10/3/21 Rev. 21:1-7 “It Is All Good!”

01 Oct 10/3/21 Rev. 21:1-7 “It Is All Good!”

10/3/21    Rev. 21:1-7         “It Is All Good!”

Many of you who follow my sermons from week to week realize that I am kind of a lectionary preacher.  This means that I preach what is put out for me well ahead of time so that I don’t start to pick sermon topics that I think you need to hear.  I have never felt that I am smart enough to do that.  It’s a long story but the short of it is that I am able to allow God to take control of the process.  But today we are going to veer off the lectionary path.  The last few weeks we talked about a very dark subject and I hope that we all found the hope in those passages.  This week I would like to talk about the other part of this subject, heaven.

From time to time people pass me a book or a story or something that they feel I might be able to use in a sermon.  I appreciate this and I have all of them put in a place where I can get to them when I need them.  And I have used many of these.  They are all good suggestions.  And by the way, if you have any sermon suggestions, don’t be afraid to give them to me.  Anyway, there was one time when a parishioner loaned me this book called “Have Heart” by Steve and Sarah Berger.  It turned out to be a great book on heaven and I figured that I talked about hell enough these last few weeks so maybe I should even it up a little and talk about heaven this week.  This book contains nothing that I didn’t already know but it was put together in such a way to make it a must read.  So today I would like to show you some of the highlights that we might find in heaven.  Hopefully we will reinforce that this place is worth everything in this world.  Heaven will be the greatest place you will ever be a part of and I want all of you to be there.

I would like to begin by telling a wonderful story from Jeff Strite.  His boy Jonathan was about 2½ years old when he found a JC Penney “Wish Book” in the house and he began to carry it all over the house.  I hope that you all remember wish books.  The big stores would send everyone in the country one of their Christmas catalogs full of toys and things for kids.  They were called wish books because all the kids would see them and wish that they had something or everything inside them.  It was always a great day, the day the Christmas catalogue was delivered to our house.  Anyway, this lad would ask his dad to read the wish book to him every chance he had.  The pictures alone were enough to excite this youngster.  Now imagine how this child would react if his dad took him to an exclusive toy store like “Toys R Us” that used to be all over the country and opened the doors and said, “Jonathan, we’ve come into an inheritance that includes everything in this store.  It is all yours.”  That would be pretty close to heaven for a youngster.

Heaven is a wonderful place that is beyond our wildest dreams.  Notice how I said that the toy store would be close to heaven for this youngster.  If this were a true story, the toy store would only be a minute fraction of what heaven is.  It would be less than 1% of what heaven is like.  We have all heard and read of what we know or think of heaven.  Today, I would like to take us to see aspects of heaven that we don’t always think about.  All of these things are found in Scripture and we tend to read over them.

The first thing I want you to know about heaven is that when you get there you are not dead.  You are very much alive and you are very active.  Look at the transfiguration.  We had Moses and Elijah come to talk with Jesus.  Moses had been so called dead for more than 1000 years and Elijah something like 700 years.  Yet here they are talking with Jesus.  We don’t know what they discussed but it probably had something to do with his trip to the cross.  But they were alive!

If we look at Matt. 22:32 we find Jesus saying, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”  He is not the God of the dead but of the living.  This is Jesus talking and He doesn’t use past tense here.  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been so called dead for centuries and Jesus is still their God.  In the story of Lazarus and Martha as told in John 11 we find, “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.  And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.”

This should be the type of news that we shout out everywhere.  Somewhere along the line we have gotten ourselves in this rut of when we die, that is it.  We learn this from many sources but the main one is Satan.  If you watch TV, you see funerals are almost never in churches on TV shows.  God is never involved with death in our media.  Maybe He should be in charge of the death of the media!  Anyway, this is where we learn this garbage.  Television for the most part wants us to forget that we have ever heard of God because if we start to listen and obey God, then they will be out of business.  And that is what we want.  We want these places out of business.  Every problem we have in our modern world can be traced back to the foul creature we call Satan!

We read that we will be alive and living in a perfect place.  Why would God tell us these things if we were not going to be alive?  It doesn’t make any sense.  The Bible tells us that there will be no more pain and no more sorrow.  All sadness will be gone.  There will be no divorce, no mean spirited people.  We will never be hungry or thirsty.  Our light will come from God himself.  Why would this stuff even be in the Bible unless, unless it was true and this was the place where we can end up?  And Jesus wants each and every one of you to end up with Him in heaven.

And how do we get there?  The only way that you can be assured that you will be in heaven is if you repent of your sins, declare that Jesus is God of your life and ask Him to live in your heart.  This is the way to heaven.  When you do this then you can begin living a life of heaven on this earth.  No matter what your problems are in this world, they will get better because you have somewhere to take them.  The problems will still be there but you will have someone to help you attack them.  You will feel better because you will be in the presence of God in this universe.  This all happens when you find your way to God here.

There is a great story I read about Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.  Some of you may remember him.  He was a great Christian and about as famous as Billy Graham was.  Anyway he was on his way to give a lecture at the town hall of some city.  He had gotten himself lost so he stopped and asked a group of boys for directions to the Town Hall.  They gave him the directions and then asked what he was going to do there.  The Bishop replied, “I’m giving a lecture on heaven and how to get there.  Would you like to come and find out?”

