A Desire for Heaven (Part 1)

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A Desire for Heaven (Part 2)

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I'm going to have a handout that I'm going to be giving out later in the service.
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I'm not going to give it out now, though I don't want to give it out at this moment in the service.
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And the reason is, is because if I hand it to you now, you'll all start looking at it and you'll all start reading it and you'll stop listening to me.
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And that's not fair.
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So I want to wait until the right moment in the service where we can all look at it together because it's got some Bible verses.
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And like I said, if I hand it to you now, it will be a it will not be a good thing.
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One of the things that I think people often forget when we're talking about our faith and we're talking about the subject of religion itself.
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Is that we are dealing with subjects that are of eternal consequence.
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This is not a question of preference, as in which model car suits the needs of a particular driver.
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One can accidentally purchase the wrong automobile, spend five years paying for it and then get out of it at the end of that five years.
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I've been there many times myself.
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But when we talk about and consider the eternal significance of our religious beliefs, our faith.
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It should cause us to examine with sober minds just exactly what it is we believe.
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And while many Christians do ponder the important aspects of faith, such as the object of our faith, which is Christ and the motivation for our faith, which is the glory of God.
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I do think there is a real absence in our modern culture of looking towards the result of our faith, namely the experience of our heavenly home.
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Today, as we continue our verse by verse study of Hebrews, we are going to begin a study of heaven.
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An interesting subject, indeed, something that I think you will see is not often touched on, not often dealt with.
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And I would say, sadly, so.
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So let's begin with our reading of the text in Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11, verses 12 through 16.
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And I'll invite you to stand as we read the opening text.
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Hebrews chapter 11, verse 12.
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You will remember the context is the listing of the men and women of faith, and it goes on to talk about the result of their faith, the object upon which they focus their faith.
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This is, therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants, as many of 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, 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.
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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 God, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that we can trust it, that it is the sole and fallible rule of faith and practice for the believer.
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I thank you, Lord, that you speak through your word, and I pray this morning as we seek to understand your word, that first and foremost, that you would keep me from error as the pastor and teacher.
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Lord, keep me from preaching error.
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And I pray for the hearts of the people, the congregation, that you would open their hearts to understand truth, give them discerning hearts.
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And Lord, God, put a hedge of protection around them.
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That all that is done and said today would bring glory and honor to your name.
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That you would forgive our shortcomings, keep us from error.
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In Jesus name.
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The first few times that I read this particular portion of Hebrews chapter 11, I wondered why it was included in a listing of faithful individuals.
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If you remember so far, what we've seen is that it lists the persons by name and then lists what was unique or special or important about their faith.
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It began by saying, by faith, Abel did this.
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By faith, Noah did that.
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By faith, Enoch did this.
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By faith, Abraham did this.
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And by faith, Sarah.
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So we've got sort of a linguistic construct.
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It's building on itself.
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And it's saying, by faith, by faith, by faith.
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And that's the subject.
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And then we get to verse 12.
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And then we have this sort of excursus, which follows not the persons of faith, but rather the final result of their faith.
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Then it hit me.
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That's why it's here.
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It's here because it's been telling us these people believed, these people had faith, these people trusted.
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And then this short little four or five verses here begins to talk about the major focus of their faith, which is the reality of heaven being in the presence of God himself.
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The section begins to address the fact that many of the Old Testament believers never saw a realization of their faith in this life.
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Let's look at it again.
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Looking at verse 12.
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It says, Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants, as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
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Now, first of all, Abraham didn't see that.
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Abraham only saw from his from his loins, from his body, he only saw one child, and that was Isaac.
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Yet he was promised by God an entire nation.
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He was promised by God, your descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky, as innumerable as the grains of sand which are on the seashore.
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But he never saw that.
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He never saw the realization of that promise.
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He only saw the potential realization in the birth of Isaac.
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He only saw what could be.
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He never saw its fulfillment.
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That's why it goes on to say in verse 13, These all died in faith, not having received the things promised.
