Will I Be Bored In Heaven? (ii)

We see in Revelation 21:5 that Jesus makes all things new. And, what’s more, these things are trustworthy and true. If you trust Jesus for this life, for forgiveness of sins, for guidance, for whatever else, why shouldn’t you trust Jesus here as well? If you’re a Christian, no matter what happens between now and then, this is how your life will end up, this is where you’ll spend eternity. Everything is going to be new. Everything is going to be exciting. Nothing is going to be sinful, nothing is going to be boring. We’ll enjoy the newness of Heaven forever.

God makes another statement in verses 6 – 8, read those with me. God can say it is done, because He knows He will do it. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, He knows the end, so He can say, before it’s done, that it is. The end of verse 6 is a promise, and what a great promise it is. What is the qualification to enter this holy city? Thirst, and poverty. He’ll give water that satisfies and He’ll give it freely. What a promise that is! Remember this is what Jesus told the woman at the well, and now this promise is for all of us. Do you feel thirsty? Do you feel poor? Well great, you’re in! and, of course, the water that satisfies is Himself. Only Jesus will satisfy, are you thirsty for Him? Thirsty for your heart to be like His? Thirsty to see His justice? Thirsty to obey Him? Verse 8 makes it clear that if you don’t thirst for Him you’ll thirst for something else.

Verse 7 tell us that the one who conquers will have this heritage. What does that mean? It means that one who stays faithful to the end will inherit, earn, gain, be given these things. We’ll be sons of God. I’m not sure it gets much better. Imagine hearing this letter read for the first time. You’ve been told that persecution is coming, that people will quit the church, that Christians will be killed and that the devil will make war on you. And then what? If you overcome, you’ll be called God’s son. Doesn’t that make it worth it. I love how the Bible appeals to our senses. It doesn’t help us fight sin just be telling us that sin is evil and destructive, although it does do that, it helps us to fight sin by telling us about something better. You could quit the church to make life easy now, or you could overcome, and be called a son of God! I love that. If you trust God and thirst for Jesus more than anything else, then everything promised in this book is yours.

But if not, verse 8 warns us there can only be trouble. We all worship something. Jesus, or ourselves basically. If we worship ourselves we’ll be filled with cowardice, faithlessness, detestable thoughts and actions, and sexual immorality. If you don’t thirst for Jesus you’ll thirst for something like that. And you’ll end up where you belong, the lake of fire, the second death. If you reject Jesus, and reject righteousness, if your thirst for the toilet water of the world instead of the spring of Jesus, you’ll spend eternity where you want to be…away from Him.

We started be asking is Heaven will be boring? The real question, I guess, is will Jesus bore us for an eternity? Is there enough of Jesus to satisfy us totally, forever? It’s like a bird worrying he’ll run out of air, like a fish worrying he’ll run out of water. There’s the old song, ‘every day with Jesus is better than the one before,’ which is not totally true in this life, but it will be true in the next. I want to let one of my heroes, JE have the last word about this; ‘To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean’

The God Who Comes Out

Last week i blogged about the parable of the prodigal son, and one of the phrases that grabbed my attention the the most was 'when he came to himself.' Sin makes us somehow less than ourselves, it makes us inhuman, but Jesus restores us.

The second phrase, or half-verse that really strikes me is verse 28b, 'his father came out and entreated him.' Whats going here? Well the prodigal son is home and the father is rejoicing. He's given him new shoes, new clothes, a new ring, he's killed the prize animal on the farm for him. But he's just heard some bad news.

'Joseph won't come in.'

'Joseph won't come in?'

'He won't come in sir.'

The older brother, still harboring resentment in his heart about his siblings theft and irresponsibility has come home from a hard day working in the field. By the sweat of his brow his determined to impress his father. His father, who had never given him so much as a young goat that he might celebrate with his friends. Maybe this would be the evening, maybe this would be the weekend. And then the sounds of songs waft towards him on the warm evening air, he sees dancing, what in the world is going on.

'Your brother's home, your father's celebrating.'

He can hardly believe what he's hearing. A hundred times he's played this out in his mind, his brother slinking home, put to work and made to pay back every penny he cost the family. That thought kept Joe going on the hard days where he had to pull double time just to stay above water. But now? It's like his father's lost his mind. Joseph isn't going in.

