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Well, this week, some of you
may have seen an interesting article online or in a paper,
went something like this. A Presbyterian minister died
this past Sunday in Florida while he was delivering a sermon. The
topic of his sermon, going to heaven. Reverend Jack Arnold
told the congregation at Covenant Presbyterian Church that his
favorite Bible verse was Philippians 121, for to me to live is Christ,
to die is gain. Then he said, when my work is
done, I will go to be with Jesus, and that will be gain. And when
I go to heaven, at that point, Arnold paused briefly, looked
up, swayed slightly, and grabbed the podium before falling to
the floor. He had suffered a massive heart attack. Well, one other
point here, it says before collapsing, Arnold quoted the 18th century
Bible scholar, John Wesley, who said, until my work on this earth
is done, I am immortal. But when my work for Christ is
done, I go to be with Jesus. Well, it caught my attention
not only because of the novelty of it, but also because I had
just taught a Sunday school lesson on heaven, and had been for the
past several weeks. So I'm feeling fine. I have a little bit of a cold.
I'm not expecting an epidemic of this sort of thing. I mean,
I desire to go be with Christ, but I think for, at least for
the sake of my family at this point, I think the Lord has me
here at least for another 30 minutes or so. So who knows CPR? Rob Carmen's out of town, but
okay. But feeling good. Well let's
finish up a little bit of what I was talking about last week.
We had looked at a couple of visions of heaven given in scripture. Two of the main ones being in
Ezekiel 1 and another one being in Revelation chapters 4 and
5. And really much of the space in Revelation is in heaven
itself, even the first few chapters. John has a vision of Christ in
heaven and Christ delivers messages to him for the churches. We saw
in chapter 4 that John has a vision of heaven and a throne and the
one who sits on it has his glory radiating from him. This is a
picture of God the Father himself. He sees these strange-looking
living creatures with a face like a lion, another one looked
like a calf, a face like a man, the fourth have a face like a
flying eagle. Each of these living creatures
have six wings and they sing, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come. We also saw these people, these
24 elders, we discussed a bit what that maybe represents, many
people believe it's representatives of the redeemed church, although
it's impossible to say for sure. Some say they're angels, but
I tend to think that they are elders because they are clothed
in white robes and have crowns of gold on their heads, which
are features of the redeemed elsewhere in the Bible. And then
we stopped at the end of chapter four, let's look a bit at verse
five. I don't want to get into too much detail in chapter five.
What I really want to do is focus on what is going on in heaven
right now and how this amplifies that. Let's look at Revelation
five and we'll just read this whole chapter and I'll make a
few comments on it. And I saw in the right hand of him who
sat on the throne, that is God, the father, a scroll, a scroll
written inside and on the back sealed with seven seals. Then
I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy
to open the scroll and to loose its seals? And no one in heaven
or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll
or to look at it. So I wept much, because no one
was found worthy to open and read the scroll or to look at
it. But one of the elders said to me, Do not weep. Behold, the
Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has prevailed
to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals." Now this scroll
here, is not really identified as to what it represents. Much
in this passage is symbolic, of course. In the ancient times,
of course, they didn't have books like we have today with pages
you turn over, but they had often used scrolls, and they would
write books on scrolls. The early parts of some of the
Bible were written on scrolls, certainly. But they would also
use scrolls for legal documents, for deeds, for contracts, and
things like that. And they would seal these scrolls,
like you've probably seen in movies or maybe even done yourself,
with some wax or some other indicator that would protect this scroll
from being opened. Or if it was opened, you would
know that it had been violated in some way. And so these scrolls,
in particular, probably in this case is referring to a deed or
a contract. Now, what exactly this scroll
or contract represents is a matter of some discussion. John MacArthur
says that this scroll is the title deed to the universe, that
only Christ is worthy to open And that's a symbol of possession.
