Heaven (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Our Father, we thank you this morning for this place that we have to gather together to protect us from the elements, just for your kindness towards us and just giving us a church, not just a building, but a group of believers to gather together and just in even gathering us here this morning.

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Father, I pray as we look to your word and what it says, as we just begin to skim the surface, as it were, of heaven.

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Lord, I pray that you would bless this time, bless the weeks that follow as we look at it, that we might be encouraged in how we ought to live, how we ought to think, how we ought to even eagerly anticipate what you have promised your children.

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Lord, again, we ask for your favor in Christ's name. Amen. Well, we, trying to shut this thing off, we're going to have, for the next two weeks, we're going to have not me teaching.

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So, so what I did as I put this together is I wanted to keep that in mind because there's so many things

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I literally have been fascinated in the ideas, the different ideas about heaven and kind of putting them together.

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Some people argue that heaven is not a physical place and we have rebuttals to that.

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But there are all kinds of things, just the descriptions of heaven, the activities that go will go on in heaven are really fascinating.

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And I thought, you know, I just don't want to get knee deep into describing the physical nature of heaven and then not come back to it for three weeks.

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So what we're going to do this morning is go through the notes we have here and then page five of the notes, which is actually,

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I guess, not page five, but page 10, you can virtually ignore because that's where we're going to be going next.

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But last week we talked about just, just generally speaking, what heaven is and how it's important.

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I like what Piper said, and he's really echoing a quote I'm going to read from Richard Baxter here in a minute.

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On page three from last week, I said, or Piper says, the critical question for our generation, the critical question for our generation and for every generation is this, if you could have heaven with no sickness and with all the friends you ever had on earth and all the food you ever liked and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed and all the natural natural beauties you ever see,

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I guess it must be, I must have mistyped that, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven if Christ was not there?

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And the answer needs to be for the Christian, no. If we love Christ, he needs to be our focus.

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And then I want you to go ahead and turn to page six, or yeah, page six in front of you,

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Richard Baxter. Look at what he says. A heavenly mind is a joyful mind.

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If you're focused on heaven, you are joyful. This is nearest and true, the nearest and truest way to live a life of comfort.

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And without this, you must needs be uncomfortable. Without a focus on heaven,

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Baxter says, you should be uncomfortable. Can a man be at a fire and not be warm or in the sunshine and not have light?

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Can your heart be in heaven and not have comfort? On the other hand, what could make such frozen, uncomfortable

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Christians, but living so far as they do from heaven? Says, how can you possibly be a

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Christian and not experience the warmth and comfort of heaven?

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Oh, Christian, get above. There should be an exclamation point there. Believe it.

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That region is warmer than this below. It is better in heaven than here.

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I wanted to spend some time this morning, even just this week. I've just been reminded through my interaction with various people this week of the importance of heaven and discussing how it is that one gets there.

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And I thought we might look at a couple of passages and get some insight into that.

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How does one get to heaven? We talk about salvation a lot of times without thinking that the necessary result of salvation is heaven.

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We are saved from hell, from the way, from the direction that we would naturally choose, which would lead to hell.

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And we gain as a result of salvation, heaven. How do we get there? Let's look at Matthew 7, a passage our pastor preached through not long ago.

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And we're going to look briefly at this and then we're going to look for some time at the life of Abraham.

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Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14. And this is such a picture

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I want as I read this to you. I want you to just think about the words. Think about the picture that they're painting.

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Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction.

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And there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life.

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And there are few who find it. I mean,

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I don't know about you, but when I even just hear those words, it's like everybody in the world is on this highway and they're all merrily marching along and they broadly think of themselves as on the road to heaven.

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We're all going to heaven together. We're all just marching joyfully toward heaven.

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The problem is what everybody believes is the right direction is the wrong direction.

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And really what this paints is this broad road, everybody on it, and then there are just, you know, there's something off on the horizon that we can kind of see.

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And it looks like a narrow gate and maybe not too impressive. And nobody's really going over there. So why would we go over there?

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Jesus says, enter through the narrow gate, get off the broad road, go on the narrow gate.

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There are a few that find it. It's like the secret entrance. Listen, what

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MacArthur says. Both the narrow gate and the wide gate are assumed to provide the entrance to God's kingdom.

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Both. Everybody thinks they're OK. Two ways are offered to people.

