Summer Road Trip #8: Highway to Heaven

Highway to Heaven

 (Part 8)

Thesis:  Over the past 7 weeks we have discussed the Idea of Summer Road Trips…today I want to conclude with:

Title:  Highway to Heaven…

I did a 6 part series on this subject in more detail 6 years ago…you can go to our Website or Youtube to find it.  

Matt 7:13-14

13   “Go in through the narrow gate, because the gate to hell is wide and the road that leads to it is easy, and there are many who travel it. 14 But the gate to life is narrow and the way that leads to it is hard, and there are few people who find it.

GNT

Rev 21:1-6

21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.  4  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

ESV

Introduction:  One of the hottest topics in Christendom today is the study of Eschatology…which is the study of End-Time events.  People want to know “what is going to happen in the End-Times”, “are we living in the End-Times” and “What is Heaven Really Like.”  

Transition:  Most people surveyed believe in some type of After-Life and most of those believe in what we would call heaven.

• Their beliefs may be skewed or inaccurate…but many all over the world believe in an after-life
• Very few believe when you die it is over and done.
  • There is no hope in that.
  • 1 Cor. 15:19 Paul says, “if in this life only we have hope in Chirst we are of all men most miserable.”
  • The messages says it this way:  “If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot.”

As I approach such a huge subject today my desire is for the Holy Spirit to burn into our hearts and our minds…ETERNITY.  The church needs to work with eternity and forever in mind…there is an eternal heaven as well as an eternal hell.  The church as a whole Needs a PERSPECTIVE evaluation.

1. The Heavens

Introduction:  In 1952, a young woman named Florence Chadwich stepped off Catalina Island, into the Pacific Ocean.  Her goal was to swim to the shore of mainland California…21 miles away.  It was foggy and cold.  She could barely see the boats alongside her.  Florence swam for fifteen hours.  She begged to be taken out of the water.  Her mother, in a boat alongside, told her she could make it.  Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted she gave up and stopped swimming.  They pulled her out and it was at that time she learned she was ½ a mile from the shore, from her desired goal, from the finish line.  At a news conference the next day she said, “All I could see was the fog…I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.”

My desire is to help you and I see the shore…

• Why do we struggle to believe:

1. Sense-oriented – It’s just natural and easier to believe in things that we can see and touch.

• Consider Thomas the Disciple. . .touch, see and feel.  

• Jesus accommodated him. God wants you to believe! He’s not trying to hide and make it hard.

• “Blessed are those who believe and haven’t seen.”

2. Hard-to-answer questions – helps make it seem unreal

• Where is heaven?
• Will we recognize each other?
• How old will we be?
• What about those who die as infants?
• Will we remember things from our time on earth?

3. Misrepresentation – Too often, what we hear about heaven isn’t truly appealing to everyone. As a result, we struggle to believe because we really don’t want to believe in that kind of heaven. Sure, it beats going to hell or simply being stuck in the ground, but a trip to Hawaii or Disneyland sounds more exciting than some of the descriptions of heaven I’ve heard. I would say that heaven is almost always undersold.

• The reason we don’t have a very accurate picture of heaven is because we’ve been more influenced by the culture’s ideas of heaven than we have the Bible.

• For instance, who stands at the gate guarding the entry into heaven? Peter! We know this from the many jokes we’ve heard about heaven.
• And what about the movies?

• Familiar plot: A lead character dies in some type of accident, and a man in a white suit comes to him. He’s told he can’t go to heaven yet because he has one last mission to perform back on Earth. Then, after this final good deed he can earn his wings and enter into the pearly gates.

• Other things

• Sit around in a mansion

• Many folks would prefer a simple cottage in the woods over a mansion on a hilltop.
• A pastor, a seminary graduate said, “Whenever I think about heaven, it makes me depressed.  I’d rather cease to exist when I die.  I can’t stand the thought of endless boring tedium.  Heaven doesn’t sound much better than hell.”  
• Mark Twain in the Adventures of Huck Finn said:
  • “The Widow Douglass went on and told me all about the good place, heaven.  She said all a body would have to do there was go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.  So I didn’t think much of it…I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said, not by a considerable sight.  I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.” 
• Many have a sad view of heaven.

• Streets of gold and gates of pearl

• Isn’t this appealing to our vanity?
• Do streets of gold really make you want to go there? Would that be a deal-breaker if they weren’t gold?

• Worship continually

• Be honest. Does an eternal worship service appeal to you? 24/7/365/eternity?
• Some of you could barely hang with the 25 minutes we had this morning.

• And then there are the greeting card companies that perpetuate this picture of heaven as a place where we sit around on clouds with our wings and our halo playing our harps.
• Summation of heaven for many = mansions, streets of gold, pearly gates, Peter standing there, angels, harps, halos, clouds, etc. – That’s not heaven!
• Listen to the words of the Apostle Paul…2 Timothy 4:6-8 “the time has come for my departure.  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me that day.”
  • The word departure means
  • Loosening of an ox from the yoke or cart
  • Pulling up tent stakes for travel…
  • Untying a ship from the dock, to set sail
  • Unchaining a prisoner
  • To finally solve a problem
• Early in the second century, a Greek Philosopher, Aristides, a non-Christian, wrote to his King about the behavior of Christians:
  • “If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.”

