What is heaven like?

2 Timothy 4:6-18 New International Version (NIV)

⁶ For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. ⁷ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸ Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Personal Remarks

⁹ Do your best to come to me quickly, ¹⁰ for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. ¹¹ Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. ¹² I sent Tychicus to Ephesus. ¹³ When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.

¹⁴ Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. ¹⁵ You too should be on your guard against him, because he strongly opposed our message.

¹⁶ At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. ¹⁷ But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. ¹⁸ The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

I took the service at Temora Uniting today.  (Temora is a small town in NSW, 80 ks from Wagga Wagga). These are my thoughts on this passage:

This is Paul’s farewell discourse really.  It has lots of personal touches, and advice he gives Timothy for his continued ministry.  He talks about being poured out like a drink offering;  He talks of fighting the good fight and finished the race, and keeping the faith.  The poignancy of this reaches us down the years.  Notice right at the end in verse 18 he says that The Lord has delivered him from the lion’s mouth and will deliver him from every evil attack.  This was a time when Christians were fed to the lions and Paul knew this might be his fate.  Most scholars agree he died a martyr’s death. When he talks about deliverance, he isn’t talking about physical deliverance; he’s talking about deliverance via death, to the world beyond. 

This is what Matthew Henry says:  “With what pleasure he speaks of dying. In verse 6 He calls it his departure; though it is probable that he foresaw he must die a violent bloody death, yet he calls it his departure, or his release. Death to a good man is his release from the imprisonment of this world and his departure to the enjoyments of another world; he does not cease to be, but is only removed from one world to another”(end of quote)

Paul is contemplating heaven.

One of my friends, after a trip to the UK, posted a photo of a beach scene somewhere in Scotland, and this prompted a friend of my friend gave this description of an experience she had recently at the beach.   

She was visiting Loch Aird Gorge on the Great Ocean road. (For those reading from another country, this is a beautiful coastal landscape which is at the bottom of Australia, featuring chucks of land which have separated from the mainland and are called "The twelve apostles" - although there are now only 9 of them;  the others having disappeared into the Southern Ocean)

 

She wrote:  “ I had one of the most surreal experiences of my life there. It was the height of Summer, in Dec '94 and a scorcher of a day, so I had taken my shoes off to walk on the beach. When I got to a cave, I walked in quite a way into the pitch black. There was shallow  water flowing through the cave which was freeeezzzing cold on my bare feet! I remember after a while when my eyes had become accustomed to the dark, I turned around and looked out to see beyond the mouth of the cave... golden sand and blue ocean. It was the weirdest sensation, being in a freezing cold, pitch black cave yet only 20 or 30 metres or so away, it was a roasting summer's day. I've never forgotten that! Venturing in there was a foolish thing to do in hindsight. I didn't have a torch at all, and could easily have stood on something nasty with my bare feet or worse still, fallen down a hole. But I came to no harm and have a lasting memory of a very special experience.”

This experience might describe what our expectation of heaven might be;  our earthly existence is darkened at times, we are so prone to our physical limitations of cold and heat and illness etc; yet we always look out onto the bright landscape of heaven, through a portal. We can sometimes just about see the sunlight and the blue and the promise of that space with God, on eternity's horizon.. There is even the idea that as our eyes become adjusted to the darkness, we develop "heavenly eyes", so that we see more clearly on earth, what is really important (as you could see the dimensions etc of the cave). Our lives are dark sometimes (as in the cave experience), but we always have the promise of passing back to the light, either here, when the grief/pain is overcome, or when we go to heaven.  I think this is what Paul was thinking about.

How do we get to heaven?  Do we have to be good enough?  There are many people who think this way.  If you are a good person, you’ll go to heaven.  But who measures goodness?  If you are a sliver short of a mass murderer, do you get to heaven?  If you live a fairly moral life, will that ensure your ticket to paradise?  But who measures what morality is?  Some people say that if what you do doesn’t hurt anyone else, then it’s OK.  And perhaps if you only have a tiny slip up in the morality department, you still get to heaven. 

If we think in this way about heaven, then we might be tempted to become like the tax collector in the Luke 18. “I’ve never looked at a porn site, so I’m better than that neighbour of mine who is always downloading dirty pictures”.  And I never swear, so I’m better than most people”.

While there’s a lot to be said for observing the moral and ethical guidelines of the Bible, and especially for observing the golden rule;  it certainly makes us stable, kind and happy people - I’m not sure it gets us to heaven.

