After the entire course of the narrative has been played out, after the judgment, those who believe in Jesus will enter into the full enjoyment of life that they have longed for. They will hear Jesus say something like Matthew 25:34, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
While people often refer to this kingdom as simply “heaven,” the Bible actually paints as even richer picture of a new heaven and new earth. It is a picture of promises; promises of an entirely renewed creation, promises of resurrected bodies, promises of spiritual treasure, and ultimately the promise of the presence of the glory of God.
Revelation 21:1 -4 says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 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. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’”
What is Heaven?
Heaven is the place where God most fully makes known his presence to bless. Although God is everywhere, his presence to bless is most clearly seen in heaven, and thus his glory, as the greatest of all blessings, is most clearly seen in heaven.
I. Heaven is a place
The new Heavens and the new Earth of Isaiah 66:22 will be a place so rich and good that the former things - like death, suffering, sorrow, and pain - will not even be remembered.
Heaven is the place where Jesus is. When he ascended into heaven, the fact that heaven is a place seems to be the point of the passage.
Admittedly, we can not see where Jesus is now, but that is not because he passed into some ethereal “state of being” but because our eyes are ill equipped to see the spiritual world that exist around us.
Jesus promised in John 14:2-3, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
What will this place be like? John says in Revelation 21:11-14 that God showed him “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed— on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
The city will be four dimensional, with its height being the same as its width and length. It will have a wall, “built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.”
God will make new both heaven and earth. Paul writes in Romans 8:21, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” No longer will there be thorns and thistles that resulted in God’s judgment for sin, nor will there be other distortions of nature that bring destruction. Paradise will be restored. Therefore, the world will no longer be broken, and the people will no longer be broken.
II. Heaven is a people
Those who live in the new creation will have glorified bodies, as we talked about last week, and with the curse of sin removed, all creation will be returned to its original state. Life in the new heavens and earth will include many of the good things about life here on earth, only they will all be much better.
All will eat and drink at the marriage supper of the Lamb according to Revelation 19:9. Jesus will once again drink wine with his disciples as the river of the water of life will flow through the street to the middle of the city where the tree of life will yield 12 kinds of fruit bringing eternal life. Music is prominent in the description of heaven. In fact, it appears that music and other artistic activities will be done with all excellence to the glory of God. Humans will continue to exercise dominion over the earth and its resources.
Though we will be like God, we will not be God. Therefore, we will not have infinite knowledge, not of ourselves or God, though we will know fully as we are fully known, meaning that all of God’s purpose for us will be revealed to us. So, for example, we will continue to increase in the knowledge of God who is infinite!
Finally, the renewed heavens and earth will be place where we can fully enjoy the treasures of heaven that we have been storing up during this life. This is wonderful encouragement for us to “do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith,” as Galatians 6:10 tells us. Therefore, as believers in Jesus, we ought to, according to 2 Peter 3:11-13, live “lives of holiness and godliness” while we are “waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
III. Heaven is the presence of God
Heaven should not only be conceived in spatial and materialistic concepts, but mostly as the presence of God. When John saw the city come down, the first thing he saw was that it had the glory of God, and he heard God say, “Behold, 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.”
In addition to being a place of unimaginable beauty, heaven will be a place where God’s glory is so undeniably evident that all of creation will function in a way that is in full cooperation with his will. Therefore, the simplest definition might be "heaven is the presence of God."
In the Jewish religion there was great respect for God's name. Yahweh was comprised only of consonants, "YHWH." (הוהי) There were no vowels, and the word was thus unpronounceable. It was merely formed breath. In order to avoid using God's name, the Jews used other names and designations for the name of Yahweh.
The word "heaven" became a synonym for Yahweh to post-exilic Jews. This usage is carried over into the New Testament as can be seen in the following gospel usages:
Matthew 23:22 - "he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it."
Luke 15:21 - (Prodigal son) "I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight."
John 3:27 - (John the Baptist says of Jesus) "A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given to him from heaven."
The equation of God and heaven is also evidenced in the manner in which the gospel writers use the phrases "kingdom of God" and "kingdom of heaven" synonymously. Matthew, who wrote his gospel narrative particularly for a Jewish audience, is sensitive to the Jewish evasion of the name of God and uses "kingdom of heaven" in exactly the same contexts where Mark and Luke (writing for Roman and Greek audiences respectively) use the phrase "kingdom of God." John the Baptist, and then Jesus, and then the disciples, all proclaimed to the people of Palestine, "The Kingdom of heaven is at hand!" (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 10:7). This was the good news of the gospel; what God, what heaven, was doing in Jesus Christ.
If heaven is the presence of God, then the popular mental conceptions found in many religious circles today are most inadequate. Pictures of clouds, harps, angels, pearly gates, and gold are figures that while true are merely earthly symbols of the reality to come. Surely we must pursue an understanding of heaven beyond these inadequate pictures.
In I Corinthians 2:9 Paul quotes from Isaiah 64:4 and does so in the context of the spiritual realities God has made available to Christians in Jesus Christ: "Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him." God is so much bigger than our finite abilities to conceptualize that any images that we can conceive are but inadequate images which become idols. Perhaps that is why the Jews generally refrain from speculating about "heaven," for it leads to forbidden idolatry. But Christians have always engaged in such speculation!
