Questions about Heaven

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We have been going through the book of Hebrews together.
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We're in the 11th chapter.
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We go verse by verse, as is our custom to do.
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We believe that how we are to understand the Word of God is to understand the whole Word of God.
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And we go verse by verse through it to seek its understanding.
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This morning, I am actually finishing a sermon that I began almost a month ago now.
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It happens that way that sometimes things come up.
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And it is that about a month ago, I preached on the subject of heaven and I preached on two aspects of heaven.
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I preached on the reality of life after death and I preached on the reality of our eternal state with the Lord, which we make a differentiation between what happens when we die and what happens when Christ returns and we go into all of eternity.
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And I spent time on that.
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If you would like to go back and listen to those messages, I would encourage you to.
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They're on our sermon audio page and you can always get those there or if you need a CD, I can get that for you.
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But this morning, what I wanted to do was I wanted to take a step back from the subject of heaven, take a step back and sort of look at the panorama of the of the idea of heaven and the truth of heaven.
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And I wanted to ask some common questions and give some answers to the questions that a lot of people ask when we talk about heaven, as we've already learned in our lessons.
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And I just want to just reiterate what we've already learned.
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We've already learned, one, that when we die, we are conscious and with the Lord.
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However, this is not our eternal state because our bodies are in the ground.
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We do carry consciousness after life, but it is not with our body.
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Our body is here and it returns to the dust.
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The second thing we learned is that when Christ returns, we will receive a resurrected body and our eternal condition will be a physical one, not just a spiritual one.
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It will be a type of existence that we have not experienced because the only existence we have experienced has been one which is plagued by disease and corruption and and our bodies fail us all the time.
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And we watch as our bodies become older and begin to wrinkle and begin to gray and begin to be less and less able to be relied upon as we get older.
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I see a lot of heads doing that.
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But we have a spot on the side of my head where I'm going gray in one spot.
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I don't know what happened, but it's like somebody just went and stuck me right there with a gray thumb.
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But anyhow, that's where we are.
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We live in this condition of of constant breaking down.
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It's like entropy is all around us.
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And the second law of thermodynamics is working its way out all the way around us.
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And we're just completely just breaking down.
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And one of the one of the things that I see in the world that reminds me that we're not evolving, we are we are devolving, we're going backward, we're dying.
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But in the new heaven and in the new earth, it will not be that way.
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We will have a new body which will never see corruption.
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We will have a body as Adam and Eve had a body which did not see corruption until after the fall.
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Now, today we are going to go further in our study of Hebrews 11, but I want to begin by reading it because people might ask, well, where are you? Where are you getting this idea? Why are you even talking about heaven from this text? Let's let's go to the text of Scripture.
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And I just want to again reiterate why this subject is at hand.
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The whole chapter 11 Hebrews chapter 11 is about faith.
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It's about what people of faith look like, who people of faith were.
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And it's already told us about Enoch.
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It's told us about Noah.
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It's told us about Abraham.
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We have all of these great examples of what it meant to live by faith.
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And then in verse 11, rather verse 12, he begins a little a little aside on the issue of faith and what it meant to die in faith.
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So let's stand together.
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Let's hear the word of the Lord.
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And then pray that God will minister to us by his word.
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Hebrews 11, verse 12 says, Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born the descendants, as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
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These all died in faith.
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Not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth for people who speak, thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
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If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.
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But as it is, they desire a better country.
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That is a heavenly one.
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Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
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Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you that it is true.
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We thank you that we can trust it.
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And Lord God, even in our many failings, we have a rock to build our trust on.
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Lord, as I preach this morning, I pray that you would keep me from error, keep me only in the truth and help me, O Lord, to be given the strength of your spirit to preach as you would have me to preach.
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And I pray for your people, God.
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I pray that you would open their hearts to the truth.
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And I pray, Lord, if there's anyone here who's questioning or does not know where their eternity is bound at this morning, Lord, that you would remind them of the gospel that only in Christ can we have the hope of eternal glory.
