presence. Anything less than this makes us just like everyone else in this world. God’s presence is what makes us different. That is the only thing.
1. Not our own goodness.
2. Not our own holiness.
3. Not our own good deeds.
4. God’s presence, is what makes us unique, different, holy.
c. Last 7 weeks we have covered an incredible amount of ground in trying to come to grips with God’s glory.
i. The most wonderful thing is the number of reports I hear from many of you about your encounter with the Visible Majesty of the Divine Presence.
ii. What has happened to you when you let God be God in your life?
iii. We looked at the effects of God’s glory, how He manifested it in the Old Testament, then through Jesus. We learned how the absence of His presence is really the absence of His control in our lives. And we also learned about His plan to reflect His glory in you and I.
2. Understanding Our Inheritance:
a. Ephesians 1:18 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,”
b. Today, we will grapple with the incredible inheritance that you and I have in Christ. Most of us understand what an inheritance is. It is what we are left behind as heirs from someone who has given what they have to you after they have died. Their rights and property become yours.
i. My family was the heir to my father’s estate, and we got ½ of the home I grew up in. I treasure that inheritance! It means a great deal to me, because it meant a great deal to my grandfather who built it and my father who left it to me.
ii. Likewise, you and I have received an inheritance in Christ that many of us have really no idea of what it contains.
1. Some of us understand that it means “eternal life.” Whatever that means.
2. Others of us understand that it means we are forgiven.
3. But we don’t really grasp the meaning of what Jesus has left us in his will. And most of us have never read the will to see what it was that we have coming to us. We would be not only amazed but excited to find out!
a. Item 1: Eternal Life:
i. Believe it or not, you are going to live forever.
ii. When you were born, you began your entry into eternity.
iii. Christians and Non-Christians alike.
iv. The question is where will you spend it.
v. With God or Without Him.
vi. Your choice here on earth determine your future. Reject God now and you reject Him for eternity. You only get to choose while you are alive.
b. Item 2: The authority of Christ is ours:
i. If you want to understand this piece of your inheritance, I urge you to come on Wednesday nights to our bible study on Ephesians.
c. Item 2: A New Body:
i. This is what we will look at today. The glory God is going to give each of us who choose to live with Him for eternity!
ii. Everyone will live forever, and everyone will get a new body. The righteous, those who have received the sacrifice of Jesus will inherit the joy of God’s presence, while those who reject Christ will suffer in their new body for eternity…gnashing their teeth in a place where the fire is never quenched and the worm never dies.
c. 1 Cor. 15:42-56- 42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 45 And so it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. 49 And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. 50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed -- 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." 55 "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" 56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. The New Body
a. For you and I to understand this wonderful promise of God described in this passage of Corinthians, we need to first understand the PURPOSE of God with the human body.
b. God has a very high purpose for our body.
i. It is perfectly suited for our living on this earth.
ii. In fact. God became like one of us in the person of Jesus.
iii. And then after Jesus died and was buried, God didn’t just skip from the burial to Pentecost, the giving of His Spirit.
iv. No, He raised Jesus’ body from the grave in the form that all of our bodies will someday take.
v. That is a resurrected body. A new body.
vi. A spiritual body, designed for a life in eternity, unbound by earth’s limitations.
c. What will it look like?
i. Different yet similar:
1. You can notice from the passage we just read, that there will be a difference between the physical body and the resurrection body, the old form and the new form.
2. The plant that emerges from the ground looks very different from the seed that was planted.
3. You cannot imagine what a plant was going to look like just by looking at the seed.
4. In the same way, we can’t look at our present physical bodies and have a good sense of what our resurrection bodies are going to be like, because we’re going to be transformed into something new and gloriously different at the resurrection.
ii. Just like Jesus:
1. A seed changes dramatically, but it does continue as the same life form.
a. A wheat seed doesn’t turn into a barley plant, and a kernel of corn doesn’t turn into flax.
b. The identity of the seed continues into the full-grown plant.
c. In Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances in his resurrection body, none of his disciples and followers recognized him until he chose to reveal himself to them.
d. But once he told them who he was, they did recognize him.
e. They saw the wound in his side and the nail prints in his hands. They knew his face.
f. The promise for us is that we will have the same personality, and be recognizable when we are clothed with our new body after death.
2. That’s the point in Philippians 3:21: "...The Lord Jesus Christ...will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body."
iii. Clothed for eternity:
1. Because our human bodies are suited for this earthly environment, they won’t be right for heaven.
a. Essentially, they are “earth suits.” Appropriate for life on earth.
2. When we’re raised to resurrection life, our bodies will be suited for eternity, and God himself will clothe us appropriately and perfectly.
a. We won’t be disembodied spirits. We will have a body that is our new suit for eternity.
3. We won’t have to worry about being overdressed or underdressed in eternity.
4. That’s a problem I always have as a pastor when I go to wedding rehearsals. I always tend to get it wrong.
a. Jennifer has to give me advice.
iv. Four contrasts about our bodies, old and new, are evident from this passage:
1. If you were to create a table listing on one side of the page the references to the old body and on the other, you get the reference to the new body. You see some patterns:
2. The first contrast says the perishable will be replaced by the imperishable.
a. Our New Bodies will be Durable.
i. As human beings, we are not very durable.
ii. From the moment we are born, the process of aging, deterioration, and eventual death has begun.
iii. And we know from the Scriptures that this is a tragic consequence of the fall.
iv. We are irreversibly mortal now.
v. But the good news of the resurrection is that we’ll be raised for good, eternally alive as Jesus Christ himself.
vi. Our new bodies won’t experience sickness or deterioration or death.
vii. 1 Peter 1:3-4: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you...."