And we know that Christ, of course, is going to conquer this world,
bring all things into subjection under Him. And while that is
true, that may be extending this metaphor a bit too far. Matthew
Henry calls this scroll the book of the divine counsels. And based
on the subsequent chapters in Revelation, as the seals are
open, you see these various councils or prophecies coming to pass,
these steps in the revelation of history. In chapter 6, we
see a seal open and a white horse comes and someone on it who has
a bow and a crown was given to him, he went out conquering to
conquer and so forth. A number of seals are opened and as each
seal is opened, another event happens in the unfolding, the
redemptive history. So I think the scroll just refers
to those sealed elements of the future that God hasn't revealed
to us yet, but in Christ he has. And so Christ is worthy to reveal
these things to us. let's continue to read verse
six, and I looked and behold in the midst of the throne and
of the four living creatures and in the midst of the elders
stood a lamb as though it had been slain having seven horns
and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God sent out
into all the earth now we saw this phrase seven spirits of
God last time in chapter four verse five and the seven spirits
of God is not referring to seven distinct persons but I believe
the Spirit himself in all his fullness. A seven is a number
of completion or of perfection. And so this is the Spirit of
God in his full ministry, his full person. We also looked at
an interesting passage in Isaiah 11, where there are seven features
or ministries of the Spirit mentioned there, and that may have been
echoed in this passage. Verse seven, then he came and
took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne.
And this lamb, of course, is Jesus Christ. Although the name
isn't used here. Now, when he had taken the scroll,
the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before
the lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense,
which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song,
saying, You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of
every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us
kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on the earth.
Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the
throne, the living creatures, and the elders. And the number
of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, with thousands
of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who
was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength,
and honor, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as
are in the sea, And all that are in them, I heard saying,
blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits
on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever. Then the four
living creatures said, amen. And the 24 elders fell down and
worshiped him who lives forever and ever." So we see again, one
of the main features of heaven besides glory is praise, worship
of God. We see at least three different
songs sung here by those in heaven and those who are on earth and
those who are under the earth. So the whole creation is worshiping
Christ here, the slain lamb who has been raised from the dead. Any questions so far about these
visions of heaven? Just sort of wrapping that up. We will
look later in the coming weeks at what we find in the end of
Revelation when we see the new heavens and the new earth. Much
like after we die and go to be with Christ, our salvation isn't
quite complete yet because we still have this resurrection
of the body that we anxiously await for. In a similar way,
heaven is not complete yet because there is going to be a time when
the current heavens and earth will be done away with, the created
universe, and God will make a new heavens and a new earth. this
new heavens and new earth will, heaven itself, the presence of
God, is not going to be a separate place anymore as it is now. It's
going to be, in a sense, wedded to this physical earth, which
will be renewed. It will be a heavens and earth
without sin, and God will have his dwelling place with men forever.
And so, this, again, this vision of heaven, I think, is in a way
incomplete because there is still more that God is going to accomplish,
and we'll look at that in the coming weeks in Revelation 21
and 22. For right now, I want to continue
on and go back to the confession and look a little bit about the
intermediate state again. We talked about that for some
time. What happens after we die? We looked at various views, various
false views in particular. One of the false views was the
view that most souls in a state of grace, that is, souls that
aren't damned outright on death and go to hell, would go to purgatory. And the word purgatory is from
the word that we use for purging, for cleansing. And the purpose
of purgatory is to further cleanse us from sins, to give us temporal
punishment for our sins. Now, we looked at this in depth.
This view has no scriptural support. We know that Christ has paid
the penalty for our sins, so there is no condemnation or even
punishment for us who are in Christ Jesus. When we die, as
we'll see later, we go to be with Christ. There is no intermediate
state where those who are in Christ will suffer any punishment
at all for our sins. Another view is called soul sleep,
that is, the soul is unconscious until the resurrection, and again,
there is no scriptural support for that. There's the view called conditional
immortality, where those who are in Christ will be given eternal
souls, or their souls will be given an eternal aspect to them. Those who are not in Christ will
cease to exist upon death or sometime later. And then there
are some who sadly, more commonly today, I think, hold this view
of second probation and a probation You might think of this time
on earth as a probationary period to see if, at least from a human
perspective, people will believe on Christ and be saved. There
are some who think that there will be a second probation opportunity
after death where people will say, okay, you had one chance,
here's your second chance. Will you believe in Christ or
not? And particularly for those who maybe never heard the name
of Christ, maybe those who died in infancy, God will give a second
chance. But again, there's no scriptural
support for this view either. And the truth is, if somebody
rejects Christ in this life, how are they going to receive
Christ in the next life? You might think, because they
will see Christ in his glory, that perhaps that will cause
them to repent. But remember, salvation requires
a change of heart, and that has to be done by the Spirit of God.