What does the father do? Send a servant? No, he comes himself. He leaves the crowds, the comfort and the joy, and comes and sits in the dust next to his older son. The father is the victim of a rant. I can't believe you're treating him like this, i can't believe he's getting a better deal than i am. I always obey, i always work hard, and i have nothing. Imagine the temptation of the father here. You always obey? well obey this: get inside. But no. He loves him, he talks to him, he reasons with him.

He goes outside.

The older son doesn't understand his father. he doesn't understand that, by birth, everything that is his dads is also his. He doesn't even understand this when he comes and sits on the ground next to him.

I wonder if we understand. Do we base our relationship with God on our work, or on Jesus work? Do we know that we have a God who comes out, or do we think of God as locked away in his study, waiting to be impressed. Remember who is listening to Jesus? The scribes and pharisees, grumbling that Jesus is talking and eating with sinners.

Friends, Jesus comes out to sinners! To you and me. He comes to get us, comes to invite us in, comes to share the fattened calf with Him. He doesn't want our slaving, He wants us. To misunderstand this is to be consigned to a life time of misery and uncertainty. Stop trying so hard, and come and enjoy everything that Jesus won for you. Everything that's mine is yours.

Will I Be Bored in Heaven? (i)

Do you ever worry that Heaven might be a bit boring? You’d probably never say it out loud, but you’ve thought it. Life on Earth as a Christian seems so real, so fulfilling, so good, but what will Heaven be like? And eternity seems like a long time to be sitting on a cloud, or in a church service, or whatever. Can we be sure that we’ll enjoy Heaven?

The simple answer according to the Bible, and according to these eight verses, is a resounding and loud, yes! Yes! We can be sure that we’ll enjoy Heaven forever. In fact, we can be sure that the longer we’re in Heaven the more we will enjoy it. Revelation 21:1-8 promises us that we can look forward to a new Heaven and a new earth, where we will experience God’s mercy, where we’ll be satisfied by the pleasure of His presence, and where we’ll be delighted by fellowship with Him forever. Revelation 21:1-8 breaks up into two parts, in verses 1-4 we see that the former things have passed away, and in verses 5-8 we hear Jesus saying that He is making all things new.

Remember, the last two chapters of Revelation tell the story of the rest of time. The rebellion is over, the devil, the beast and the false prophet are gone forever, sin is gone forever with them and now we can live forever in peace with God. As The Lord promised to Abraham, He will be our God and we will be His people.

So let’s look at verses 1-4 together. Verses 1 and 4 both tell us that things have ‘passed away,’ those statements bookend this paragraph and let us know that this is it’s main thrust. Something has changed forever, never to go back. The old has gone, the new has come. We learn about the new Heaven, new Earth and the new Jerusalem in verses 1 and 2. These verses represt a fulfillment of God’s promise in Isaiah 65:13 where He promises to make a new Heavens and new Earth. Well here they are. Verse 1 gives us the wide angle of the whole new creation. No sea, no sin, no groaning, no corruption, then verse 2 narrows in on the new Jerusalem, which comes out of Heaven and to Earth. Maybe we should stop thinking about us going to Heaven, and start thinking about Heaven coming here. The city is ‘prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.’ She’s pure, she’s holy, she’s beautiful, she’s ready. You and I have all been hurt by sin, by corruption, but Jesus promises us a world where none of these things exist. The new city isn’t a girlfriend who is going to break your heart, she’s your wife who will love you forever. Will we enjoy Heaven? Yes! We’ll enjoy the purity, the trust and the joy that comes from a world without sin. We can’t even imagine how good it will be there!

We can trust that these things are true because of who will be in the holy city. Look at verse 3 and 4 with me. Isn’t that the most astonishing promise. We’ll no longer be separated from God, in fact, we’ll be with Him. And where God is there is nothing to fear, nothing to ruin enjoyment. The presence of God is the greatest joy, the greatest reward the Bible knows how to offer, it’s what we were made for and we’ll enjoy it forever in Heaven! Every tear will be wiped away. Every sorrow forgotten. Every day will feel like the best day ever, because we will live with Jesus. No crying or prain. These things belong to the old order. These things, like sin, belong to a world influenced by the devil and his followers. These things belong to a world stained by sin. That world has passed away, gone forever. Jesus has made all things new.