3. The second contrast says the dishonorable will be replaced by the glorious.
a. Our bodies will have incredible potential….no more sin!
i. At the fall our potential for pleasing, serving, and glorifying God was drastically reduced.
ii. Genesis tells us we were created in the image of God, designed to reflect his glory and perfection, created to honor him.
iii. But we know that sin is at work in us now. Even though we’ve been redeemed from the penalty of sin by Jesus Christ, we still struggle with fleshly patterns of sinful rebellion.
iv. Even the most faithful follower of Jesus Christ knows that his body, his intellect, his emotions, and his will are in a sense dishonorable or imperfect or incomplete.
v. We live in a fallen, flawed world, and we reflect that fallenness.
vi. But we will one day be raised in glory, to use Paul’s phrase. When we get to heaven we won’t be sinful anymore.
vii. We’ll be just as glorious as Jesus Christ is in eternity.
4. The third contrast says the weak will be replaced by the powerful.
a. This has to do with our abilities.
b. Our earthly bodies are temporary, weak and fragile.
c. The older I get, the more I hear myself say, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." We all feel it happening.
d. We’re frustrated by our own limitations, whether they’re physical, emotional, or spiritual.
e. In 2 Corinthians 10-13 Paul reflects on how his entire experience is one of weakness, not just physically but in every area, and how he longs to be delivered from that weakness.
f. Our new resurrection bodies won’t be like that. They’ll be raised in power, and again, we’ll be like Jesus.
g. We’ll experience no limitation of weakness. We’ll be filled with power, and we’ll be able to accomplish anything in eternity that God calls us to do.
i. If you remember, Jesus after the resurrection was unlimited by the laws of nature, and demonstrated this by walking through locked doors and disappearing suddenly.
ii. Time and space will not have control over our new bodies in the way they do over our existing ones.
h. I hope you’re clear that heaven is not about floating around on clouds and strumming harps.
i. The Scriptures tell us that we’re going to have work to do in eternity.
ii. It will be good, fulfilling, exciting, and challenging work. (See Matthew 19:28; Revelation 20:4.)
5. Finally, the fourth contrast says the physical will be replaced by the spiritual.
a. This focuses on the sphere of existence our body will be in.
i. This earthly body of mine is strictly physical.
ii. This physical world is the only setting in which it can live and function.
iii. But my new resurrection body will be raised a spiritual body.
iv. Now, I do have a spirit within me that was given life by the Lord Jesus when I accepted him as my Savior and Lord.
v. It now resides in an earthly body, which is tremendously limiting, but one day it will live in a spiritual body.
vi. Both spirit and body will be perfectly suited for heavenly living.
vii. In Matthew 22 Jesus said that we will be like the angels in heaven, and the human categories of getting married and not getting married will be irrelevant.
viii. It’s not that we’re going to be the same as angels, but we’ll be like them in that they are perfectly suited for heavenly, spiritual, supernatural living.
4. The Necessity of Death (v50)
a. “Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”
b. I have bad news. The only way you can get this new body is to get rid of your old one.
c. That means that Death is a necessary part of the process of resurrection.
d. When a seed is planted in the ground, it dies.
i. It actually decomposes.
ii. It must cease to exist in its original form as a seed before it can come to life in its final form as a plant.
iii. Jesus applied the same figure to himself..
iv. He said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).
v. Before Jesus could bear the fruit of our salvation, he had to die.
vi. The point Paul makes here is that the same is true for us. We can’t be raised until we’ve died.
vii. In a sense we’re not really buried or cremated; the reality is that we are sown just as a seed is sown, and from that sowing new life will explode.
viii. This view is unique to Christianity among all the philosophies and religions of the world.
5. Did you know that your old clothes are wearing out? Do you long for the promise of new ones?
a. Last week, I spoke at length about the nature and necessity of suffering in our lives. It comes with wearing the earth suit that we wear.
i. But today, I hope that you will be reminded of the inheritance and promises of God concerning your future, the nature of your new body!
ii. Look at 2 Corinthians 5:1-6:
iii. For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, 3 inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. 4 For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. 5 Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.
b. ILLUSTRATION: In one of his lighter moments, Benjamin Franklin penned his own epitaph. He didn’t profess to be a born-again Christian, but it seems he must have been influenced by Paul’s teaching of the resurrection of the body. Here’s what he wrote: The Body of B. Franklin, Printer Like the Cover of an old Book Its contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Guilding, Lies here, Food for Worms, But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ’d, Appear once more In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended by the Author
c.
6. The Promise is for you:
a. Remember the story in John’s gospel of the friendship Jesus had with Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. Lazarus died before Jesus could arrive at their home, and Martha and Mary were grieving.
b. "Jesus said to her [Martha], ’Your brother shall rise again.’ Martha said to Him, ’I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ’I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?’" (John 11:23-26.)
c. That must be the question for us: Do we believe Jesus is the resurrection and the life?
i. Have you believed in this life-giving Jesus Christ?
ii. And as a result, are you a heavenly being instead of an earthly being?
iii. Having been born as a son or daughter of the first Adam, are you now a child of the King of heaven because you’ve accepted his forgiveness for your sin and surrendered your life to him?
iv. Have you accepted the eternal life that Jesus offers?
v. We don’t have to be afraid of what happens after death. We’ll be with the Lord forever in this incredible resurrection body that Paul has been describing in this passage.