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In Jesus name, Amen.
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Amen.
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In this passage, the and I've exegeted it in weeks past, but just to remind you, the point is this.
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You have these men of faith, men like Abraham, who were given promises from God, but yet he died before the promises had been fulfilled.
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Abraham was promised an entire nation is going to come from you.
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But yet upon his death, only one son, Abraham, had had Isaac.
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And the point of the verse here is he's saying that these all died in faith, talking about Abraham and others, they died in faith, not having received everything that was promised to them, but trusting that it was going to come.
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They trusted in God, even in death, because they understood something about death.
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They understood death wasn't the end.
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The only way that any of this makes any sense.
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Is that if death is not the end, because if death is the end of life and it's the end of consciousness, if it's the end of us and who we are.
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Then Abraham's promises to him were never fulfilled.
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But you see, Abraham's life, though it ceased in this world, it went on in the next.
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And he is even now experiencing the reality of the promises of God which were given to him.
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He had his eyes fixed, not upon a earthly kingdom, but upon a heavenly city.
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And that's why this whole all of these messages I've been focused on have been focused on heaven, because the reality of heaven is so striking.
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The reality of it is so heart grabbing that I wanted us to, for a few moments, just focus on it.
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And get in touch with that reality again, because really, we get so caught up in this world.
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We get so caught up in the little things of this world, the every day, the mundane things.
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You know, I'm not going to make it home to see lost, you know.
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I lost is not anymore, so maybe that's a bad example, but, you know, we get so caught up in this life, in this world and all of the little things of this world that we forget this is a bookmark.
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This is a post-it note in the annals of history.
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This is not even, you know, the Bible talks about us being like like the flower that that blooms and then fades away immediately.
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Our lives are like a vapor and we get so caught up in them.
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We get so focused on them when the Bible tells us we're supposed to be seeking those things which are above.
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And we get so focused on seeking the things which are beneath.
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So, as I said this morning, I wanted to focus on the subject of heaven.
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This is the last of these messages that I'm going to do, and I'm going to answer some questions and I want to begin by adding a disclaimer.
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My disclaimer is this.
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I've never been to heaven.
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I'm not dead yet.
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And thus, when I speak on the subject, I have to do my best to only say what the Bible says.
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I can't give you my own perspective because I don't have one.
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I can only say what the Bible says.
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And since the Bible does not give us an exhaustive view of eternity and heaven, not all of our questions are going to be answered.
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But I think there are some questions that are universal and it's those questions that I want to deal with.
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The first thing I want to look at is Ecclesiastes 311.
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So if you want to jump back to Ecclesiastes with me.
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In Ecclesiastes chapter three, verse 11, the writer of Ecclesiastes, oh, and by the way, Ecclesiastes is is one of the one of the more difficult books in the Bible to interpret because everything in Ecclesiastes is sort of written from from this side of heaven's perspective.
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In fact, it's all about what's under the sun.
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It talks about throughout the book, he says, under the sun, under the sun, under the sun is used consistently and all is vanity.
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Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
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And basically the writer of Ecclesiastes is sort of making the point that I was making a few minutes ago.
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Everything under the sun really, in the end, is useless in one sense because you can't take it with you.
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Everything under the sun is useless in one sense because eternity is not going to be fixed on what happened here in the sense of if you were a rich man here, that's not going to make you a rich man in eternity.
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If you're a poor man here, it's not going to make you a poor man in eternity.
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What determines our eternal destiny, which we will see in a little while, is Christ.
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Christ is what determines our eternal destiny.
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And but the thing that I want to focus on Ecclesiastes is even though the writer of Ecclesiastes, who we believe is Solomon, even though Solomon is writing this from a very human point of view.
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He's writing it from a very fleshly point of view, not that he was writing in his flesh, I believe he's writing under the inspiration of the spirit.