He Came To Himself

I love the story of the prodigal son that Jesus tells in Luke 15, don't you? I love it's subtleties, who was Jesus talking to, and why does it matter? I love it's details, why does Jesus tell us the father ran, and kissed and put a ring on the finger and new shoes on the feet of his son? I love the way it subverts our expectations, i love that verse 25 does say, as you might expect, 'for i tell you, there is more joy in Heaven...'

There's been one phrase in this parable that has been lodged in my head for the last few days. In verse 17 Jesus tells us that the younger son 'came to himself,' and this started his journey home. You know the story of this young man. He asks his dad to pretend he's dead so he can go off and live the high life in the big city. He spares no expense while he's there. The King James tells us that he 'devoured (his fathers) living with harlots.' No expense was spared for this young man, he ran headlong into his new life.

And then famine. And then his new friends disappeared, there was a new show in town perhaps, or maybe they were more interested in food than parties. The young man, his clothes in rags, ends up feeding pigs. You can almost hear Jesus pharisaical audience shifting uncomfortably at this point. Pigs?! And he's feeding them?!

This is where sin leads us and leaves us. Deserted by friends. Cut off from family. Clothes in rags. Dreams in tatters. Feeding pigs, being jealous of pigs even. We throw ourselves into sin, we thirst for it, we leave our lives, our selves behind for it, blinded by it's promises. It uses us then abandons us, it promises us life, but cuts us off from the source of life.

But then we come to ourselves. We realise that it's only in communion with Jesus that we are who we are supposed to be. We're a key in it's lock, a hand in a bespoke glove. We're not limited by God, we're set free. This is what the younger son realised, surrounded by well fed pigs, wearing tattered clothes and beaten up shoes. I'm supposed to by my father's on, he realises. I'll come to myself, and go back to him,

And that's what we need to realise. Jesus made us for Himself, and we are restless, jealous of pigs even, until we find ourselves in Him. The Bible does just help us fight sin by telling us that sin is wicked, and evil, and painful, and destructive, but that Jesus is better. That when we come to Him, we come to ourselves. We don't lose our identity, we find it, and redeem it, and reclaim it, and live it forever.

Nothing Thrills Like the Gospel

One of the marks of Gospel wakefulness is the the failure of anything else to thrill the soul like the Gospel. When the heart enjoys Christ and savours His power, sin grows bitter. Even good gifts that God made recede to their proper flavours. Good things that we have made 'god things' don't cease to be good; in fact they continue to provide pleasures and satisfactions but they keep their proper functions and blessings in service to the common grace the God of glory ascribed to them. 

Gospel wakefulness doesn't lead to asceticism. It does not lead to a withdrawal from society and simple pleasures into a monastic regimen. Rather, Gospel wakefulness is foremost about orienting your spiritual system around the sun. When the sun is the center of the solar system, the planets don't cease to exist. In fact they exist more securely, more beautifully, in their proper positions and proportions. With God at the centre of your universe of worship, with the Gospel at the centre of your life all other good gifts -peoples and pleasures, thoughts and things - take their proper place and proportion in our lives. They are more pleasing and enjoyable because they give the pleasures they are designed to give and no more. 

Gospel Wakefulness, Jared C. Wilson, Pp 59-60

Book review: The Glory of Heaven. John MacArthur

Here's the headline; if you've been allured, led astray, by the recent vogue for heaven tourism books, this is the necessary antidote. And i'm sorry.

Let's deal with those two statements backwards. I'm sorry because if you've read such books as 'Heaven is for real,' or  'To Heaven and Back' two cite to popular books, then, at some level you've been let down by the church. No one who is even familiar with the Bible should need books like these to help their faith, no one who is even familiar with the Bible would accept these books as compatible with Christianity. The fact that these books sell so well points to a systemic failure in the church. And it stinks. And i'm sorry.

This book, The Glory of Heaven, is the antidote. This book will fill you with longing for Heaven, actual heaven, the Heaven we find in the Bible, not in the, at best, dreams, or, at worst, demon inspired accounts of the near dead.