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These all died, believing that they would happen, trusting that they would happen, but not yet having received the promises.
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And it goes on to say, But having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
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That that last portion is important because it says they acknowledged themselves to be strangers and exiles.
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Think about that.
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Abraham was promised a land by God.
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God says, Go out from among your people, go out from among your kindred and go to the land, which I will show you, which I will give to you.
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But guess what? Abraham never took ownership of the land.
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Abraham never went and stuck a stake in the ground and said, This is the land of Abraham.
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This is the land of my people.
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Never happened.
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This is why later there would be a battle when the Israelites left that land for Egypt.
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They stayed in Egypt for 400 years and they came back.
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What happened? There were people on the land.
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They had to fight to get it back.
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They had to fight for what God had promised them.
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They believed it was theirs by God's delivering and that he would give it to them.
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But they had to go and take it.
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You see, Abraham never received the promise as such.
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He was a stranger in the land.
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He was an exile in his own country.
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He wasn't a landowner.
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He was an exile.
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He was a stranger.
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And this is what it goes on to say, because the person who actually called himself a pilgrim, and that's the word that's used, Genesis 47, 9, was Jacob.
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Even his grandson, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even Jacob said, I'm a pilgrim here.
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Why then did they still trust in the promise of God? They trusted in the promise of God because they saw God's promise not just to be filled in this life, but also to be filled in the next.
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Read the text with me and see what I say, because in verse 14, it says, for people who speak thus, what's thus, what he just said, for people who call themselves exiles and sojourners and pilgrims, for people who say that, make it clear that they're seeking a homeland.
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A person who calls himself a pilgrim recognizes that he's out of his homeland.
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He's not where he's from.
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And it goes on to say in verse 15, if they had been thinking of the land which they were from, they could have gone back.
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They had the opportunity to return.
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So he's not talking about the Chaldeans either.
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He's not saying I'm a pilgrim here, I could go home to her, I could go back there.
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That's where my people are from.
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I could go back there.
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He's not talking about that either.
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Verse 16 says, but as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one.
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You see, the focus was not on the physical.
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The focus was on the spiritual, the heavenly land.
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It goes on to say, therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
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When Jacob called himself a pilgrim, he did not mean he was out of his ancestors homeland in Mesopotamia.
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If this was the case, he could have just returned.
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No, he meant that the earth itself is a pilgrimage and that he had his eyes fixed in faith on a better land, a better world.
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You see, beloved, that which was being sought out by our ancestors in the faith was not an earthly city built by man's hands.
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What was being sought by our ancestors was a heavenly city built by the hand of God, one wherein a perpetual relationship with God could be enjoyed.
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Our faithful forefathers, according to the faith and according to this passage, desired a heavenly country.
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Now, all of that is simply introduction, because really what I'm going to be talking about this week, next week, and I certainly hope I can do it in two weeks, it may not be possible.
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But the week after that, I'm preaching it September 11th is on a Sunday this year, so we're going to have a special service in regard to that.
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And I've already got that sermon planned, so if I go longer than two weeks, we're going to have to talk about heaven after that, but it may we'll see how it goes.
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But because this is the thing, as I was reading this text, as I was pondering this text, as I was meditating upon this text, praying, what should I talk about in regard to this text? What should I really focus on? That key term kept jumping out at me that they had a desire for a heavenly country.
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They had a desire for a better country.
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This this idea of something other than this world permeated their soul and it was their motivation in their faith.
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It was what motivated their belief.
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As I began thinking about that, I began to ponder a few very important questions, I want you to ponder them with me, I want to ask you these questions and I want you to think about them and ask yourself these questions.
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As modern people of faith, as modern Christians, do we still long for heaven? Now, before you automatically begin giving an answer, really think about the question, do you sit and ponder and long for heaven? Maybe a more structured theological question would be this, is your life motivated by a sense that there is something better which Christ has prepared for those who trust in him? Or maybe even a simpler answer or a simpler question would be, are you looking forward to going to heaven? Now, I know the pious answer would be, well, yes, pastor, I certainly am looking forward to going to heaven.