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But but what I'm saying is he's writing it from a human perspective about being under the sun and and things being useless and whatnot.
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He makes an important point in verse 11.
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He's in the verse 11.
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He's speaking of the Lord and he has made everything beautiful in its time.
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Also, he has put eternity into man's heart yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
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Now, the very basic thing that I want us to see in that answers the first question.
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The first question is that a lot of people say about heaven when they when we're talking about having people ask the question about heaven is people ask the question, well, how can I even understand eternity? How can I even understand that? And honestly, I will tell you, this is something that I have wrestled with.
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I've wrestled with the concept of eternity because I can't really fathom how God has always been.
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And and and there was never a time when he was not.
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I can't really fathom anything that's outside of time.
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But yet I have to accept that because that's what the Bible teaches about God.
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But I'll go one step further with you.
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It's hard enough to think about eternity forward.
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If you think about eternity backwards, it's it's it's it's not even it's not like you have a timeline.
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And in God's time, I just infinitely longer.
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It's that there's not even a timeline.
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It's a never ending thing.
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And that is God.
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He is never ending.
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Here's here's the thing, though, that I think we have to remember.
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People say, well, I can't even fathom eternity.
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Why should I even consider it? Why should I even worry about it? I can't even wrap my mind around it.
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Yes, you can.
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This came to my realization.
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Long time ago, but it really it just it keeps cropping up in my heart.
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I can't fathom not eternity.
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What I mean by that? I mean, I exist and I can't imagine not existing.
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Have you ever sat and thought about in your brain not existing? There was a time when you didn't.
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Thirty two years ago, I didn't exist.
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Amazing.
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I mean, seriously, 32 years ago, I wasn't and then I was and now I am.
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And the question is, is there coming a time when I will not be? Because that's what I can't fathom.
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Because the Bible says God has put eternity in my heart.
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He has put something within me that expects to live on.
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You see, that's the part about the verse that I think is so striking, because he said he put eternity in man's heart.
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Not that we would know God from beginning to end.
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And the verse goes on to say that in verse 11, it goes on to say he said yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
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Not that we would understand God's beginnings and endings, but that we would have a drive forward.
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We have a desire to go on, even people who don't believe in God.
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Very rarely do they believe that their spirit just dies.
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I know many people who have varying beliefs about God.
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I have friends in every spectrum of life that believe in all kinds of things, from mysticism to Buddhism, to all kinds of different beliefs.
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And I've met precious few.
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Who believe that they just die.
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Why is it that there's almost a universal understanding of life after the grave? Because God has put eternity into man's heart.
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So don't say that you have trouble considering eternity.
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Say what you really have trouble with is considering the opposite of that.
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You have trouble considering nonexistence.
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That's what we really have trouble considering.
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Eternity is what we were made for.
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So my answer to the question, the first question is, how do we understand eternity? Just remember, it's in your heart.
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You know that you're going to keep going.
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Now, where you keep going is a matter for another question, but I think that's just one initial question.
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Now, the second question I want to deal with is the question of this.
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Should we even try to imagine what heaven is like? I've had people ask me that, you know, Pastor, I have a hard time imagining what heaven is like.
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Should we even try to imagine what it's like? Well, I want to give you a quote from an elder, David Fairchild is his name.
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And he said this, he said, we cannot desire that which we cannot imagine when we say we cannot imagine what heaven will be like.
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We completely disregard all that God has revealed to us about our eternal home.
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And that's the end of the quote.
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But the point that Fairchild is making is that not only can we imagine what heaven will be like, but we're supposed to because we're supposed to desire it.
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How can you desire something you can't imagine? You can't.
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So you have to in some way be able to imagine it.
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Turn to Revelation 21, the Bible is pretty clear about what heaven is going to be like.
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The problem is, is we have we have we have allegorized heaven so much that we missed the plain reading of the text.
