Imagine
this scenario with me: imagine that humans have developed the technology to
colonize Mars. We’ve mastered space travel, we know how to create livable
conditions on other planets, and now we are going to set out “where no man has
gone before” to build a colony on Mars. Now imagine that you are selected to be
in the first group of people who are going to live on Mars. What would you do
in that situation?
I suspect you
would try to learn everything you could about Mars. After all, you’re going to
be living there now. We won’t even move to a new school district without
finding out everything we can about it, so if you were going to live on a new
planet, I bet you would do your homework. What will it be like? What will we do
there? How can I prepare for my new life there before I leave?
Now imagine
that the day arrives when you are scheduled to leave. As you get strapped in to
your seat in the space shuttle, you turn to the person next to you and say,
“Wow! Isn’t this exciting? I’ve been looking forward to this since the day I
heard about it. I can’t wait to see this and that and do these things.” And the
other person says, “Wow! You seem to know a lot about this place.” To which you
respond, “Don’t you? I mean we’re on our way to live there!” And the other
person says, “Not really. I didn’t really think to look into it. When I found
out that I was going to live there, I said ‘Wow! That sounds great! Just come
get me when its time to go, and I’ll be there.’”
Does that
seem far-fetched to you? Would anyone choose to remain ignorant about a place
that they were going to live in someday? No—and yet, we have all probably done
just that when it comes to Heaven. I’ll admit it—I’ve never put out much effort
to learn about what Heaven will be like until now! Even in seminary, we didn’t
spend much time talking about it.
This
situation is almost unfathomable when you think about it. How can it be that
we’ve chosen to remain ignorant about Heaven? We have promises in the Bible
that we are going to live with God someday in a place with no sin, no sickness,
no sorrow, and no death! Yet how do we respond? “Shazam! That sounds great,
Lord! I can’t wait! Just come get me when its time to go. I’ll be here
finishing season one of ‘Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.’”
What has
happened that we have this kind of disconnect? I think some people have lacked
the motivation to study the subject of Heaven because they think we can’t
understand anything about it. When talking about Heaven, some people have
pointed to 1 Corinthians 2:9, which says, “no eye has
seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for
those who love him,” and they’ve said, “Well, I guess that means we can’t
know much about heaven. It sounds like it will be great, but we just can’t know
much about it.” Yet look at v. 10—“these things God has
revealed to us through the Spirit.” What Paul meant is that we could
never have figured out God’s plan for us on our own, but God has revealed it to
us in the Bible—and that includes information about Heaven, as we shall see.
Over the
next several weeks, we are going to study this inspiring subject. Today we are
going to lay down some foundational thoughts that will guide the rest of our
study. These thoughts will hopefully clear up some common misconceptions so
that we can build our understanding of heaven on a solid foundation.
1. The Heaven where Jesus lives
right now is different from the New Heaven and New Earth, where we will live
for eternity.
This point
is important to understand because it means that some things may be true of the
Heaven where Jesus lives today that will not be true of the New Heaven and New
Earth where we will live for eternity—and vice versa. As we go through this
study, I’m going to be careful to point out when I’m talking about the Heaven
where Jesus lives today rather than the New Heaven and New Earth.
It seems
from Scripture that the New Heaven and New Earth will be a new universe in
which we will live after God causes this universe to be destroyed. Let’s look
together at a passage in 2 Peter 3 [READ 2 Peter
3:10-13]. We then find a description of the New Heaven and New Earth in
Revelation 21-22. We will look at this passage in more depth next week, but
notice the introduction that we find in Revelation 21:1 [READ Rev. 21:1].
We can
point out a few differences already from what Scripture tells us. For example,
our loved ones who live in Heaven with Jesus today do not have their physical
bodies. Only their soul is there; their bodies, as we know, are in the grave.
But in the New Heaven and New Earth, everyone will once again have their
physical bodies, which will have been resurrected.
Also, it
seems somewhat likely that there is a temple in the Heaven where Jesus lives
today, but Revelation 21:22 says clearly that there will be no temple in the
New Heaven and New Earth. Earlier in the book of Revelation, John repeatedly
mentions seeing an altar in his vision of the Heaven where Jesus lives today,
and Hebrews 9 may suggest that the tabernacle which God commanded Moses to
build was actually a replica of a temple which exists in the Heaven where Jesus
lives today.
The primary purpose of a temple is
to create a space where a perfect God can connect with imperfect creatures. Our
loved ones in Heaven today are still imperfect in a sense because they do not
have their resurrected bodies, so if there is a temple in Heaven today, that
could be part of the reason why. But in the New Heaven and New Earth, we will
be perfect in body and soul, and so there would be no need for a temple—and
again, Revelation 21:22 says clearly that there will not be one.
So remember this
principle—there are some differences between the Heaven where Jesus lives today
and the New Heaven and New Earth where we will all live for eternity.
2. The New Heaven and New Earth will
be a physical place like we live in now.