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The narrow gate is by faith only through Christ, constricted and precise. It represents true salvation in God's way that leads to life eternal.

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The wide gate includes all religions of works and self -righteousness with no single way.

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But leads to hell, not heaven. Difficult is the way.

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Christ continually emphasized the difficulty of following him. Salvation is by grace alone, but is not easy.

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It calls for knowledge of the truth, repentance, submission to Christ as Lord, and a willingness to obey his will and word.

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Everybody's on this broad road. It's kind of like, I don't know if you, how many, who, well, who can explain what a lemming is?

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Do lemmings exist in the real world? Do they? OK. You ever played, there's a computer game named lemmings, came out a long time ago.

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It's kind of like a puzzle game. And what do lemmings do? Let me ask Cindy.

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They follow each other. And if so, if one walks off a cliff and dies, they all go off the cliff.

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You know, it's just like, and that's exactly the picture. Everybody's just kind of, you know, well, this must be the right way.

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I must be OK, just like everybody else. And then one after another to their doom.

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The Burger King commercial where everybody's mindlessly running into the hole. Yeah, I mean, that's the way of the world.

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Pursuing things that ultimately don't matter, believing that they're OK. And even this week, just been focusing on these two issues.

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You might have heard us on the radio this week. And one of these things is something that we began to talk about.

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But there are two extremes. Even this week, as I was doing some counseling, I just talked about, you know, how when you get saved, when you first get saved,

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I don't know if this happened to you, but it happened to me. It's like every worldly thing needs to just get put out of your life.

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Whatever it is, you know, everything's just gone. I mean, I didn't get rid of all my

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CDs, but I got rid of most of them. I got rid of all my albums. I got rid of all my comic books. I got rid of all my baseball cards.

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I got rid of, I got rid of, you know, it's just like everything that just seemed to me like it was some kind of obsession or idol or anything, just everything went.

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And now I'm just like, what did I do that for? You know, but it's all gone. Why? Because we somehow think that, you know, even,

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I'm not saying I was a legalist, but I think there's this tendency to think that everything in this world is necessarily evil.

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Well, that's not really true. But the extreme of that legalism is adherence to rules, the idea that adherence to a list of rules will please

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God, resulting in heaven. What is that? I mean, besides legalism, what else is it? Works.

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Works. I've said this many times. If you want a religion full of rules, what religion should you join?

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Any other, but I mean, the best, I think, is Islam. I mean, you get into it and you'll be shocked how you have to eat, how you have to, you know, go to the bathroom, how you have to do everything.

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They've got a rule for everything. Your life is controlled from, you know, breakfast to dinner and it's one big set of rules.

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Adherence to a set of rules. Well, first of all, God gave us a set of rules. Can you keep those?

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So that's one extreme. The other extreme is antinomianism. I just put antinomian because that's the definition

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I put in here. But it literally means against law, anti, against, namas being law.

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And the definition, in case you're wondering, it's Merriam -Webster's Dictionary, which should not be disparaged, who says, one who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace, the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation.

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Is there anything wrong with that? Wouldn't we agree with the idea that faith alone is necessary for salvation?

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Faith without works is dead. In other words, faith alone is right, but you have to define faith ultimately.

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And faith that does not work is dead faith. A faith, you know, if you say,

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I believe in Christ, and here's the picture of an antinomian of someone who doesn't believe in a changed life whatsoever.

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I believe in Christ, but my life is exactly the same as it was. I've essentially fastened the label

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Christian onto my regular life. Okay, now we come to Romans 4, verses 2 to 5.

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Romans 4, verses 2 to 5. And who would like to read that for me, please?

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Bruce. Oh, you can read one too, you know, it's fine.

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Okay, now I mentioned we're going to study Abraham a little bit this morning because Paul uses him here as kind of a test case, as a case par excellence, as just an example of salvation by faith alone.

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And as I note here, under number one here at the bottom of page six, when Abraham was called by God, he lived in Ur of Chaldea, or Ur of the

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Chaldees, as we sometimes say, a thoroughly pagan and idolatrous city. Archaeologists have estimated that there were about 300 ,000 people living there during God's time, and the point of me even putting the population in there isn't so much, you know, that there's going to be a quiz on the population there, but he's one of 300 ,000 pagans.

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Why does God call Abraham? Carl, you are a good theologian.