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Everything's an allegory, everything's oh, well, that's just what John was thinking about when he wrote this, he didn't really know what he saw and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Why don't we just take what the text says and then from there build our theology rather than building our theology first based on some kind of Hollywood myth of mysticism about what heaven is going to be like and then build on that.
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That's what a lot of people think.
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Heaven is going to be sitting on a cloud, strumming a harp, you know, sitting up there with Elvis and Jesus and all the rest.
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I mean, this is what Hollywood shows is heaven, you know, you go around and you swim in heaven swimming pool and eat heaven's cookies and have ice cream on Hallelujah Boulevard.
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You know, this is this is the picture that we get.
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Revelation 21, it's a long passage, but it all it all makes sense.
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Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.
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And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.
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Oh, by the way, go back to the sea is no more passage.
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I've heard people get mad.
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Well, I'm a surfer.
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I like to see stop talking.
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I'm sorry.
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I've just I've heard people get over whatever it is.
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It's holding you back from this idea that heaven is going to be great because it's not going to have what you think it should have.
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How how how really egocentrical are we? I heard something.
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Heaven's going to be what I want it to be.
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You're not God.
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And trust me, whatever God wants it to be is infinitely greater than what you want it to be, because you're a human being and you're finite and God is infinite.
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So don't tell me you have the best idea of what heaven's going to be like.
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And I saw a holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
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He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.
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He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more and neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain anymore for the former things that pass away.
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First things first, heaven is number one, a place where we are with God with no separations.
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The hardest part about this world is that we are separated from God.
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Even now, we have to have a mediator between us and God, not there.
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I will make my abode with them, they will be my people, I will be their God forever, there will be no separation, there will be no wondering.
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There'll be no doubt God will be with us and we will be with him, that's that's the best thing about heaven.
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Surfboards, you know, be gone.
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It's the best thing about heaven's God's there.
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If he was the only one there, it'd be the best thing.
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And it goes on to say, verse five, and he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I'm making all things new.
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Also, he said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.
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And he said to me, it is done.
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I'm the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end to the thirsty.
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I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
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The one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son.
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But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for the murders, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters and all liars, their portion will be in the lake which burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
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Now, I don't want to talk about hell today, but it's in the text because the the the antithesis of the beauty and glory and grandeur and happiness of heaven is the horror and terror and tears and pain and suffering of hell.
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And even in the grand description of what the new Jerusalem will be, there's a picture here of the life for because if you're not a believer, that doesn't mean you stop living.
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It means you stop living in the sense of having life in God.
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You stop living with God.
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You are separate from God and hell, but you are still conscious of it.
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Verse nine, then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me saying, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb.
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And he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper clear as crystal.
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The thing is, all of this is physical, beloved.
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This isn't some spiritual plane.
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This actually exists.
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It had a great high wall with 12 gates and at the gates, 12 angels and on the gates of the names of the 12 tribes of the son of Israel were inscribed and on the east three gates and on the north three gates and on the south three gates and on the west three gates and the wall of the city had 12 foundations and on them were 12 names of the 12 apostles of the lamb.
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Here we have this description of what it looks like.
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I can't imagine what heaven's going to be like.
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It's right there is a big picture.
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I could draw this not well.
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And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and its walls.
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The city lies four square its length in the same width.
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And it's he measured the city with his rod.
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Twelve thousand stadia and its length and its width and its height are equal to cube.
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He also measured its wall one hundred and forty four cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel's measurement.
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Interesting little note there that measurements are measurements.
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I think sometimes we forget that, you know, truth is truth and a yard here is a yard there.
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The yard, the wall was built of Jasper while the city was pure gold clears glass.
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The foundation of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel.
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The first was Jasper, the second Sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, seventh chrysolite, the eighth barrel, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysophage, the eleventh Jason and the twelfth amethyst.
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The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl in the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.
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And I saw no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God and the Almighty and the Lamb.
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There's no need for a temple.