“Are you kidding,” one boy said.  “You don’t even know the way to the Town Hall.”  That is the beauty of this plan.  All you have to do is ask Jesus to give you the way and He will take care of the rest.  And it is all good.

So, you will be alive when we get to heaven.  You will also be busy.  You will be busy in your new body.  We can read about this in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians.  We will have new bodies.  They will be perfect bodies.  There is no more arthritis.  There will be no more cancer or asthma.  We will be able to get out of bed in the morning by jumping up.  We also have to remember that God doesn’t do things just for fun.  There is always a reason.  And the reason for the new bodies is that you have things to do.

This will not be a time when you lay on clouds all the time.  You will not be playing harps all day.  You will have jobs and one of those jobs will be praying for those of us left here.  In Rev. 8 it tells us that all the saints will be praying.  That means that your relatives in heaven will be praying as well as your friends and neighbors.  They are praying now as I speak.  So are the saints who have been there a hundred years and a thousand years.  All means all.  And it is all good!

It also tells us that they will be praying for the Father to intercede on the earth on behalf of all the martyrs.  The martyrs will even cry out louder to the Father for justice.  This means that when we get there we will still know, in a limited way, what is going on here on earth.  We will still have emotions as we cry out for justice.

You will also be worshiping in the best worship service that you could ever imagine.  There will be people from all over the globe worshiping in a loud voice.  We see this in Rev. 5.  Also in Luke Jesus tells us that all of heaven rejoices when one sinner repents.  I find it mind boggling that I stopped all of heaven and all of their activities and they rejoiced when I first accepted Jesus as my Savior.  I was that important and you are also.  Jesus loves you more than anything or anyone in the world.

You were also built to work.  We read in Genesis 2 that we were made to work before the fall.  In Rev. 7 it tells us that you will be in God’s army.  If you know anything about armies, they are busy.  This army is preparing for the battle as told in Rev. 19.  The point of all of this is that you will be busy.  Your loved ones are very busy right now as we speak in heaven.  And it is all good!

So far I have tried to show you that we will be alive and active.  I mentioned this earlier that we will also be aware of what is happening on earth in a limited way.  Please remember that God can do anything at all regardless of how we feel about it.  Remember the story of Samuel and the medium.  This was actually Samuel talking after he had died.  He was aware of what was going on here.  Please don’t get me wrong here.  Today I would say that 100% of the time, mediums are wrong and only want your money.  But God did use this one.  He also used pagan kings so we have to be careful not to put restrictions on God.  We read in Deut. 18 that mediums are an abomination.  This is true but God can use anyone as seen in the Samuel story.

If you ever think that you need to use someone like this then call on Jesus.  Jesus Christ is our medium and He is the best that there is.  One of the problems we have in this world is that we only kind of believe in Jesus and we don’t follow what He says.  Here is what I mean.  I have had several instances where I have felt that someone who has died has reached out to talk to me.  I’m sure that some of you have had the same experiences.  This is one of the things in life that we don’t want to talk about because it is assumed that this isn’t really happening.  After all, there usually isn’t any physical evidence of this.  But it does happen and I think that it happens often.  I think that it happens more to people who are really in tune with Jesus.  It could happen to anyone but it usually is with those who love Jesus and have a personal relationship with Him.

Then the question becomes “Is this from Scripture?”  The answer is a resounding yes.  Jesus came back as did Moses, Elijah and Samuel.  This happens all the time but we usually are not tuned into this.  Let us look at Hebrews 12:1.  To paraphrase this in the context of what is before this we see “Therefore-because of what I just got done telling you, because of all these great people who are in Heaven now-understand this: we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.”  I want you to take a look around the sanctuary (at your friends).  Take a good look.  There are witnesses all over the place now.  They are at this wall and that wall and up there and everywhere.  We are surrounded by the witnesses here so that we can worship.  They are everywhere.  If you can’t see them, feel them.  If the hair is standing up on your arms or if you have goose bumps, it’s because they are here.  And they love us.  They love you!

You are never alone.  The witnesses are with you at all times.  This is one of their jobs.  This is a hard job because I know it would be a hard to watch me.  But they are there and we need to be more aware of them.  We do this by knowing Jesus Christ in a personal way.

I think that the most important message here is that you were made to be in heaven.  Look at yourself.  You were made for heaven and heaven is the most wonderful place that there can ever be.  We have talked about the other place several times over the last few weeks and there is no comparison.  Both these places are real.  There is no doubt about it.  Your choice has to be heaven.

And the greatest aspect of being in heaven is that you will be with God.  He will talk with you like we talk here now.  He will help you and be with you.  You are His.  You will never be alone again because He will be with you. There will be a host of saints who have gone before you who are also with you.  If you want to have some proof of the love that Jesus has for you, just take a look at heaven.  You were made to be with Him in this wonderful place that we cannot even begin to describe.  I cannot give enough thanks for all the love that He has extended to all of you.  And it is all good.  Thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.