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The Chaldeans were polytheistic, which means more than one

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God, having a multitude of gods. And by the way, you know, from time to time

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I confess my sins, I do play a game called Civilization. And, you know, one of the foundational principles of this game, and this is why

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I sometimes will ask parents if they allow their children to play this game, because I think it's a great game, except for it sort of implies that polytheism precedes monotheism as if monotheism is an evolutionary result of polytheism.

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Well, it would be the opposite. I mean, how many religions were there in the beginning? Well, none is correct, but one, right?

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There was one God, one faith, that was it. Polytheism comes in later when people start inventing their own gods.

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But the Chaldeans were polytheistic, having a multitude of gods, the foremost of which was called

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Nana. I don't know if any of you grandmothers like to be called Nana, but the moon god.

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Because his father, Terah, Abraham's father, Terah, was an idolater.

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Abraham obviously was reared in paganism. So again, the idea, out of 300 ,000 people, God calls him.

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When God called Abraham, or Abram, as he was called then, he had no reason to choose him out of the millions of other pagans in the world, but then he commands

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Abraham to go to the land that would be shown to him. Let's look at Genesis, chapter 12, verses 2 to 3.

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And who has Genesis, chapter 12, verses 2 to 3? Okay, Will.

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Okay, so he tells him to go forth, and then he makes these promises to Abraham, that he will be a blessing throughout the earth.

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But he told him to go, and as MacArthur notes, he only partly obeyed

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God because he brought his father and his nephew Lot with him. And then he wastes 15 years in Haran, and then his father dies.

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And then he continues on in this trip, and only obeys partially by still continuing with Lot.

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So then when he reaches Shechem in Genesis 12, 7, God promised him the land.

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Let's look at 12, 7. Who has Genesis 12, 7? Go ahead,

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Mark. Okay, so now the promise is expanded to cover a promised land.

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But as we said, Abraham's faith was not perfect, and no one is perfect.

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The first test he had to face was a famine in Canaan, and he went to Egypt instead of turning to God.

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And what happens while he's in Egypt? Does Abraham sin while he's in Egypt?

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That's not my wife, it's my sister, which causes some issues.

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The Lord gave repeated assurances to Abraham, and Abraham responded in faith, which

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God reckoned to him as righteousness, Genesis 15, 6. But again, when testing came, he relied on his own judgment rather than the

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Lord's word. When Sarah was getting beyond normal childbearing age and remained barren,

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Abraham listened to his wife for spiritual advice. She was the spiritual leader in the home, very good.

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And committed adultery with Hagar, which led to Ishmael. What's the complication there with Ishmael?

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Islam is part of the complication. In fact, under Islam, they teach that the chosen son, the one who was to inherit the land, and the promises to Abraham was

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Ishmael. You were going to say, Troy? Well, I didn't know that.

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Right in Mecca, they have Ishmael's court in the high holy places there.

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By the way, Mecca was originally the headquarters, as it were, of a polytheistic religion, which

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Muhammad, in love, conquered and killed everybody and converted them to Islam.

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But I digress. I said this last week, as long as it's in love, you know.

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I was talking to people, you know, and I'm like, it's like when you're in the army or when I was on the sheriff's department, people would always say, you know, you can say whatever you want as long as you say with all due respect before you say it.

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And so like in Christianity, it's like you can say whatever you want as long as you say in love before you say it. You know,

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I have to tell you something, in love, and then you just unload on people. Not good.

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But Abraham was a trophy of God's grace. A trophy of God's grace.

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Okay. Abraham failed often, but was obedient at the top of page eight. Obedient in one of his most amazing, one of the most amazing tests in Scripture, the command to sacrifice his son

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Isaac. Ishmael is not the son of the promise. Sarah has finally, when she's, after she's laughed and gone through all of her sin, they have a child,

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Isaac, the child of the promise, the son who is going to inherit these promises.

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And then God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. And as I've said,

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I mean, it's interesting in the Bible, you know, the way things kind of get twisted. Certainly when growing up, when

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I heard the story of Abraham and Isaac, I always presumed, you know, Isaac was maybe eight or nine years old or something like that.

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But he was a full grown man. Could have whooped up on Abraham. So Isaac kind of is impressive in this too.

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It's like, okay, dad, I'll do whatever you say. And then

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God stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac before he does it. What's the point?

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What's Paul's point? Why is Abraham so important? Well, God demands perfection.