My intention this week was to create for you a mental picture of heaven as the presence of God. Would you want to participate in a "heaven" that was only what your mind and heart could conceive? I would not! I have very little imagination! The "heaven" that I could conjure up in my mind would be extremely boring! That is why so many people care so little about going there.
I am convinced that heaven is not boring. Man is made so as to only be content with God!
That is why the presence of God is the essence of heaven, and we must seriously ask ourselves the question, would I want to go to heaven if God were not there? What in heaven is valuable to us apart from the presence of God? Is God really enough?
Heaven is the presence of God.
When it comes to thinking about "heaven," we, with our finite minds, do not even know how to ask the correct questions. Mankind (religious people particularly), thinking as they most often do, in a worldly, spatial and temporal framework, ask questions like these:
What will I be like in heaven?
What kind of body will I have?
Will I be able to recognize those I love?
What will I be doing in heaven?
Will all of my desires be fulfilled in heaven?
What kind of mental or emotional recall will I have in heaven from my time spent on earth?
How big will my "mansion" be?
Will I have more than someone else?
Will someone else have more than me?
Our questions about "heaven" are framed in such a self-oriented perspective they only reveal that we do not have a clue what heaven is all about!
Heaven is the presence of God.
God's presence always implies that He is acting in accord with His character. Heaven is only concerned about, centered upon, the other person and the Ultimate Other, God, who should be our ultimate concern in heaven.
Heaven is the presence of God.
The earliest proclamation of the gospel by Jesus Himself was "The kingdom of heaven is at hand" in Matthew 4:17, because the presence of God was at hand in Jesus Christ. In Matthew 5:2, Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Jesus explained in Matthew 16:19 that the "key" to the kingdom of heaven was the confession that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The kingdom of heaven is present whenever the King is present, for Jesus said, "the kingdom of God is in your midst" in Luke 17:21. In Ephesians 1:3 Paul explains that "God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," in Jesus Christ. The writer to the Hebrews indicates that Christians have become "partakers of a heavenly calling" (3:1), have "tasted of the heavenly gift" (6:4), and have "come to the heavenly Jerusalem" (12:22) all in relation the presence of God the Spirit in us.
If heaven is the presence of God, then is the presence of God not actively present among us and within us right now, here on earth, as Christians? Are we not actively participating in the heavenly and spiritual expression of the character of God? Is that not what the Christian life is all about? I believe it is!
The heavenly Father is desirous of expressing His nature and character through His spiritual children, Christians, the People of God, As we presently participate in the "kingdom of heaven." The kingdom Christ died on the cross to initiate and will return again to consummate. But I declare that I am not saying that earth is heaven, or even that the church is heaven. To that I would exclaim, "Good heaven, God forbid!"
Heaven is the presence of God.
Heaven is the Consummation or completion of what Christ inaugurated or started on the cross, a continuum of the life that we now have in Christ Jesus. The life that we participate in as Christians, both now and then, presently and in the future, is the life of Jesus, eternal life; the life of the heavenly reality of the presence of God.
Heaven is the presence of God.
One old circuit preacher once turned the phrase like this, “The Creator-God so designed the creature-man so as to require the presence of the Creator-God within the creature-man in order for the creature-man to be the creature-man that the Creator-God intended the creature-man to be.” Plato even once said, “We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.”
Man is not man as God intended apart from seeking for and participating in heaven, seeking for and participating in the presence of God. Therefore, it is all the more exciting that God’s fellowship with us will be unhindered. We will forever be able to interact with him and worship him as we were designed to do. This will be the fulfillment of God’s purpose to call us, as 2 Peter 1:3 says, “to his own glory and excellence.” We will forever dwell in the presence of his glory with great joy! That is the gospel, the good news about heaven. Heaven: the presence of God in Jesus Christ. Now and forever more Amen! As the song writer testified, "Heaven came down and glory filled my soul."
Heaven is the presence of God.
Our greatest joy will be that we “will see his face.” The sight of God’s face will be the fulfillment of everything we know to be good and right and desirable in the universe. In his face, we will see and experience the fulfillment of all the longing we have ever had:
The longing for love, and power
The longing for peace, and glory
The longing for significance, and beauty,
The longing for joy, and wisdom,
The longing to know truth,
The longing for justice, holiness and goodness.
We will discover that in God’s presence there is, as Psalm 16:11 says, “fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
Perhaps the best paragraph in the whole Lord of the Rings Trilogy is when "Frodo" is honored with a song to celebrate his success in destroying the Ring of Doom.
“And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them…until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.” (The Return of the King, 933)
Like those who listened to the minstrel’s song, we who see our Savior in the last day will also be made merry with the story of his victory, the grand narrative of the Creation, Fall, Redemption and Consummation. And we too will be hushed by and wounded with the sweet words that are sung of his self-sacrifice on our behalf. We will have joy like swords—bright and piercing—and all of the pain and loss of Christ’s death (and our daily dying with him) will only mix with and enhance our bliss. We will be, finally and forever, fully aware of the reality of the presence of God.
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