Some people think that God is only a forgiving God, not a judge, and that means they can do whatever they like in their life and when they die, God will still welcome them to heaven.  I’m not sure that’s right either.

What gets us to heaven, is acceptance that we cannot do it ourselves, no matter how good we are, because our best will still never quite come up to the perfection of God.  We will always be dogged by our humanity.  We ask God to forgive and accept us the way we are.  We believe in Christ’s resurrection, and his promise and ability to resurrect us.

That brings me to my second point.  What will heaven be like?  We can’t really know. We know it will be a place where there are no more tears.  It will be a happy place;  it will have God in it and all will be well.  These are just my ideas really.

It will be a place of reunion, I think, where we meet our family and friends who have gone before.  That will be a great day, I think. Love is the thing that endures.  God would be going against his own divine precept if love born on earth didn’t continue in heaven.

It will complete our life here.  Our questions will be answered;  all perplexities and tragedies will be explained;  we will see our life on earth from the heaven side of our lives, and all will make sense.

I think there will be work to do.  It might get a bit boring otherwise. But it won’t seem like work.  It will be a place of harmony.  No workplace bullying here.  No hunger, no want of any kind. 

There are some lovely verses in Isaiah 65:17-25, which describe a lovely picture of heaven

Verse 17says the former things won’t come into our minds;  no bad memories. Verse 25 says everything harmful will be banished;  verse 18 says there’ll be joy and gladness;  verses 20 to 25 says there will be fullness of life, security, rewarding work, fellowship with God, and peace

But we don’t really know what it will be like.  Even as we look at these Isaiah verses, we can’t really comprehend it.  If we knew all things in heaven and earth, we’d be like God and the knowledge would be too much for our finite earthly consciousness.  It would be like trying to explain our world to an ant.

So here we are, in between these two worlds so to speak.  We await here, living in our physical bodies, and look to heaven to come.  We live in the “promised but not yet” time;  and while most of us, enjoy our life in this “waiting state”, and probably hardly ever think about heaven, we are, still, in a sense “waiting to be called home”.  When I was a girl on the farm, I’d be outside playing with my siblings and we could be a long way from the house.  But we’d always know when it was dinner time because my mother had a cowbell, which she would take outside and ring, when it was time to come in.  My father would hear it, and we’d all down tools and toys and come in for dinner.  We all of us will experience a time when, for us, the heavenly cowbell will ring, summoning us home.  It ought not be an experience to dread, even though we will not know the manner of our going, or the time.  God is in charge of that.  We only have to live, always in the knowledge that this place we inhabit now, in our physical bodies, is not our final destination.

Life is precarious;  it is unpredictable.  The truth is, we could be called home any day, or we could be here for many more years.  So, we should live every day, in a sense, as though it will be our last.  We should give ourselves over every day to the indwelling spirit of God.  This is a lovely way to live;  this living a day at a time, according to the will of God, so that whatever our changing circumstances are, our constant is God, and our peace is knowing that at the end, there will still be God. 

And because his mercies constantly renew us, even while our bodes are getting older every day and subject to decay, our spirits stay fresh and invigorated. Some years ago now, my brother send me a birthday card, with a picture of a young woman on the front, with a hole in the front page, so you could see the woman’s head on the page underneath.  The front cover was a shapely and beautiful young woman (in cartoon style), but when I opened it, the picture was of a hag woman, with wrinkles and everything drooping, and a caption which said “who on earth put my head on this wreck of a body?!?”  Our bodies do indeed start to decay and age, even as our spirit stays the same. God can put a new and vibrant spirit in our aging bodies;  a spirit which enables us to live with love, service, dignity, gratitude, peace in a world which is held in the tension of the promised but not yet;  a world which is changing, uncertain, sometimes very evil, violent, unforgiving.  We are like changelings.  We live in the world of the here and now amongst people whose pursuit of their own pleasure knows no bounds;  yet here we are, with this seed of eternity inside us quietly and patiently and obediently waiting for our “cowbell call” to go home.  , We can rejoice that we are held and valued by God, as we live out his precepts here and now, amidst a world often dark with its own sin. 

We can’t know all the answers about heaven;  trying to understand heaven is like trying to put a huge hot air balloon into a shoebox.  But I’m sure of one thing.  God, having begun a good work in us, and setting our feet on that last, best journey, will not allow us to tumble off it or led off into the abyss. Like Paul, we trust God to bring us safely to His heavenly Kingdom.

Ephesians 1:11-23

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians%201:11-23&version=NIV

The thought that always comes to mind when I read these is that they describe a Supreme deity;  a sovereign deity.  Is God sovereign? 