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Abraham was not perfect. But if we must be perfect, if anyone must be perfect to get to heaven, how could

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Abraham get into heaven? How could a sinner like Abraham be declared righteous by God?

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You have to be perfect. You have to be declared righteous by God in order to get into heaven.

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Let's go back to Romans four. And we're going to see what we already know.

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Abraham did not merit heaven. He didn't perfectly obey.

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I mean, at the very least, he lied, committed adultery. That's not exactly the highest standard.

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So he certainly didn't qualify on the basis of his works. Kistemacher says this,

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By the Jewish teachers and their followers, Abraham was considered the only righteous man of his generation.

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Moreover, they held that it was for that very reason that he had been chosen to be the ancestor of the holy nation.

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He was considered the first of seven men who, listen, by their merits, brought back the

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Shekinah, which is what? It says there, the cloud of light. It's that the glory, essentially the glory of God, so that it could take up its abode in the tabernacle.

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We are told, moreover, that Abraham began to serve God at the age of three before he was even called, and that his righteousness was made complete by his circumcision and his anticipatory fulfillment of the law.

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Before the law was given, Abraham fulfilled it. Yeah, yeah, not right.

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Abraham was, in my words, a trophy of grace and an example of God's accounting to those who believe.

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Let's look at Romans 4, 3. For what does the scripture say?

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Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

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Paul doesn't write, God thought about the life of Abraham and declared him righteous.

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That would be salvation by works. That is not what happened. The word, the

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Greek word, is lagizimai, to credit or reckon

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Abraham's belief and therefore see him as righteous or upright or just, and therefore fit for heaven is grace.

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But it's also in keeping with the justice of God. Look what Kistemacher says down there at the bottom of the page.

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The Lord reckoned or considered or counted this ungodly individual, yes, this sinner, namely

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Abraham, to be that which in and by himself he was not, namely just.

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Just consider that for a moment. God looks at Abraham, considers him just, even though he wasn't.

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So did God make a mistake? Let's keep reading. The Lord was able to do this without in any way becoming unjust because of the certainty that the coming

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Messiah would by means of his voluntary sacrifice secure this great blessing for Abraham and for all those who share

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Abraham's faith. Works can never justify us in the sight of God.

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That cannot happen. We can never do enough. What are our works? Filthy rags.

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They are absolutely useless in the sight of God compared to what they ought to be. They're not going to work.

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They're not going to get us in. Listen to what Matthew Henry says and then we'll go back to Romans 4, 4 and 5.

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And therefore to him that worketh not, that can pretend to no such merit, nor show any worth or value in his work, but disclaiming, in other words, saying, no,

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I don't have that. I don't have that value, that worth. My works aren't that good.

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By saying that, casts himself wholly upon the free grace of God in Christ by a lively, active, obedient faith.

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To such a one is faith counted for righteousness, is accepted of God as the qualification required in all those that shall be pardoned and saved.

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Him that justifieth the ungodly, that is, him that was before ungodly, his former ungodliness was no bar to his justification upon believing.

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Let's unpack that a little bit. Let's start even from the end. His former ungodliness, whatever sins

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Abraham or any of you this morning might have committed before belief, are not a disqualification.

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They don't stop you from getting in. I mean, I think of, you know, probably the most grotesque sinner

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I could ever think of who professed faith in Jesus Christ and only the Lord knows, is

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Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed people, cut them up and stored them in his refrigerator for later use.

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This was an evil man. And he professed

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Christ. I don't know if he was actually a Christian or not, but he professed Christ before he died. And you say, well, what he did, he deserves hell.

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Absolutely right. But if he really believed, can he really be forgiven for that?

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Which brings up another point. Sometimes I think we think there's a... Is there a difference in sin?

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Yes. Certainly in this world there is. You know, what Dahmer did, is that different than lying on your taxes?

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Yes. You know, you get put to death for what Dahmer did, and so far you don't get put to death for cheating on your taxes.

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So far. But in God's economy, you know, it's like absolute value.

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You know, or a rounding thing. You know, everything gets rounded to one. You know, whether it's .00001

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or 1 .9999, it all comes back to one. It's one sin.

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And one sin, period, is enough to send you to eternal hell.

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He justifies the ungodly. He declares the ungodly righteous.

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He looks at the unrighteous sinner, Abraham, in this case. He looks at him, he knows everything that he's done, and he says, listen,

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Abraham, I am not justifying you on the basis of your works.