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Yet the reason why I would ask such a question is because in all of the Christian discussions about heaven, most often they are limited to how you get to heaven and what's going to lead up to Jesus's return.
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There's a ton of stuff about millennium and Jesus's return and raptures and you can fill a library with all the books have been, but how much is written on heaven? Not a whole lot.
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As I said, there's a ton written on the millennium, you could spend you could spend years and not exhaust what's written on that.
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But very little is actually ever discussed about what heaven is like and what's going to happen when we get there.
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In actuality, we really lack a theology of heaven in the church.
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In fact, I did a little digging and I found that in most theology textbooks, heaven receives the least treatment of any other subjects.
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That I could find, for instance, William Shedd, William Shedd wrote dogmatic theology, it's a three volume set.
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He writes 87 pages on eternal punishment, two on heaven.
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That's a pretty big difference.
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Martin Lloyd-Jones, Great Doctrines of the Bible, 900 page book.
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Contains less than two pages on the eternal state, Lewis Burkoff, systematic theology, two pages on hell and only one on the eternal state, it's on the last page.
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So as we can see, even many of the folks who have committed themselves to the systematization of biblical theology have left the subject of heaven pretty much untouched.
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We say we long for heaven, yet how are we to long for and desire something which we have never really taken the time to consider? Oftentimes, I think we long for this life.
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We long to exhaust this life for as long as we can and stretch this life as long as we can.
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And this is really this life, you know, we don't really sing the old spirituals anymore about going to heaven and they seem so odd to sing about going to heaven.
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You know, a lot of those spirituals come from times when it was hard to live as a Christian.
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In America today, there's so much ease and people say, oh, well, it's hard to be a Christian.
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Go to Iraq, spend a week, come back and tell me how hard it is to be a Christian here, honestly.
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And I think we forget that we are to long for heaven.
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When was the last time you heard a sermon on the theology of heaven? I can honestly say I've never preached one.
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I preached, this is my sixth year, I've never preached a sermon specifically on this topic, which is why I have so much to say.
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Many of us have not heard a sermon on the theology of heaven.
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We are we've been told how to get there.
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We've told that it's better than hell, that we can agree on.
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But we know very little about it.
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In fact, I believe that we are rarely motivated as Christians by a desire for heaven.
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I really think we're motivated out of the fear of hell.
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I think we're rarely motivated out of the goodness of heaven.
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I think we're motivated just because we know heaven's good and hell's bad.
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We don't want to go there.
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And as such, because of the ignorance of heaven, many people replace biblical instruction with fantasies and hopes that are not biblical.
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I've heard people say, well, heaven is what you want it to be.
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It ain't in there.
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I don't know where that idea came from, but it's not biblical.
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Others imagine heaven as a place where disembodied spirits sit on clouds and shrunk hearts.
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Well, that's Hollywood's version of heaven, that's, you know, movies like The Heavenly Kid and all that, this is, you know, the staircase going up became an escalator in the mid 80s.
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And that's what we see.
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That's that's our view of heaven.
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It's the Hollywood version of disembodied spirits sitting on clouds with halos and wings.
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I said earlier that we don't have a theology of heaven.
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That's not true.
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Everyone has a theology of heaven.
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The problem is most people don't have a biblical theology of heaven.
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So I want to clarify something I said.
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Everybody's got one.
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Everybody's got a view, a picture in their mind, something.
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But most of it comes from something other than the Bible.
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It's even more sad when we realize that some actually fear going to heaven because of the picture that they've developed in their minds.
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Some believe that heaven is a place of disembodied spirits sitting on clouds, strumming hearts.
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And you know what I've heard people say, that looks pretty boring.
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I don't want to go do that forever.
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And you might say, oh, wait, I'm being blasphemous, cessation thing.
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No, I'm not, because that's not what the Bible describes heaven as.
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I'm blaspheming Hollywood.
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Not the Bible.