Many cartoons about Heaven picture people floating around
on clouds in mid-air, but the description of the New Heaven and New
Earth does not give us that picture at all. Rather, the description we read in
Revelation 21-22 describes a physical place like Planet Earth. After all, it is
called the New Earth, so what can
that mean except that its like the old Earth, which we live on now?
These two
chapters at the end of Revelation describe a city with walls and gates made of
precious metals and jewels—things that are physical substances that you can
touch and hold and see and feel. They describe a street in the city with a
river running down the middle of it, and along this river there are trees that
produce fruit. These are all physical objects which can be felt and seen and
heard and even tasted!
I think
some people have concluded that our eternal home with God will not be a
physical place because they think that physical things are somehow evil, but
its very important that we don’t accept that idea. I believe some Christians
have gotten the wrong idea from certain biblical statements. For example, 1 John 2:15 says, “Do not love the world or the things in the
world.” But John isn’t talking about the ground beneath our feet or the
air in our lungs. He tells us what he means in v. 16—“for
all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes
and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.”
When John says, “do not love the world,” he’s talking about the desires and
values of the people in the world; he’s not telling us to beware of grass and
streams and meadows.
Or sometimes we might sing an old gospel song like, “This
world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through.” That’s true, but
maybe we should clarify that statement a bit—this world the way it is now is not our home, but we must never forget that
Planet Earth is the kind of place that we were created to live in.
In the
earliest days of Christianity, some people bought into the idea from Greek
philosophy that the physical world is somehow bad and evil. They even went so
far as to say that Jesus didn’t have a real body—He was like a ghost, they
said, because they believed that God surely wouldn’t have any contact with
something evil like the physical world. But my friends, remember—God created
the physical world, so it can’t be evil. Jesus demonstrated that the physical
world isn’t evil by becoming a man, with a body that needed food and water and
sleep. Even after He rose from the grave, He still had a physical body that
could be touched and was capable of eating food.
So there’s
nothing evil about our bodies or our planet, and according to Revelation our
eternal home with God will be a physical place like our planet. But remember—we
will have all of the things that we enjoy about our planet with none of the
things that came from the Curse that was a result of our sin! Imagine walking
barefoot through a meadow without worrying about stickers and thorns; imagine
exploring the woods without worrying about poison ivy; imagine breathing
without allergies; imagine drinking from a cool stream without worrying about
diseases or pollution. This world as it
is today is not our home. That is true, but it still has the same basic
blueprints, and if you look closely I think you’ll see a glimpse of your future
home with God.
3. The original creation likely
gives us an idea of what the New Heaven and New Earth will be like.
Genesis 1-2
describes what the Earth was like after its initial creation, when humanity
lived in perfect unity with God before sin had entered the world, bringing with
it things like death, disease, sorrow, and pain. The basic situation in Genesis
1-2 is the same as the basic situation that we find in Revelation 21-22—people
living in a physical world in perfect unity with God without death, disease,
sorrow, and pain. So its reasonable to think that the original creation gives
us an idea of what our eternal home in Heaven will be like.
This
observation could help us answer some important questions about the New Heaven
and New Earth, like “What will we do there?” Sometimes
people have wondered if our home in Heaven will be like a church service that
lasts for eternity. To a lot of people, that sounds more like Hell! I’ll
admit it—that idea doesn’t get me very excited. Now we could say, “Well, we’d
never get bored with it because we could see Jesus face-to-face,” and you know,
that’s probably true.
But think
about this—Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God, and that’s not
what they did all the time. They were given a job! If we can speculate from the
original creation, it could be that we’ll be the caretakers of the New Earth
just like human beings were created to be the caretakers of this Earth. I think
its possible that the New Earth may initially be uncultivated outside of the
city that we read about in Revelation. God may turn us loose to go map out His
new world and cause it to be fruitful. Imagine setting out like Lewis and Clark
into uncharted territory, but with no possibility of getting killed along the
way! Talk about excitement and adventure!
These
thoughts that we’ve discussed today should lay a good foundation for the rest
of our study. We’ll begin to build on this foundation next week, and we’ll
start with a tour of the New Heaven and New Earth as its described in the final
chapters of Revelation.
But for
today, I want to challenge you again with the thought of how crazy it is that
we, as God’s children, would fail to think long and hard about the place where
we will one day live with God. How can we be content to simply bide our time in
this world without learning more about our future home and whether we might
become more prepared to live there? C. S. Lewis
described us well when he said, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about
with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an
ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot
imagine what is meant by the offer of a [vacation at the beach]. We are far too
easily pleased.”1
We are
content to spend our mental energy keeping up with the Kardashians or our
favorite sports team rather than using it to think about Heaven. We spend most
of our working years focusing on retirement as though we cease to exist after our
final Bingo Night. We are far too easily pleased, but as our minds begin to
focus on the next world, our hearts will follow along, so as we work through
this study, get ready to feel a thirst that this life cannot quench!
Notes:
1. C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory and other Essays
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), 1-2. I updated the language of the final
analogy.
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