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I am not justifying you on the basis of your obedience. I am not justifying you for any other reason other than your reliance on me.

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Abraham could not have known exactly who his savior was going to be, but he believed that God would save him from his sins.

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He relied entirely upon the grace of God. He believed God, even if imperfectly.

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And I think it's also interesting what Matthew Henry wrote there in the middle of that paragraph.

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By a lively, active, obedient faith. What is a lively, active, obedient faith?

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Scott. He believed that God would raise him from the dead.

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He believed that God was even able to raise Isaac from the dead.

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That's why he was willing to sacrifice him. Yes, Erickson. He knew that there was, yes, in John 8, at the end of the chapter.

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He knew that, sorry, but he knew that there was going to be a savior. He didn't know the name of him. He didn't know it was going to be

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Jesus, you know, who was. So he saw the day of salvation, as it were.

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He saw that there would be a lamb who would bear the, you know, the sins of the world, his own sins.

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That someone would be his substitute. Is that your question? Will. What is it?

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Well, if I were going to summarize it, I would put it in one word. I could say sin, but I think that's too easy.

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I think the sin of pride. It is believing that in some way.

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We have control of our own destiny. We have control of everything that we can, you know, appear before God and say, look what

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I've done. You know, you I have earned my way here. You know, yep.

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I might have done this, that and the other thing. But look at all the money I gave to charity. Look at the time I spent in the soup kitchen.

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Look at how I helped little old ladies across the street. Look at my Eagle Scout project where I, you know, balanced the environment of the entire state of Massachusetts.

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Whatever it was, you know, we think, look, God. And he says,

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OK, that was really good. But remember that world that you were helping so much? It's gone. Now what?

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You know, what value did that have? He wants eternal things. And the only eternal worth there is, is the work of Christ.

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And our trust needs to be entirely placed in that. So what makes us think we can do it?

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It's a sin nature that makes people want to. I mean, why do we have religions that are so, you know, like Islam or Mormonism or Jehovah Witnesses or whatever religion you want to name?

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And if you really look at most of these religions, what are they? They're a series of rules designed to make you look holy from the outside when you obey them.

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An active, obedient faith is that one that shows up on Sunday morning, is here at 10 .15,

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gives an offering, goes home at 1 .30,

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2 o 'clock. Goes home at 1 .30,

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2 o 'clock, you know, just in time to watch the second half of the Patriots game.

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Occasionally notices, you know what, I really need to dust off my Bible because that thing is getting seriously dusty.

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But it's a Sunday only faith, is that a lively, active, obedient faith?

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You know, I think about things like when Paul says, pray without ceasing. When he says, do all things with thanksgiving, don't grumble or dispute, all these kind of things.

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And what is he really getting at? What he's really talking about is the Christian life, this active, live, obedient faith is one that the first thing in the morning you just say,

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Lord, I thank you for all that you've given me. Not, I thank you that I'm not like those other people. I thank you for all that you've given me,

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I can't believe it. And throughout the day, it's just one that says, I can't believe all that you've done for me,

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Lord. And at the end of the day, he says, I can't believe all that you've done for me, Lord. And in the midst of the day, is kind to other people, puts other people first.

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And it's not about what we do, it's how we think, it's what comes out of us.

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Even as Jesus said in Mark chapter 7, it's not what goes into you. I mean, it's all these rules and regulations that say, don't eat this, don't drink that, don't smoke this, don't do that.

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It's not what goes into you, it's what comes out. It's your actions, it's your words, it's the things that issue forth in action.

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That shows what's really in your heart. And if your active, live, obedient faith is based on Sunday morning attendance, that is not active, live, obedient faith.

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If it's based on Sunday morning giving, Sunday morning serving in the nursery, whatever it is,

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Sunday only faith does not cut it. Yes.

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Yes, Karna. Well, that's a good question.

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Ask them if they're getting their real estate in Israel. The question was about being the children of Abraham, and we are children of Abraham.

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Well, I mean, that's true, right? God promised Abraham what? He promised him a lot of things, that he would be a nation, that he would have descendants numerous as the sands of the earth, but he also would have a land.

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So then my guess is, you know, they should be trying to figure out where their condo is going to be in Haifa or something, because they need to get ready for that.