Verse 11 says “we have obtained an inheritance; we are predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to His will”.  These verses relate to salvation – inheritance, and we won’t go down the predestination path today.

I believe God certainly had a broad and definite plan for our salvation.  He willed it,  he brought it about .  So, if he had such a purpose and will in this regard, surely it would stand to reason, He does so too, in relation to what happens to us in other ways too.  The important words here are “purpose and His will”.  He works all things according to his will.  He doesn’t cause bad things to happen, but He manages it, allows it, and uses it to reveal himself to us.  Romans 8:28 declares this …. All things work together for good, for those who love him and are called to his purpose. So this passage paints a picture of a Supreme Loving Being. In these verses, we find the following:

·        Verse 11 describes God as having the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.  Accomplishes all things;  he decides it and he does it.  All things, not just the nice stuff, but all things, according to his purpose and will.

·        immeasurable power,  verse 19;  immeasurable;  unable to be measured.  That’s the power of God.  These are dimensions which are off our scale

 

·        he raises from the dead, verse 20.  He used physical death for His purpose ie to raise us to a life far above anything we know here. And if he can raise from the dead, then he must have supreme power over everything.

·        He is seated in heaven, above every other authority;  above every other name or dominion.  Unassailable;  power over all below;  power over all that exists;  power over all that ever was and ever will be.

·        He is above every other name in this age and the next

·        He has all things under his feet.

·        Right at the end of the passage, Paul brings this picture of Supremacy full circle.  The One whose purpose is to save us, fills the earth and heaven, is also the One who can, as in Vs 22, be in His church, his body;  us;  not just in community, but dwells personally in us in all his fullness, through the HS.

So we have a picture of a supreme God, Father, son and HS.  And the hard question is “If he is supreme and loving, why does he allow awful terrible, unthinkable things to happen, especially to the very young, the innocent, the vulnerable.  Why does He allow people to be bullied, abused, oppressed;  why does he allow people to suffer?

It seems to me that the terrible things that can happen to us fall into two categories;  firstly, the things that just happen to us, out of the blue, from a seemingly random, unknown source, and secondly, the things that others do to us, which cause us pain or hurt. 

Last year, one of my daughter’s friends was killed in a car accident at.  She was a lovely young Christian woman, just 21;  married just over 12 months. A huge B-double rammed into her as she turned off the road.  On the same highway, there are people transporting drugs;  there are mafia bikie gangs;  there are crooks and pedophiles travelling on that road;  we can’t understand why this young life was taken in an instant.  Why not one of those others? This is one of those things which just seem to happen;  a freak accident that makes no sense.  We find it hard to believe in a Sovereign God who allows this sort of thing to happen.  I don’t think God causes this sort of tragedy, and  I can’t believe God deliberately sends us awful things, for our own good;  that would make him some kind of cosmic sadist.  And I guess, in the face of this type of suffering,  his sovereignty seems a fettered, beaten thing, just mopping up tragedy after the event, by bringing good out of it.  I have no answer for that, except to say that if God’s power was always used to prevent awful stuff, we would already be living in a sort of heaven.

 The second type of suffering is of the type done to us deliberately, by someone else.  Of the two, I’ve found this type harder to cope with.  The random stuff;  the stuff that seems to be nobody’s fault is less personal in a sense, and it’s easier to put it down to some mystery that God has under his care. But deliberate hurt and betrayal at the hands of someone else, is very hard to understand and come to terms with.

I’m sure, for instance, God could have made sure that one of the very many attempts to kill Hitler, succeeded. We could argue that killing him would be descending to the same level as he was.  But there’s also no denying that if one of these attempts had succeeded, especially early in the 1930’s, millions of innocent people would not have died;  war may have been avoided altogether. 

It was really uncanny how many times Hitler escaped assassination.  Perhaps the most concerted was in 1944, when a man named Claus von Stauffenberg made several attempts.  He was backed by a group of about 9000 Nazi resistance fighters.  All his attempts failed for one reason or the other;  there were other people who tried to kill Hitler too, but no-one succeeded.  Some escapes were really uncanny quirks of fate;  On one occasion, a bomb planted in a conference room went off minutes after Hitler had left the room, and he was unharmed.  On another, a bomb was placed in the lectern where he was speaking.  But he, uncharacteristically, cut his speech short and the bomb missed it’s mark.  Perhaps the quirkiest was when a bomb placed in a briefcase under the table where he was seated, went off, but Hitler was unhurt, because one of the people also seated at the table unwittingly pushed the briefcase behind a leg of the table.  The bomb went off, but the stoutness of the oak table protected him from the blast.  Others at the table were killed, but Hitler was unscathed.