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But you see, people get this Hollywood picture of heaven in their mind and they get some unbiblical picture of heaven in their mind.
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And I can't imagine that for eternity.
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Well, don't, because that ain't right.
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Others have this idea that heaven is going to be an unending church service, wherein we sing all the good hymns simply back to back to back to back forever.
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And it's an eternal sing along, never ending sing along in the sky, not described that way in scripture.
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Oh, but wait, in the Bible, there are angels that only sing holy, holy, holy over and over and over.
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Guess what? You're not an angel.
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Get over it.
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You're not going to be an angel.
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You're not an angel.
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Now, the idea that we're going to come back as angels is, again, Hollywood intruding on scripture.
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Get it out of your mind.
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It's not biblical.
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One pastor admitted, one pastor admitted to fearing heaven.
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And this was his quote.
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He said, I don't really want to go to heaven because I enjoy learning.
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I wish annihilationism were true because I would rather just cease to exist.
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End quote.
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That's a sad reality because that man's theology of heaven led him to the brink of depression over his perception of what heaven is going to be like, because his perception of heaven was, well, I'm just going to be omniscient in heaven.
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I'm going to know everything about everything I won't be able to learn anymore, and that's going to drive me crazy and I'm just going to not be able to handle it.
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And I would rather just cease to cease to exist.
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And I think he's a pastor, he should know better.
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But, you know, we're not perfect either.
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Pastors, pastors can get mixed up, pastors can be confused, pastors read the Bible and study it just like lay people.
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I mean, in the sense that we all have the same scripture to look at, and sometimes it can be confusing to us as well.
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So I don't condemn the man, I just say it's sad to think that he's depressed over heaven.
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I think there's a lot of people that don't spend enough time learning about it that when it comes down to it, they don't know enough about it to excite themselves over.
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They don't know enough about it to desire.
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As such, we focus so much on this life and we're not like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, we don't yearn for a heavenly country, we don't yearn for what Christ has gone ahead of us to prepare for us.
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John 14, verse one through six.
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So this morning, we're going to talk about the theology of heaven.
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I've already gone for about half my time, but I want to we're going to we're going to go a little further.
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I want to talk about theology of heaven.
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I want us to look to scripture to give us an understanding of our eternal home so that we might be better able to long for our arrival there.
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We're going to look in three different areas.
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Number one, we're going to define some terms.
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So if you want to take notes, the first part, and this is where we're going to probably only only get to do today, and that's we're going to define some terms.
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Number two, we're going to describe the eternal state.
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That's going to be next week.
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We won't get to the eternal state this week, but you'll understand what I mean in a moment.
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And number three, we're going to discern common questions and objections to the biblical understanding of heaven.
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That may have to be after September 11th, I don't know yet.
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I don't know if we'll get to the objections and questions next week.
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It's going to depend because I don't want to rush.
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I don't like that.
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It's better to get the lesson through than to get through with the lesson.
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Dr.
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Jerry Powers.
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All right now.
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So we're going to begin with defining terms.
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We're going to define some terms.
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Let's begin with the most basic of definitions, and that is the very word itself.
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What is the term heaven mean? What is how is the word heaven used in the Bible? The Bible actually uses the word heaven in three ways, so it can be somewhat confusing when you see the word heaven.
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If you automatically assume that the word heaven automatically describes the state of the soul in the afterlife, if you automatically assume that it can be somewhat confusing.
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You need to understand that there are three ways that the word heaven is used in Scripture.
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In fact, the Bible actually says there are three heavens.
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Now, it doesn't say like the Mormons believe that there's three levels of heaven.
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Like, you know, if you do somewhat good, you get the first level, you do a little better.
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And if you attain the third heaven, that means you get to become a god and go populate your own earth.
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That's Mormon theology.
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That's not biblical theology.
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And when it talks about the third heaven, all it's saying is this.
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There are three heavens.
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There is the atmospheric heaven.
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That is where the clouds are.
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There is the stellar heavens.
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That's where the sun, moon and stars are.
