My friends Ray Thielbar, Roger Sorenson and Bruce Osmanson send me gorgeous pictures of Ely from time to time. They are always staggeringly beautiful. They remind me of the breathtaking beauty of the Boundary Waters, the lavish glories of God’s creation and, of course, all my good friends still living up in Ely. I love these pictures.But they are just pictures, aren’t they?
I can’t feel the wintery forest breezes in a picture. I can’t hear a wolf howling or crabby ravens noisily chattering amongst themselves. I can’t hear the crunch of the snow under my boots or feel the stinging cold on my face. I can’t feel the radiating warmth of the setting sun sneaking gently through the frosty trees. It is just a picture.
This “just a picture” issue is precisely our problem whenever we attempt to describe the glories of heaven, our eternal home. Even Jon Mortensen couldn’t capture what is actually there! As the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.” Ironically, even the words of Scripture cannot completely convey the fullness of heaven; not because God’s Holy Word is inadequate in any way, but simply because our human language is inadequate.
So I want to be very simple in our discussion of heaven this morning. While references to heaven appear literally all over the Bible, I’d like to focus our attention on just two passages. The first of those heavenly snapshot passages is Revelation 21. The Apostle John was describing his glorious revelation experience, intended by God to encourage a suffering 1st century church, and he finished his story with a glorious description of heaven.
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘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.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick, by human measurement, which the angel was using. The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.
I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
Heaven is gorgeous. Heaven is the presence of God. Heaven is the total absence of sadness, death, mourning, pain. Heaven is absolute newness. Heaven is the final quenching of every thirst. Heaven is the ultimate reward for those who embrace Jesus and the ultimate loss for those who reject Him. Heaven is perfection. Heaven is light without darkness. Heaven is a tree of life and healing. Heaven is completely curseless living. Oh my goodness, heaven is seeing the face of God and seeing that we are fully seen by God! Heaven is eternal.
Meditate on this stuff. Each one of these statements carries with it a theological and existential ripple effect too rich and glorious to describe and almost too perfect to be believed. Logically, scientifically, even cynically speaking, if even one of these statements is true, heaven is beyond our most vivid imagination. If even one of these statements is true, securing our place in heaven is the single most intelligent pursuit any human being could ever undertake.
And that brings us to the second and even more critically important passage. During the Last Supper Jesus had with His disciples, he was preparing them for the difficult days to come. Just as the Apostle John would encourage people with his great revelation of Jesus years later, here Jesus encouraged with another sort of heavenly discussion. He explained how we all can secure our place in heaven. Listen closely to what He said in John 14.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. My Father’s house has plenty of room; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
We secure our place in heaven by fully embracing what Jesus says here. I see three very simple components to this heavenly encouragement we must take home today...
We secure our place in this glorious heaven when we reject fear; when we refuse to allow our hearts to be troubled. Folks, there is a cross coming for me in a few hours. There is injustice, violence and horror in store for me. There is bad government, foolish leadership and all sorts of birth pangs in store for the planet. Do not let your hearts be troubled; reject fear!
Monica made my day Wednesday morning. I have been deeply troubled by things going on in our world and in our country of late. It seems to me the world around us grows more selfish and superficial, more disconnected and destructive almost every day. And so as I was walking out the door to the office on Wednesday morning, I snuggled up to Monica a bit and half-jokingly said, “Tell me everything is going to be okay, honey.” At that, she took my face in her tiny hands and said with a smile, “Everything is going to be excellent!” A true follower of Jesus understands that everything is going to be excellent. We’ve read the last chapter! There will be many dark, difficult days ahead, but we don’t fear as this world fears. We reject all fear!
But the only way we can live this fearlessly is to fully trust God and the way He has made for us in Jesus. This is the second component of our preparation for heaven. Trust God has a plan and a place for us. Trust Him to care for us as only He can. Trust that we will one day be with Him. Trust Him so completely we can be fearless and confident about all these things. Since we know where our LORD Jesus has gone, we can confidently know where we too will go. We must be filled with trust in God; fully excited, expectant and confident.
And yet the hinge of our trust is Jesus. We secure our hope of heaven when reject fear, trust God and, thirdly, when we become utterly and single mindedly Christian. We secure our place in heaven when our thoughts, our words and our daily lives reflect that Jesus Christ alone is the way, truth and the life. We are secure in our heavenly hope only to the degree we understand Jesus alone can give us the security we seek; that Jesus alone is the only way to the Father. We are only secure when we rest confidently and securely in the arms of Jesus.
And please understand we’re not playing some intellectual game here. Being single mindedly Christian is not simply a matter of dry religious, intellectual assent to a list of doctrinal principles. Being single mindedly Christian means single mindedly embracing the full Gospel, the way, the truth and the life. It means praying and working for God’s kingdom to come on earth even as it is in heaven. (Considering the picture of heaven we’ve just reviewed, that’s a pretty lofty goal!) It means not simply hearing and praising the high standards of the Sermon on the Mount on Sundays, but living them out by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit in our daily work. It means taking up your cross and living dangerously; truly radical discipleship in every sense of the word. It means a complete baptism, a complete immersion into His death and joyous resurrection to completely new life. It means fully living each day as though you were dying; speaking sweeter, loving deeper, giving forgiveness and embracing eternity for all its worth. It means we are absolutely present in and squeezing the juice out of each precious moment of this life in a way impossible for anyone other than the single mindedly Christian person. Intellectually accepting Jesus as the way, truth and life is only the very first step on our path to heaven’s glories. We are called to single mindedly live out our acceptance!
Folks, everything is going to be excellent! There is no snapshot picture of heaven I could give you today that could possibly do justice to the gorgeous reality. Even the perfection of the Word of God cannot describe what the Bible itself tells us is indescribably wonderful.
Don’t you think it would be wise to call the Front Desk and make a room reservation?
Don’t you think it would be wise to investigate all these things for yourself and, on the remote possibility I’m correct in what I’m sharing here today, happily jump into this Jesus thing with both feet? Who are we kidding here, folks? If what I’m saying here today is correct, if it is even remotely possible that these things are all true, what could possibly be more important for any of us than to know, love and follow Jesus with every happy, hungry ounce of our being?May we all be sloppy obsessed and gorgeously fanatical about heaven! May we fearlessly trust in God! May we be single mindedly Christian! And may our rejoicing in all these things help us gloriously reflect heavenly hope to the completely fearful world around us!
Amen.