• Three Heavens – The word “heaven” and other forms of that word are used over 600 times in the Bible, but there are three major uses of the word.

• The first heaven we see by day. The second heaven we see through discernment. The third heaven we see by faith in Jesus Christ.
• You can get to the first heaven by plane. It takes some level of spiritual insight to understand the second heaven. And it takes Jesus to get to the third heaven.

• The Third Heaven – This is the heaven that is our focus.

• This is the heaven that Paul visited.

• 2 Cor. 12:1-4 (NIV) – I will reluctantly tell about visions and revelations from the Lord. I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know – only God knows . . . But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words . . .

Transition:  What if I told you however that the place you think is Heaven…is what many theologians call the intermediate heaven or paradise…but it is not the eternal for eternity dwelling place of the people of God…what if I told you there was a fourth place that is the eternal heaven and I use that term only for clarity purposes…let me explain and give you a lot of scripture.

2. Bookends
   1. To begin to understand eternity and God’s plan for humanity you must consider the bookends of Scripture…Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and Revelation 21 and 22 are God’s plan for Humanity…the rest of the bible is not God’s plan B…it is how to bring about original intent…through repentance, restoration, redemption, reconciliation, recovery, return, renew, regenerate, and resurrect….
   2. If you leave the RE out of the gospel and out of the plan of God you will miss the whole point…
   3. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”  (Revelation 21:1-3)   
      1. Where Jesus is, there Heaven will be. It’s profound, but it’s really very simple.
      2. I contend with you if Jesus isn’t there…it won’t be heaven at all…He is the whole point.   
      3. Here it is. The incarnation and resurrection of Christ will continue forever. It’s not that Jesus became a baby at Christmas, and then 33 years later came the resurrection and ascension and then he stopped being a man. No, the second member of the triune God will be a human being for all eternity. Now, really we should be stunned by that. But we have to move on…  
   4. We will be with Him, resurrected people living with the resurrected Christ. Physically resurrected people need a physical place to live. That physical place will be the New Earth.   
      1. Think about what this means. Often we think of Heaven as our going up into an angelic realm to live with God in His place. But in fact, the Bible says the ultimate Heaven, will be God coming down from His place to live with us in our place—the New Earth. That’s the place He’s making for us.  
      2. Christ’s name Immanuel does not mean “us with God.” Immanuel means “God with us.” Where will He be… with us? On the new earth.   
   5. We’ve heard it said, “This world is not our home.” It’s true, but it’s a half truth. We should qualify it to say “This world—as it now is, under the curse—is not our home.”   
   6. But we should also say, “This world—as it once was, before sin and the curse—was our home.” And we should add, “This world—as it one day will be, delivered from the curse—will be our home.”  
      1. In the intermediate Heaven, we’ll be with Christ, and we’ll be joyful. But it won’t be our permanent home. We’ll be looking forward to our bodily resurrection and relocation to the New Earth. (Our loved ones won’t go to New Earth before we get there. We’ll go together to colonize the New Earth!)  
3. Closing
   1. A Barna poll shows that for every American who believes he’s going to Hell, there are 120 who believe they’re going to Heaven.   
   2. Then why did Christ say in Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”   Why did Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” 
      1. I didn’t make that up. Jesus said it. I’m not his editor I’m just the messenger boy.   
   3. We assume that people are good, so it shocks us that some people would go to Hell. If you asked an angel he wouldn’t be surprised at all that people would go to Hell. Where else would they go? What shocks angels, I think, is that people go to Heaven!  
   4. Why would we go to Hell? Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In the original Greek all means all, which is why the translators chose the word “all.”   
   5. Sin separates us from God. Because we are sinners, we cannot enter Heaven as we are. God loves us just the way we are, but He loves us too much to let us stay this way. Christ came to change us.  
   6. WE ASSUME THE LOVE OF GOD EQUATES TO THE APPROVAL OF GOD…BUT IT ISN’T. 
      1. Then he will say, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matthew 25:41  
      2. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Matthew 13:40-42  
   7. The best of life on Earth is a glimpse of Heaven; the worst of life on earth is a glimpse of Hell. For believers in Christ, this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For unbelievers, it’s the closest they will come to Heaven.   
   8. Consider the love of God: He determined that he would rather go to Hell on our behalf than live in Heaven without us. He so much wants us not to go to Hell that he went to Hell for us on the cross so that we wouldn’t have to. (Let’s not point our fingers in accusation at such a God!)  
   9. Apart from Christ, our eternal future will be spent in Hell. Like any gift, forgiveness can be offered, but it isn’t ours until we receive it—and we can only do that through repenting and confessing our sins and receiving God’s gift of salvation.   
   10. I began the message by reading from Revelation 21.   
       1. [God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain… “I am making everything new!” …He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. Revelation 21:4-6