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And then there is the abode of God, our father, who are in heaven.
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All right, so you have three different ways the word heaven is used.
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Thus, when Paul in 2nd Corinthians 12 says that he know a man who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven, he's not talking about some third celestial plane.
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He's talking about the fact that he wasn't caught up to the clouds.
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He wasn't caught up to the sun, moon and stars.
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He was caught up to the abode of God and actually was in the presence of the Lord.
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All right, so we understand there's three ways which heaven is used, only one of which refers to the abode of God.
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All right, because this sermon is focused on what happens when we die and going to heaven in the eternal state, because this sermon is focused on that, I want you to know when I say the word heaven, I'm referring to it in the third way.
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Don't confuse that I might be saying heaven as far as atmosphere, heaven as far as the stellar heavens.
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I'm talking about heaven in that way.
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I'm doing this to make sure that we all understand the language which I'm going to be using.
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All right.
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Now, Chris and Nathan, if you would take those handouts and make sure everyone gets one.
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I already have one, so we'll begin in just a second.
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Again, if you would have received this, if you would have received this when you first got in, you would have looked at it, you looked at the Bible verses, you would have cheated and it would have been unfair.
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I got to be a step ahead.
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That's the only way to keep it fair.
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No, I seriously, if you got this when you first walked in, you just stared at it the whole time and everything I would have said for the last 20 minutes would have been useless.
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So once you get it, I want you to notice that there are two terms here that you must become intimately familiar with if you want to understand the subject.
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And the two terms are intermediate and eternal states, understanding the intermediate and eternal states.
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When a person talks about heaven, usually they talk about heaven in the context of someone dying.
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Somebody dies.
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Child says, what happened to Grandpa? Grandpa died and now he's in heaven.
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Right.
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That's normally how we use the word heaven in our modern usage.
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However, here's where things begin to get a bit more in depth as we examine the Bible.
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The Bible teaches that there is coming a time when our earth will be restored.
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Hear that again, because I don't want you to be confused on this.
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The Bible teaches that there is coming a time where the earth will be restored.
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Yet in the time between now and the time of that restoration, when people die, what happens to them? That's the question.
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That's an important question, because if the earth is not restored yet, which we all agree that it's not because we're here and it's not done.
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If the earth is not restored yet and there is an interval between the time which we die and the time of the restoration of the earth and our own resurrection, what is the time in between? Now you look at the chart, you'll notice that I've broken it down.
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I say understanding the intermediate and eternal states, you'll see I have the current state.
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What is the current state? Current state is the state you're in right now.
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You were born and one day you will die if Jesus carries, if Jesus carries, we will all die.
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Ten out of ten die.
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No question, right? It's not his ultimate statistic happens to everybody at least once and only once birth to death.
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That is our current state.
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When you die, there is an interval between that and resurrection.
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This is referred to by theologians, not just me, but by theologians in general, as the intermediate state.
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And if you look at the sheet, I tried to make this very clear in our current state.
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We are spirit and body together on the earth.
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Our spirit is in our body.
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We're together as one functioning person.
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However, when you die, the Bible is very clear that your spirit is with the Lord, but your body is still here.
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Your body goes into the earth and whether or not you are buried, whether you are buried at sea or whether you are cremated.
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And basically people ask me all the time, well, Pastor, do you think cremation is wrong? I don't think cremation is wrong.
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It really just speeds up the process that the earth would do on itself anyway, turning you back to dust.
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There's nothing necessarily wrong with cremation.
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The Bible never condemns it.
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It never talks about it much because the historical Judeo-Christian method was burial because of the belief in a resurrection.
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Yet at the same time, cremation does the same thing as what would happen if you buried a person.
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They would ultimately become dust anyway.
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So it's like I said, it's just rapid deployment of what the nature is going to do on its own.
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So there's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with cremation.
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However, either way, the body goes back to the earth.
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The spirit goes to be with the Lord.
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This is very clear.
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I've given you references to look up.
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I encourage your study.