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We are grafted in, it's very clear in the New Testament that we are grafted in, but we are the spiritual children of Abraham, we are not literally his descendants.

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And the promises made to Abraham, was Abraham rich?

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Yes. I guess the question is, you know, and here's the focus.

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The focus, the word faith movement, is on this life or the next life. No illness, riches, abundant blessing.

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If you have all that stuff, and you go to hell, not a good trade.

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The promises made to Abraham and applied to us, primarily are spiritual in nature.

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We are heirs to the spiritual things of Abraham, not to his oxen, and his cattle, and not even his land.

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You know, and it really, I mean, it could get into a really difficult discussion with someone of that nature, because if you believe that you are the full child of Abraham, then not only does it get into the land, it gets into, has the church replaced

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Israel, and what are the ramifications of that? And there's a big inconsistency, by the way, in people who would say that the church has replaced

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Abraham, and we're anticipating the millennial kingdom, because you can't have both.

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So there would be a big conflict there. But I mean, basically, it's a matter of hermeneutics, and we can talk about that more later.

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But just to give you the general idea, we are grafted in, we receive the spiritual blessings of being

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Abraham's children, but the idea that, for example, we would get the land is not true.

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Yes, Charlie. Right.

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Right. And it has nothing to do with the wealth and all that. It has to do with Abraham understanding the alien, the external righteousness that God, I'm going to use words that we don't always use, but we should, the alien righteousness, that is a righteousness that Abraham did not possess himself.

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Abraham did not have inherent righteousness to offer up to God. What he had was belief in God that God then credited or reckoned or imputed to his account.

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In other words, what should have been Abraham's lot was condemnation because of his sin.

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And instead, God looks at his faith and reckons that as righteousness and takes his sin, places it on Christ, takes

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Christ's perfect righteousness, and accounts it to Abraham. That's what imputation means.

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It means we believe in double imputation, which is not amputation, imputation with an

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I. You have to be careful. Christ's righteousness imputed to believers.

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The sins of believers imputed to Christ. He paid for them on the cross.

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That's why he suffered and hung there was to pay the penalty for sin.

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Okay. What must saving faith, narrow gate, active living faith consist of?

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What must you believe? The gospel. That you, like Abraham, have no claim on God's favor.

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No claim on his favor because of your sin. Your sin would keep you out of heaven.

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You know, it's kind of like if you go to get on an airplane and you're carrying some explosives. You know, the dog sniffs you or whatever.

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It's kind of like that. You know, you get to heaven and you want to walk through the thing and you've got all this metal all over you.

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And they go, hey, dude, back up. Get rid of the metal. And you're like, OK, but I can't. It's welded to me.

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Well, then you're not getting in. You've got sin welded to you. You are estranged from God from birth, bent on pursuing a life of rebellion and sin against him.

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David said that he was estranged from God from the womb. So are we all.

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Romans would teach us that we are born enemies of God.

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No amount of good works you could ever do. No amount of works Abraham could ever do could pay the debt created by your disobedience of God and his commands.

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You must believe that Jesus is eternally God. I mean, I could add all sorts of things about Jesus, that he was born of a virgin.

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I could go on and on and on. Here's something. Can you be a Christian? Can you go to heaven and say, well, there are certain sections of the

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Bible I don't believe? What does it mean if you don't believe part of the

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Bible? I'm a Christian, Erickson. I say that all the time.

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If you don't believe Genesis 1 or 2, you know, when do you take the Bible as starting literal?

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You know, where does it kind of kick in? Where does Moses go? OK, I'm done with all my kind of introductory stuff and, you know, kind of making things up.

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And now I'm getting really serious. When does Moses start doing that? But beyond that, there's something else.

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If you're a Christian, you say there are certain parts of the Bible I don't believe. Then how about this statement?

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Is this fair? There are certain things that God has said that I don't believe. I think

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God's a liar. That you don't believe

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God and you're not a Christian. I think one has to believe what the Bible says in order to be a

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Christian. Now, that doesn't mean you're going to know everything. But if you know something, if you're taught something, you say,

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I don't believe that. There's reason to wonder. If through further study and prayer you still don't believe it, then there's more cause to wonder.

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Erickson, yes.

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I mean, we're talking about yes. Erickson's question was, is it possible to disagree with other believers?

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Yes. But I think, you know, let's put it this way. Let's say you say, well, you know what?