I find this baffling;  that this evil man escaped death so many times, yet this lovely young Christian woman, was killed in a freak accident on the highway. Where is God in these matters? 

Why is it that sometimes evil people can go on and on with their plans, seemingly unaffected by the sovereignty of God?  I have no answer except that God cannot make someone behave with compassion and peace if they have made up their minds not to.

During the reign of Hitler, there were two brothers.  One was Hitler’s right hand man, responsible for setting up the concentration camps;  responsible for killing millions of Jews.  His name was Herman Goering.  Herman had a brother called Albert,  and Albert was responsible for saving many Jewish people.  He hated what the Nazi’s were doing to his countrymen.  He and his brother were close, despite their differences in politics and ideals.  Herman liked to show of his power to Albert and so Albert was able to use his brother’s influence and name, to free many Jewish people.  One of these was Franz Lehar.  He wrote “The Merry Widow”(that lovely operetta)  Another was the wonderful singer Joseph Schmidt.  If you haven’t heard of Joseph Schmidt, he was the Austrian equivalent of Peter Dawson.

We are given the power to overcome evil with good.  We are given a choice as to how we will behave.  God will not interfere with that free will.  God is sovereign, but he would not intervene in Herman Goering’s life, or Hitler’s life, even though it would have saved much suffering by innocent people. 

It must seem to us at times, as though God isn’t supreme. And it seems sometimes that evil people always win.  But it’s not the case.  Seasons of evil always come to an end. Consider these words from Ps 73

³For I was envious of the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked. ⁴For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. ⁵They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people. ⁶Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them like a garment. ⁷Their eyes swell out with fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. ⁸They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. ⁹They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues range over the earth. ¹⁰Therefore the people turn and praise them, and find no fault in them. ¹¹And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” ¹²Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. ¹³All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. ¹⁴For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning. ¹⁵If I had said, “I will talk on in this way,” I would have been untrue to the circle of your children. ¹⁶But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, ¹⁷until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. ¹⁸Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. ¹⁹How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!

I’ll tell you what I believe.  I believe God is sovereign.  I believe that everything is ultimately under His control, even the freak accidents and the illnesses. I think that nothing happens to us, without his saying it’s OK, or not OK.  And if it’s not OK, it doesn’t happen to us. .  I think the world, spiritual and physical, is a broken place;  almost perfect, but subject to imperfection all the time;  full of good people and bad people;  flawed and faulty, who set up flawed and faulty systems and who are at the mercy of their ambitious human nature.   The world is full of people who chose to be evil or selfish or ignorant or uncaring.  The world is also full of people who chose to be a positive force;  who are willing to help and care for others.  There are extreme examples at both ends of the spectrum, and then there’s us common, ordinary folk, who are in the middle. And even the physical world is subject to this fallen state.  Accidents happen; illnesses strike us down seemingly willy-nilly.

This can seem a short, trite answer to this most anguished question..  It’s a fairly unsatisfactory answer when we are faced with our own personal tragedy. 

But for me at least, it is, after the strident, shrieking voice of grief has calmed a little, the answer which makes sense.  God, even through accident and illness knows how many days we have, before we’ve even lived one of them.  We don’t understand it, but then God is God and we are frail humanity.  Of course we don’t understand it.  Because it’s not for us to decide these things.  God judges our hearts and numbers our days. We, his creation, cannot rule over such matters. He is the Alpha and Omega;  he has control over life and death.  We can trust him with this purpose.

When people hurt or bully us, we want God to be an avenging force, stepping in to give us victory over those who seek to destroy us.  We want God to spare us from hurt and suffering.  We want God to cause them to fall into their own traps. 

But the reality is, He often doesn’t, in any tangible way.  The limitations of our earth-life are sometimes painful and perplexing and damaging to us. Life can be messy, illogical, difficult, challenging, scary, depressing, fragile, unpredictable.  The only way we can get through it with joy, is by inviting Jesus to walk the journey with us. God allows evil to touch us but He never leaves us to cope with it on our own.  God’s power is to be found amidst our suffering;  comforting, triumphant and restorative. He has his own purposes, but He always has our spiritual well-being in mind, despite the pain sometimes of our physical, mental and emotional circumstances

May God himself attend us, as we wrestle with the hard questions of life.  Amen