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Luke 16 is the story of Lazarus and the rich man.
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Lazarus spirit goes to Abraham's bosom and the rich man goes to Hades.
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Luke Chapter 23, 43, Jesus said today thou shalt be with me in paradise.
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You will be with me.
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Your spirit today when you die, you will be with me not later, but now.
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Second Corinthians 5, 8, Philippians 1 and Revelation 6 all give references to this intermediate state, the state where our spirit is with the Lord and it is in a place of consciousness where we can where we know where we are.
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We are with the Lord.
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I think Revelation 6 is very important because Revelation 6 is where the spirits of the martyrs are crying out for justice.
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The spirits of the martyrs are saying to the Lord, when will you bring vindication for our martyrdom? And the Lord says, wait another wait a time because there are still others yet that are going to experience the same thing.
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But you see these these people that are in this intermediate state, their souls are there.
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They remember who they are.
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They remember how they died and they're waiting for their vindication and the resurrection.
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They're there, they're conscious, but that's not the eternal state.
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We call that the intermediate state.
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If you were to die today, your spirit would be with the Lord.
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If you are saved, your spirit would be with the Lord.
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And there you are awaiting resurrection.
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And that's why I put the eternal state.
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The eternal state is where the redeemed spirit and body.
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Together.
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Are on the new earth.
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Now, you'll notice that I left out a lot of stuff, I left out millennial positions, I left out in time scenarios, Armageddon, all of that stuff, because all I'm trying to do with this chart is give you a very simple overview that there are three states you can be in as a human.
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You can be in your current state, which is body and soul here.
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You can be in the intermediate state, which is where your spirit's with the Lord and your body's in the ground.
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Or you can be in the eternal state, which is coming for all of us, which is where our body and soul will be redeemed together in the eternal state, which is heaven.
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The Bible clearly says there's a resurrection coming.
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The Bible says those who are dead in Christ will rise first.
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Why do their bodies have to rise if there's no physical nature to heaven? It wouldn't make sense.
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There is a physical nature to heaven, and that is what we look forward to in the eternal state.
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Now, I want to address an important issue.
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There are Christians who do not believe in the eternal or rather, they don't believe in the intermediate state, but rather they believe that when you die, that your spirit also dies or what they would say sleeps.
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The technical theological term is called psychokinesia, and basically it just means this.
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They believe that when you die, your body goes in the ground.
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Your spirit also goes into the ground.
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Your spirit is with your body.
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They're undivided and that your spirit and body together in the ground will stay there until the resurrection.
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OK, they do not believe that there is any consciousness between death and the resurrection.
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That's taught in Adventist movements, Seventh-day Adventist movements, and even the Jehovah's Witnesses, which I would not call a Christian group, teaches psychokinesia, the idea that when you die, your spirit goes into the ground and your spirit is there asleep until it is raised to life.
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I want to deal with that one today.
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I want to I want to I want to address that, because I think the most important thing that we understand is that unless Jesus comes, we're all going to experience the intermediate state.
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Unless Jesus comes in our lifetime, we're all going to the second circle.
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When we die, we're all going here.
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So I think we need to understand its truth a little bit.
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Those who talk about the sleep of the soul espouse that the body and soul cannot be separated.
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And as such, when the body goes in the ground, the soul must go in the ground with it.
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However, this has never been the orthodox teaching of the church.
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This has never been from the foundation of the church, the understanding of what happens when we die from the very foundation of Christian orthodoxy, there has been an understanding that when you die, your spirit lives, that even though your body dies, your spirit is conscious.
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And if you are saved, you are with the Lord.
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Second Corinthians chapter five, verse eight, Paul says this, he says, we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
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He makes the point it would be better to be out of this body and with the Lord, because why? Because this body is corrupt, the body that we now have lust after the flesh, lust after sin is driven by motivations which are unholy.
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And we who have a redeemed spirit live inside this corrupt flesh.
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And I don't know how many of you are, but I'm so ready to get rid of this corrupt flesh.