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I know the Bible says Jesus was born of a virgin, but I don't believe that. Well, that's a far cry from saying, you know,

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I don't really know that there's a rapture. Different entirely.

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Could be a different set of hermeneutics. But if something is explicit in Scripture, you just say, well,

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I don't believe that. Okay. I don't know what to tell you, but you need to believe it.

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You need to believe that Jesus is eternally God, the second person of the Trinity. And I put that in there because you cannot be a

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Christian and say, I deny the Trinity. You cannot be a Christian and be on TV and sell books and be named

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T .D. Jakes and be a Christian. You cannot. Jesus, who in obedience to the

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Father took on the additional nature of man, not changed nature, but took on an additional nature, obeyed the law perfectly, pleasing

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God in all that he did. That Jesus died a death on behalf of believers. You must believe all of this, thus paying for their sin, the sin of all believers and providing the righteousness needed for heaven.

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And that he arose on the third day, demonstrating the Father's satisfaction with his sacrifice. How do you know that God accepted the work of Christ?

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Because he raised him from the dead. God demands that you repent, that is to turn from your life of sinfully depending upon your own works to justify you and reliance entirely on the work of his son.

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It would be, you know, Abraham saying, you know what, I messed up sometimes. You know, that whole thing with Hagar, really sorry about that.

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Didn't really mean, you know, to drag my dad and lot around. That was a bad move on my part.

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Sorry about the whole line to Pharaoh thing. Sorry, sorry. Okay, but can I get in?

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No. No, there had to be an alien righteousness. Someone had to obey perfectly for Abraham.

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Jesus Christ did that. Christian gives evidence of their heavenly citizenship.

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We're going to be talking a lot about this. We are citizens of heaven. That's why we need to be heavenly minded.

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We need to be thinking about heaven. We need to act now as if our place is in heaven.

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I'm not saying that we should be consumed by heaven, because to be consumed by heaven would maybe make us so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good.

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But we should think in evaluating things, in living life on a daily basis.

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My passport might say United States, it might say someplace else, but ultimately my citizenship is in heaven.

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Jesus went to build a place for me. And we're going to talk about heaven, how immense it is.

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I was just reading about it last night. I cannot even grasp just the city of, the new city of Jerusalem, how big it is.

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I mean, there are some really kind of mind -blowing things about heaven, just how vast it is, because it's not just the city of New Jerusalem.

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I mean, some of this is kind of, I don't want to say it's speculation, but it's just kind of reading between the lines of Scripture.

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I guess you could call it speculation, but I think it's right. If God's going to destroy everything that exists, the heavens, which means the entire universe, the earth, everything that we know, and he's going to create a new heaven and a new earth, doesn't it kind of make sense that that would be in use?

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Do you ever think about that? I mean, sometimes what do we think about as heaven? I mean, either we're watching cartoons and there's little angels playing harps while they float on clouds, and that's heaven.

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But heaven is a unique environment. It is going to be different,

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I think, than what we typically think about, and I'm excited about looking at it. We're going to be looking at it starting in a couple weeks, but I think next week we'll have

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Pastor Bob Bowman here, and then I'll be out of town for one week. So anyway, let's close in prayer.

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Our Father, even as we contemplate heaven, thinking about all that you have promised to those who love you and who are called according to your purpose, knowing that this life can be difficult, this life can be at times a struggle, that we're surrounded by sin and those who love sin, that we have a world system that wars against our own godly desires, even the things that we would love to please you in.

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Father, I pray that you would give us a renewed intensity to live for you every single day, to think about all that you have accomplished through Christ on our behalf, how you have granted us your spirit that we might live a holy life pleasing to you every single day.

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Lord, I pray that our own sins, as we do sin, would not be such that they would derail us, that we would just abandon our love for you and our love for heaven, but that we would say, you know what?

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As bad as that was, as bad as that was, I know that God forgives sinners.

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Lord, forgive me. Help me not to do it again. Father, I would pray for anyone here who is not yet saved that you would so open their eyes to the glories of heaven, to your holiness, to the infinitely valuable work of Christ, to our own lack of holiness, our own need for righteousness, our own need to be declared righteous.

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Father, I pray that you would bring about a conviction that those who are not saved here this morning would flee to the cross, that this would not be some kind of foot -dragging,

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I guess I have to sort of thing, but that they would run, that they would recognize the riches that await those who abandon everything else for the cross of Christ.