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What was a temple for? Temple is a place for meeting with God.
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Well, God's there.
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No more temple.
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Easy enough.
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And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and its lamp is lamp by its light.
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Will the nations walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there.
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Wait a minute, I like to sleep, I wish the audio could pick up my facial expression.
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Because we get so consumed with what this world is like and what we want to carry that into eternity.
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Why? The reason why we sleep is because our bodies get tired and wore out.
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And if you didn't sleep for about three days, you'd go crazy.
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Some of us have been there, but nothing unclean will enter into it.
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Oh, I missed a few words, excuse me.
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Verse 24, again, by its light, will the nations walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there.
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They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations, but nothing unclean will ever enter into it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
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Verse 22 goes on to tell us some more about it, but the point is, is it hard to is it hard to imagine? Yes.
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But is it not given to us even in the detail of its measurements? Yes.
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Well, Pastor, I think we ought to interpret that allegorically.
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Fine, what's the allegory? It's going to be an awesome place where the presence of God is with his people and where there will be no sin, there will be no allowance for sin.
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And, you know, I think that scares people, too, because I already said, well, we like surfboards and we like sleep.
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Problem is, we also like sin.
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And when I say heaven's going to be a place without sin, man, we go, oh, you know, that's the scary thing is sometimes I think sometimes I think we don't want to go.
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Sometimes I think we're so consumed with this life in this world and our sins, knowing they're not going to be there.
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Sort of makes us sad.
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And how sad is that? Colossians 3, 1 says, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
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We're supposed to want this, folks.
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We're supposed to desire this.
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We're supposed to seek after this.
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Yet, as I said in the very first sermon on heaven, it is the least thing that we talk about.
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It's the least thing that we the only time we talk about it is at a funeral.
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Most of us don't have a living, working theology of heaven because.
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Before we go to heaven, we have to die and we don't want to talk about dying, so it becomes a very difficult subject.
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So if somebody asked me, should we even try to imagine what heaven is like? I would say, yes, we are supposed to seek after it.
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We're supposed to desire it.
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And if we can't imagine it, then we can't seek after it.
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We can't desire.
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God has given us a picture of what it will be like.
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The most precious thing is that his presence will be with us and we will be devoid of sin that in and of itself is enough to give us a desire and a taste to want to be there.
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Third question, and this is the one I'm losing time now, but this is the one that I imagine most everybody has at some time asked.
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How can I be happy in heaven? And once you finish that for me, if somebody I love.
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Doesn't make it now, I have your attention, I didn't have it before that question that has been pondered by theologians for for for eons.
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Because we are told that heaven is a place where there is no tears.
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That God will wipe away every tear from our eye.
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Now, how then can I experience the joy of eternal heaven while at the same time my most precious loved one is not there to enjoy it with me? And this has created in the theological realm many hypotheses.
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There is one hypothesis that goes like this.
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It says when you die and you go to heaven, if one of your loved ones doesn't make it, you'll totally forget about them and their memory will be wiped from your mind.
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And it's like God is performing some kind of frontal lobotomy.
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You'll just take that part out of your brain and you won't remember them for all eternity.
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And for some reason that has given people comfort.
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Well, I'll just forget.
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They base it if there's any verse that they could base it on, they would have to base it on Isaiah 65, 17, which says, for behold, I create new heavens and a new earth and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
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So if they grab ahold of Isaiah 65, 17 and they say, well, there's a verse that says it's not going to be remembered.
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So I'm not going to remember anything about this life.
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I'm not going to remember.
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I'm just going to go on and enjoy heaven.
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If that is where you if that is where you are and that brings you comfort, I can't tell you necessarily that you're wrong, but I will say this.
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If you go into eternity.
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And your most significant loved ones are wiped from your memory, how then is this whole life not then wiped from your memory and will it be? And if so, what significance has it had? Just consider that.
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If you go into heaven not remembering anything.