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One of the greatest things I look forward to in heaven is not wanting to sin anymore, not having a desire to do evil.
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I don't know how it's going to be.
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I can't imagine it, but I try all the time.
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That's one of the great desires of heaven is not having a desire for evil anymore, that the flesh, which is now corrupt, will be redeemed.
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But like I said, Paul says, he says that he would it is better to be absent from the body and at home with the Lord.
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And James makes that same point, James 226, not the same point, but he makes use of the same analogy.
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He says, as the body, apart from the spirit, is dead, so too are works apart from faith dead or faith apart from works dead.
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So he uses the same example.
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He says he says the spirit of the body, when they're separated, that's death.
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When the spirit leaves the body, a person is dead, but where then is the spirit? The spirit is with the Lord, even during the Reformation period, the doctrine of soul sleep was dealt with by the very popular, I'm sure, John Calvin.
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Very important lesson that he wrote on this subject.
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I want you to hear the title, Propensity for Long Titles, hear the title of his writing on the subject of soul sleep.
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He says, psychokinetic, a reputation of the error entertained by some unskillful persons who ignorantly imagine that the interval between death and judgment, the soul sleeps together with an explanation of the condition and life of the soul after this present life.
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That was the title by John Calvin.
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But you see what he said, he said, the ones who propose the idea of soul sleep are not proposing it from scripture.
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They're they're doing so unskillfully and ignorant.
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While there are some who deny it has been widely recognized throughout the history of the church that there is an immediate intermediate state of consciousness between death and the resurrection, wherein believers are consciously present with the Lord.
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So the next question would be, at least the next question I thought of in my preparation.
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Is where is where is the intermediate state? Obviously, the eternal state, which we'll talk about next week, the eternal state is earth, the new heavens and the new earth.
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Where is the intermediate state? Where is it now? Some people say we can't see it, so it doesn't exist.
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Some people say, well, we can't see the intermediate state as such, the intermediate state doesn't exist.
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In fact, one person, one astronaut said, we have been to space, we looked into space and heaven wasn't there.
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So what was his what was the inference he was making? We look for it, couldn't find it, so it doesn't exist.
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But this misses the fact that the plane of spiritual, the plane of the spiritual is not in outer space.
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It's not residing on another planet, even though I think that was in one of the Star Trek movies, heaven was on another planet, Captain Kirk got to talk to God, ended up being a Klingon or something.
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I don't know.
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Anyway, it's not there either.
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The fact is, the intermediate state is an unseen state.
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We cannot see it.
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We cannot perceive it.
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But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
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Some may dismiss this as being mere fantasy, but we mustn't forget that something similar is actually being studied, even in secular communities.
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Leading scientists in the area of physics have no problem believing that there are invisible dimensions that are imperceptible to us.
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Scientists at Yale, Stanford, Princeton, these are all fairly liberal places, not Christian organizations, even though they had Christian beginnings.
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But scientists at Yale, Stanford, Princeton and others believe that there are at least ten unobservable dimensions and likely a number of imperceptible universes.
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And there is considered to be, among them, serious science involving these extra dimensions and things that can't be seen.
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So my question is this, why, if they can feel very smart in believing in ten extra dimensions that they can't perceive, why do I got to feel dumb for believing in one? See, that's why people make you feel, oh, well, you believe in heaven, you believe in this, you're an old hick, you know, you don't know right from wrong, you don't know anything, you're just so dumb, Southern, whatever.
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Truth of the matter is, all we believe is that there is a realm that is imperceptible to us, wherein God exists, Christ is, and in that realm, the spirits of believers are presently, consciously with the Lord awaiting resurrection.
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We call this the intermediate state.
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Now, my time has fleeted, but let me show you two places in Scripture where I think this is brought out for us.
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It's shown to us.
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It's very important.
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Go back to Second Kings, Second Kings, Chapter six, Second Kings, Chapter six, verse 15.
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So I'm page three ninety six.