The Glory of Heaven was originally published in 1996, and the recent republished work is much the same, save for a new introduction, a new chapter at the beginning, and appendices at the end which deal, idea by idea, with three of the best selling Heaven tourism books. This lack of editing is an undoubted strength of the book. Why? Because MacArthur, with his typical faithful and probing exegesis focuses this book on what Heaven is like, and that never changes. The best way to deal with error is not neccesarily to refute it, but to tell the truth. Don't just sit there and tell me that Big Macs are bad for me, feed me steak. The reasons why heaven tourism books simply can not paint a real picture of Heaven are as long as your arm, but much better to focus on truth than error. The appendices are helpful for dealing with the errors in those books, but i'm thankful, for the sake of my heart, that the majority of the book retells the Biblical visions of heaven.

MacArthur writes chapters on what Heaven will be like, what we'll be like when we're there, the new Jerusalem, and angels. Reading it made me hungry for Heaven, hungry for Jesus, and hungry for the Word. It made sin seem foolish and Jesus seem glorious. It reminded me that Heaven is glorious in the most terrifying sense of the world, and that no one who has really been to Heaven and back could come back speaking of anything other than Jesus' glory. That, after all, is the theme of Revelation.

It's a fairly short book, only 215 pages including the appendices, but, if you want a beautiful, Biblical portrait of Heaven, there's nothing i've read like it. If you're not interested in Heaven tourism books, you should read this anyway, for the sake of your faith, for the sake of your heart. And if you've been drawn away from the Bible by what those books have to say, run, don't walk to imbibe the antidote, which makes Jesus look big and us look small. Truly the theme of Heaven itself.

God Saves, God Reigns, God invites (Revelation 19:1-10)

The best thing about studying Revelation is that it confronts you with the future, and with God. It confronts you with an inescapable picture of a future that gets very bad, and then very, very good for Christians. And it paints a picture of the God we need in 2013. The God who saves, who reigns and who invites. So let’s see how God saves in verses 1-5 of Revelation 19.

It’s pretty clear from verses 1 and 2 that God saves through judgment. Looks whose speaking in verse 1, a loud multitude, the inhabitants of Heaven praising God because of the fall of Babylon. They say ‘hallelujah’ because God has reclaimed His rightful place in the world. Babylon worshiped gods that did not save, but God’s salvation is real. Babylon claimed glory for herself, but all glory in the universe is rightly given to God. Babylon set herself up as the most powerful city ever, but God’s power wipes her out. Salvation, power and glory belong to our God, and to no one else.

What’s the cause of this praise? God’s judgment! We’ve been saying all along that how we feel about God’s judgment helps illustrate how we feel about Him. Well does God’s judgment make you sing? This is how we are going to be saved, by God cutting away the sin and evil in the world, destroying it, setting fire to it, according to verse 3, and rescuing us. Does that thought make you sing? But God’s judgment is not only just in a strict judicial sense, but it’s also right in a more worldly sense. It’s vengeance. Babylon killed the saints, and now Babylon herself lies defeated. Her judgment is irreversible and eternal. Hell is infinite, because God is infinite. Sin against God is infinitely bad.

There’s two images, two themes that run through these verses. Praise and judgment. We must realize that God’s judgment is nothing to fear, but something to look forward to, as long as we are right with God. And the next time you’re tempted, lured, seduced by sin, remember that sin will only ever end in loss and regret. Remember that the smoke from her goes up forever and ever.

So we’ve seen that God saves though judgment, and in verses 6-8, we see that God reigns.  Verse 6 tells us that the crowd in Heaven turn their attention from praising God for what He’s done to praising Him for who he is. He is sovereign, He is in charge and He always has been. This is so important for us to remember in this day and age, when it’s easy to feel as if God has dropped the ball. But He hasn’t, He reigns, and He always will. Again the crowd praises with a loud hallelujah. We can praise God because His reign means the end of evil and corrupt government, His reign on earth will mean the end of the persecution of Christians. Rebellion will end, and finally the world will be ruled as it should be. Imagine how good that day will be, when everything works, at every level of life and government, as it should! No wonder the crowd rejoices, and exults, and revels in the glory of the reign of God.

And it gets better. The wedding day has come, and the bride is finally ready, and finally pure. God had first ‘married’ Israel at Sinai, but they had been unfaithful to Him. Then in Hosea 2:14-23 we learn that God will make a new covenant, a new engagement with His people, and that one day will be consummated. John the Baptist said that his joy in Jesus was like the joy of someone at their friend’s wedding. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven was like a wedding feast, and that we should be ready as a bride is for the groom. Paul taught us in Ephesians 5 that marriage only exists to give us a picture of Christ and the church.