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What significance is this life carried for you into eternity, you might come up with a good answer to that.
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I have had difficulty in myself finding an answer to that.
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In fact, on the other side of the coin, I have found in Scripture many reasons not to believe that.
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In Revelation, chapter five, the martyrs who sit underneath the throne and call out for justice, call out for justice for their martyrdom, they say, Lord, when will you bring justice for us who have been who have given our lives? I know.
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If heaven is you forget it's done and you don't remember anything else, how do they know they gave their lives? How do they know that they needed Christ? How do they know about the glory of grace? How is it that the Bible says we will sit and have supper with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God? If Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are just people whose identities will be lost in the heavenly realm, I don't tend to ascribe to that theology, the theology of the wiping of memory.
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I have I have more difficulty with that than to believe this.
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And I will tell you what I think.
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And you may say, well, I don't care what you think.
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Well, I'll tell you what I think the Bible teaches.
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How about that? I don't believe that our memory has to be lost for us to enjoy heaven.
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What I think has to happen for us to enjoy heaven is I think our sanctification has to increase.
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The Bible says in first Corinthians 13, 12, for now we see we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
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Now we know in part, then we shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
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The Bible says when I go to heaven, when I am there, when I am in the presence of Christ, it's not as if I lose everything that I've known before.
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But at that point, I will know and understand more than I have ever known and understand.
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And at that point, I will be able to hate my sin the way God hates my sin.
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I will be able to understand God's justice the way God understands his own justice.
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Will God forget the unredeemed? Will God forget the unredeemed? No, God does not forget anything.
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Will he be saddened for all eternity at their demise? Well, the Bible says he takes no joy in the in the death of the wicked.
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But yet he understands that his holy requirements demanded their punishment, it is certain that when we are fully sanctified and we, too, will be able to understand that their punishment is just and this will not steal from our eternal joy.
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But beloved pastor, I love that person, I love them, how could I be happy? I'm telling you, I don't understand it.
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Because I'm not sanctified, but I do understand this.
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I'm pretty confident Nero is in hell.
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I'm pretty confident Hitler is in hell.
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I'm pretty confident Nietzsche is in hell.
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OK, I'm sorry.
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Yeah, you can give me another name.
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There's a bunch of people.
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There are a lot of people that we're confident are in hell right now.
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And I can still smile.
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Why? Because I'm happy about them being in hell? No, because I understand justice demanded their punishment.
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If I can understand that Hitler's in hell, Nietzsche's in hell, Nero's in hell with what limited sanctification I have now.
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And believe me, it is limited.
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Will I not understand even more in glory? I do look at the Bible and I see God grieving.
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I see Jesus Christ grieving over the lost.
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The Bible says that Jesus looked at Jerusalem and said, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
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And he wept for the city.
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He wept for the lost.
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But yet he knew.
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Beyond doubt, their eternal condition, can we have heaven without someone that we love? I don't know how, but it has to be for the Bible says it is.
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We have out done our time, as I often do.
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So I want to the other question I was going to ask was, why is there no marriage in heaven? If you want to look that up, it's in Matthew 22, 23 to 30.
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Matthew 22, 23 to 30, Jesus talks about why there's no marriage in heaven.
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And I do think that's an issue for some people, because some people say, well, I've spent my whole life with a person I love them.
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How could I go into heaven and not have that continued relationship of marriage? Let me give you just sort of the simple answer.
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And you can go to the text and deal with what Jesus says there.
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But I think the simple answer is this.
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There is a marriage in heaven, but it's the marriage of Christ to his people and our primary relationship in heaven will not be with our spouse, it will be with Christ.
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That will be the primary relationship.
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We will still have a relationship, brother to sister, with our spouses as brothers and sisters in Christ, but our primary relationship will be with Christ.
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And here's the thing.