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If you're looking at a pew Bible, verse 15, we're going to read the verse 18 says when the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army of horses and chariots was all around the city and the servant said, Alas, my master, what shall we do? The situation is walked out, sees they've got an entire army ready to do battle with them.
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Verse 16, he said, Do not be afraid for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.
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Verse 17, Then Elisha prayed and said, Oh, Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.
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So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
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And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, Please strike this people with blindness.
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So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha.
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So here we have this situation.
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You have Elisha who's got this servant.
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The servant looks out, he sees this monstrous, massive army in front of him and he says he looks to Elisha and he says, What are we going to do? There's this entire horde of people who have come against us.
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And Elisha said, Lord, open his eyes to what you're doing.
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And for an instant, this servant gets eyes to see outside of the normal perception of eyes which can see and he sees into the spiritual and for a moment he gets a glimpse of the hosts of heaven.
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Now, were those hosts of heaven there all the time? Absolutely.
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But he did not perceive them until God opened his eyes to see them and they were there.
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Beloved, whether we want to consider it or not, there are angels that actually exist.
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This isn't a fanciful Hollywood tale.
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The Bible talks about angels.
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Now, they're normally not described in scripture.
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They're never described in scripture as women with wings and halos.
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But in fact, they're described in somewhat kind of very powerful ways and interesting ways, six wings to cover their face to their feet, to their they fly in all kinds of different, interesting ways, different types of angels.
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The point is, there's an entire realm you cannot see.
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Well, that's hard for me to believe.
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Beloved, we don't have to see it to know that it's there.
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We understand by scripture that these things are true and the scripture tells us we have angels.
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The Bible also tells us there are demons.
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That's hard for us to deal with sometimes because I think we think in very American, very physical, got to see it, touch it, smell it, taste it or don't exist ways.
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That's why I love this passage, because it said when his eyes were opened by the Lord, he saw what really was.
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Oh, would it be awesome if our eyes were open just for a moment to see what was really going on here? To see what was really going on in our own lives.
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And he got to see it.
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There's one more text and then we'll be done.
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Acts chapter seven.
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I love that chapter seven.
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I hate the story, obviously, because the story is of the stoning of Stephen, Stephen stoning, of course, the very first martyr in the church.
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And I hate the situation that happened with him.
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And imagining stoning is something I don't even like to allow my mind to do.
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Yet at the same time, the story is beautiful at one point, because in verse 54, it says now when they heard these things, they were enraged and they ground their teeth at him.
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But he, talking of Stephen, was full of the Holy Spirit and he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
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Beloved, we do not have spiritual eyes to see these things, but God opened Stephen's eyes for that last moment of his life that he could see the reality to which he was going.
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He was going to the throne of God.
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His spirit was going to be with the Lord.
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And as he was being treated so unmercifully by his brethren.
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God mercy him.
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And showing him his eternal reward, his position with the Lord.
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You see, even though we call it the intermediate state, the truth of the matter is when our spirit goes to be with the Lord, we will never not be with the Lord again.
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And even though we won't have our bodies in the intermediate state and we are awaiting resurrection, we are still with the Lord.
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It's where Stephen was.
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It's where Lazarus and Luke 16 was.
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It's where Abraham is.
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It is also where we who trust in Christ.
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Will be father, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word.
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We thank you for this opportunity to look into this very serious subject, the subject of the state of our souls in this life and in the life to come.
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We pray, Lord, as we spend this week examining the scriptures given to us and then look toward the week to come to study the eternal state, that you would keep our minds focused on this serious issue.
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Focus us, Lord, that we will seek the truth of heaven, that we will seek.
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That's heavenly home, this heavenly country and Lord God, if there are those here who do not know Christ.
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And have no assurance, have no faith in where they will spend eternity.
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I pray, Lord, that you would use the words of the message and the power of your spirit to convert hearts in accordance with your will, that they would know to repent.
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And believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And they shall be saved, we love you, we thank you, we praise you in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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Let us stand with us now as we sing our song to consider what we have learned and to meditate upon it.