Garden Grove Church of the Nazarene
Our people - Our church
“The Kingdom of Heaven is Like…”
Looking at Matthew 24-25; the Parable of the Ten Virgins is telling us to keep watch and be ready. Five of the virgins were ready but the others were not. Five went in to celebrate while the others were left outside to keep watch because they were not ready when the bridegroom arrived.
Are we ready and prepared for Christ’s return. Will we be invited to the banquet or will we be left outside to watch?
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On this day when we celebrate the freedoms we enjoy as citizens of this great country, we close out our series of messages on the subject of Heaven.
Why? Because to get a glimpse of the life that is to come for every believer is to be enabled to celebrate greater freedom – a freedom that even we have not yet experienced. It’s the ultimate freedom of finally breaking the bonds of time and space – leaving behind the fragile world we have traveled on and finding ourselves transformed from the dying bodies of our brief time on earth to a heavenly body that will give us an eternal identity.
Rather than just preach about Heaven, Pastor Jim closes out this series with three stories – one by a child, one by a young teenage boy and one by an adult – about what heaven might look like.
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Every summer, we have a special Sunday service at GGNaz when we celebrate our children. We thank our children’s workers and congratulate the children as they are promoted from one grade to the next. On this Children’s Sunday, Pastor Jim reflects some more on Todd Burpo’s book, Heaven Is For Real, and on the story of his disciples, who had been arguing among themselves as they walked along the road.
He asked them: What were you discussing out on the road? But they didn’t answer, because they had been arguing about which of them was greatest. (Matthew 18:33-34)
We live in a world that is obsessed with greatness. The privilege of power is sought after, perhaps not with guns, but with money, influence and manipulation. It wasn’t all that different from the culture of Jesus’ day. The disciples allowed themselves to be caught up in the power seeking obsession that had them arguing among themselves as to who was the most fit to be in positions of power and influence int he government that their master was sure to set up.
But then, there was a little child. Jesus brought before them a little child.
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One of the foundational issues concerning the Christian faith is the issue of choice. When we begin to really think about what it means to have a choice to make, a decision about whether to choose God or not, the reality sinks in that for there to be a choice, there has to be an alternative to heaven.
Remember Joshua’s words to the people:
...fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. …if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. (Joshua 24:14-15)
The stark reality of life is that if we’re not loving and honoring God, if we’re not giving our attention and allegiance to Him, we will end up serving and giving our allegiance to someone or something else. The choices we make today will determine the life we will live beyond this life.
It’s God’s ultimate plan for every single person to be in Heaven with Him someday. So what is the “other option”? What is hell?
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We can’t talk very long about heaven without talking about how the Bible describes heaven as a “much better place” than the world we live in now. The Bible is very clear that God is just. That means all of the injustices we suffer here in this imperfect world will be made right in the environment of our eternal home.
Let’s take a look at some of heaven’s “no-mores” as described in Revelation chapter 21, verses 2-4 and 22-27, then chapter 22, verses 3-5:
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One of the greatest concerns of the early Christian church had to do with trying to comprehend, much less understand, the radical and seemingly outlandish concept of life after death. They were dealing with the issues of Christ’s promised return, life after death and, more specifically, the eventual resurrection of the body.
After the obvious question, “How can that be?”, the next question was, “What kind of body will a resurrected person have?” Many of the believers had heard or read about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, but those accounts left plenty of questions unanswered.
This Sunday, Pastor Jim asks us to allow our minds and hearts to begin to dream – to begin to anticipate – to begin to look forward to our eternal lives and remember that nobody’s old in Heaven!
For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:1-4 NLT)
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We are hopelessly locked into a space and time perspective regarding how the world works. We measure everything! Weight, distance, height, depth… We need to know how long something will take, how long ’til something happens, how long we have to wait!
We are locked into time and space and can hardly even comprehend how we could possibly exist without it. Time is a commodity that we never seem to have enough of.
Yet once in a while, we are reminded that time and space were provided for mankind by the eternally existent God, the One who has always existed and is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the One who is not contained, not restrained by time and space.
As we continue with our series on heaven, allow me to briefly take you to a place in our reading of Heaven Is For Real where we’re made to think about the meaning of “time” in Heaven.
Do not forget this one thing, dear friends: To the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day. The Lord is not slow in doing what he promised – the way some people understand slowness. But God is being patient with you. He does not want anyone to be lost, but he wants all people to change their hearts and lives. (2nd Peter 3:8-9 NCV)
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God loves colors. All you have to do is look around at His creation to see it’s true. But we’re talking about the colors of heaven.
These are colors that are more intense, more beautiful, more expressive of the reality and the personality of our Creator than we can imagine. They are more beautiful than anything we could possibly see here on earth.
And think with me about why…why all the beautiful colors…why the rainbows in heaven? It goes right back to Genesis chapter 9:
God said, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. 13 I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth. (Genesis 9:12-13)
It makes sense to me that the rainbow in Genesis 9 was a visible signature – an autograph from the Creator of the universe, and a covenant established.
When those first people who survived the flood and who trusted God with their eternal lives walked into heaven and saw that open door leading into the Throne room of almighty God, what did they see?
They saw that signature of promise again – that rainbow – and not just any rainbow, God’s own rainbow! They saw the intense, beautiful colors of heaven!
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Angels…they are a natural a part of our thinking as believers.
Pastor Jim decided to take us into the “classroom” for a little while this week and perhaps answer some of those questions.
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Our topic this for this sermon may seem a bit out of theme, but it really isn’t. Why? Because it seems that much of our struggle with faith comes directly from not having an adequate perspective about the “other side” of eternal life. As Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 13:12:
We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing Him directly just as He knows us! (1 Corinthians 13:12 TM)
Most of us have been mad at God at one point or another. Something went wrong. Prayers seemed to go unanswered. You became convinced that God didn’t really care, or even notice that His children were hurting, badly. We’re trying to see God’s side, but we just can’t. We want to believe that God loves us. We want to believe that God cares. But it’s hard to see. And it’s so easy to turn on our faith and assume that God has failed us.
Here’s the question… Would it help just a little if God would choose to give us just a little glimpse… just a little peak on the other side of the curtain?
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