Can you imagine what a great feast, what a great celebration this will be. Think of how a Adam rejoiced when he first saw Eve, think of how a man rejoices when he sees his wife on his wedding day, think of how we will rejoice to see Jesus on that day. Never has a bride been more faithfully pursued and won, never has a Father spent more on the celebration of a wedding, never has guests been more ready. Never has a bride been as loved as this, never has the groom done more to prove His life. There has never been a wedding celebration like this. There has never been a love to rival the love that God has for His people.

Verse 9 tells us that the church will be clothed in white, which John explains is the righteous deeds of the saints. We learned earlier in 7:14 that this crowd had washed their robes in the blood of the lamb. Faith in Jesus and being washing in His blood is the only way to righteousness.

So which ending do you want? Judgment or salvation? Victory or defeat? And finally, blessings or cursings?  Verse 9 tells us that blessed are those who are invited to this supper. Blessing here means happy, looked upon with favour by God. Those who have faith in Jesus will be invited, will be looked after, and will be loved by the God who invites. Think about how this would’ve made the original readers of this book feel. Revelation probably would’ve been read all in one go in church meetings, so they would have been faced with the fact that they were going to face awful trials, suffering and maybe even death because of their faith. But, maybe ten minutes later, they hear that Jesus is coming for them. Jesus, full of love and power, full of gentleness was going to come and get them, and take them to the wedding feast, and they’d be together for the rest of time. Imagine how that would have felt for them. It would have made everything that they went through seem like it was worth it, everything that they suffered would seem small compared to their reward.

Jesus is enough. He is overwhelmingly enough.

John is so overwhelmed by this message that he falls down and worships the angel, before being strongly rebuked. Only God is worthy of worship. We can trust John’s message because it is the spirit of Jesus.

Look at the blessing you stand to gain by following Christ. Will you be on the side of the one who saves, who reigns and who invites. Or will you be on the side of the beast, who lies and loses, who leads you astray and is conquered, will you be in the city that burns forever. Sin will only lead to regret, Jesus will only lead to joy. There are pleasures forever at His right hand. 

Preaching the Psalms

This Wednesday in Teen Church we're starting a new series in the Psalms. Well be looking at Psalm 1, 25, 32, 45 and 51 together, before leaping in Hebrews at the start of the school year. If preaching the Psalms is anything like as difficult as picking Psalms to preach, i might be in trouble.

I think there are several good reasons for preaching through Psalms, particularly to teenagers, and particularly in the summer. First of all, pragmatically, a lot of people are away in the summer, so it's hard to go through a loing book study and build any kind of momentum doing it. We spent the last school year looking at Mark, and, like i said, we'll spend most of the next one in Hebrews, but with people in and out for a couple of months, doing something that is not, strictly speaking, sequential seems to make a lot of sense.

Also, as with any book of the Bible, the way you preach helps your listeners to know how you read. How you deal with problems with a text as you preach it helps people listening know how you deal with those problems as you read it. This is especially important in the Psalms i think. The Psalms are a Christian book, a book about Jesus from beginning to end. We've lost some of that emphasis in 2013, and i'm looking forward to getting it back. Psalm 1 for example, teaches us about a righteous man. That man is Jesus, not you and me. One of the best ways to teach people to read the Bible well is to preach the Bible well.

This leads to the next point. Luther says that the Psalsm are a miniature Bible. If Jesus isn't the God of the Psalms, then who is? Andrew Bonar encourages us to read the Psalms with one eye on David, and another eye on Christ. Gordon Wenham reminds us that Psalms 1 and 2 introduce us to a rightoeus, royal man, and Psalms 3-150 tell us about this man. We need to know about this man, we need to know about Jesus. Where better than in a book packed with Jesus!

And in a book packed with Jesus through every cirucmstance of life. Want to know how to praise Jesus while you live in a cave, or when your life is under threat, or when everything is going your way, or when nothing is...read the Psalms.

Of course, there are dozens of other reasons, and dozens of themes in the Psalms that we won't cover in just five, but that's no reason for not starting off...