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This is why I think it is that Mormonism skyrockets for some people, because Mormonism says, hey, you believe in Mormonism and you get married in the Mormon temple and you go on into eternity as a celestial married couple and you go on to spawn your own worlds in the celestial afterlife.
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They believe in eternal marriage.
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Now, for some scares them away, but for some people, for some people that that is a real that's a real pulling device.
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Well, I love my wife.
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I don't want to not be with my wife in the afterlife as my wife.
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So I'll accept this religion which tells me she gets to be my wife forever.
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I can see how I know I can see how that could be appealing.
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But just because something is appealing doesn't make it true.
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Two things and then I'll close.
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I promise where I've gone way long this morning.
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Number one, some fear the concept of heaven because they fear the change that is coming at death.
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Beloved, let me give you a little analogy.
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When you were born and before your birth, before you were born, you were very comfortable in the womb.
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You were very satisfied in the womb.
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You had everything that you needed being pumped into your body.
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You were warm, you were comfortable and in every sense you were happy.
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And then came that fateful day when the travail of birth overtook your mother and she forced you out and you didn't like it.
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But now you couldn't imagine you couldn't imagine being in a womb, being fed through your belly button.
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I mean, I couldn't.
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But you see, when you were there, you were comfortable, you were happy and you had to be forced out.
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And now you couldn't imagine going back.
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I tend to think of that analogy when I think about heaven.
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Nobody wants to die.
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Nobody wants to go through the pain and the travail of our of our body shutting down and the organs beginning to stop and our very life leaving our body.
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Nobody wants to experience that.
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It's fearful to think about.
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But yet at the same time, once that is done and the transition is made and we are in glory.
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We'll wonder how we ever lived.
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The second thing, some of you are unsure where you're going when you die, thus you cannot live with assurance in this life.
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And I don't know everybody's heart in here.
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I wish I did.
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Sure would make evangelism a lot easier if I knew who would believe and who would not.
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As Spurgeon said, just go around lifting up people's coattails if they had an E for elect tattooed and you just see who was who.
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But I just wanted to remind you that if you were here today and you can't fathom the idea of heaven because you have no confidence that you're going to be there, I want to call to your attention the gospel again.
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Because you may not believe in God.
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Even though the Bible assures us that there is ample evidence in all creation for his existence.
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Or you may think that you're a good person, that if God exists, he has to give you heaven because, hey, you've lived your life good.
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If I remind you, the Bible is clear when it says that you are a sinner, you are unrighteous, no matter how good you may think you are.
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The Bible says you deserve God's wrath and maybe you've never heard the gospel.
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So I want to declare this to you today.
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God has commanded all men and women everywhere.
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To repent, to bow their knee to Jesus Christ, not just as Savior, but as Lord, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved from your sins.
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They will be remitted and you will be redeemed.
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Jesus said that he is the only way to eternal life and no one comes to the father but by him.
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So in your heart of hearts this morning, I ask you.
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Do you know Christ, because only through him will you have eternal life? Let's bow our heads and pray.
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Father, I thank you for the reality of your word, which reminds us of the truth of eternity.
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And Lord, we are confronted by looking at these passages about heaven, even in the midst of the passage about heaven.
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We are confronted with the reality that your word tells us that heaven will not be a place where our sin is and that if our sin is not dealt with here, our sin will be dealt with there.
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So, Lord, I pray.
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I pray for anyone under the sound of my voice.
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That if they have never repented of their sins and that they have never trusted Jesus as savior.
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Lord, that you would open their hearts to believe by the preaching of the gospel.
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Your word promises us, oh, Lord.
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That it is by the preaching of the gospel that you save souls.
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Not the wisdom of the world.
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But by the foolishness of preaching.
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So I pray this morning, Lord, that you would open hearts to believe that Jesus is Lord.
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And that he is raised from the dead and that he is now at your right hand.
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And Lord, use this time to save souls, if it be within your will.
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In Jesus name we pray and for his sake.
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Amen.