It's not done because we make a decision for Christ, ultimately.
If somebody doesn't have that spirit wrought work of salvation
in their heart, though they see Christ in his glory, we see Christ
on his throne, they will not believe. Remember there were
thousands who saw Christ on this earth and while his glory was
veiled in a way, he was the spotless lamb of God. They saw his ministry,
they saw his works. And many did not believe. They did not believe because
their heart was not regenerated. They were not able to believe.
And so, they were condemned in their sins. So, while it may
seem nice from a human's perspective to give a second chance, you
know, we always like to give people a second chance to do something, there
is no basis for this in Scripture. And even if there were, it would
sort of be meaningless because they wouldn't be enabled to believe
in Christ even after death without the Spirit doing the work. So those are several views of
what happens to souls after death. I want to focus particularly
now on what happens to the souls of the righteous who die as the The confession says, after death,
the souls of the righteous are made perfect in holiness, are
received into paradise where they are with Christ, and behold
the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption
of their bodies. So the biblical view then is
that those who die in Christ go immediately into heaven. Heaven,
which is the dwelling place of God the Father and of Christ
himself. Let's look at a few passages that support this. Luke
23 verse 43 at this point Jesus is hanging
on the cross as you know there are two others crucified with
him criminals who deserve to die there was one on the right
one on the left and we know from another gospel that both of these
criminals were hurling abuse at Christ you saved others why
can't you save us and yet We know here from Luke that one
of those criminals began, for whatever reason, to see Christ
as who he truly was. Look at verse 39. Then one of the criminals
who was hanged, blasphemed him, saying, If you are the Christ,
that is, the Messiah, save yourself and us. Presumably these criminals
were Jewish, and so they would have some knowledge of who the
Christ, the Messiah, was supposed to be. And yet he said, Why don't
you save us, if you are the Christ? But the other answering said,
Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation?
And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our
deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said to
Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
So we see his heart changed on this cross. Even as he sees the
Messiah dying on a cross, he had the faith from God to see,
first of all, Jesus as innocent, as unworthy of his death, and
yet he had the faith to see Christ in his kingdom. Imagine seeing
a dying king on a cross, and yet having the faith to believe
that this man would come back in his kingdom. Then Jesus said,
verse 43, assuredly I say to you, today you will be with me
in paradise. So we have a promise from Jesus
that this thief would be with him today, on this day. He didn't say, assuredly I say
to you, someday after you hang around in purgatory for a while,
I'll see ya. Or maybe your soul will be asleep
for a while until the resurrection of the body. No, Jesus says today
you will be with me in paradise. He assures him of his actual
presence with Jesus that very day. This word paradise is from
a An old Persian word meaning park or enclosure. We have some
fancy parks like this today that are walled around, enclosed,
beautiful places. And it's used in the Greek translation
of the Old Testament for the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2 and
3 in particular. And it's only used elsewhere
in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 12 verse 4, which I'll read really
quickly. Remember, this is where Paul
had a vision 2 Corinthians 12, Paul has a vision
of heaven. He says, such a one, verse 2,
was caught up into the third heaven. He's speaking of himself.
Verse 4 says, he was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible
words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. So Paul here
talks about paradise and heaven as being the same thing. And
Revelation chapter 2, The word is also used, Revelation 2 verse
7. This is the letter to the church
of Ephesus. He who has an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will
give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of
the paradise of God, or garden of God. And we see later on this
tree of life is in the new heavens and the new earth. So we see
paradise is, in a sense, a return to the original Garden of Eden,
and yet one that's even more exalted than that, because the
original Garden was corruptible, and those who were in it were
potentially sinners. But once all things are made
new, at the end, there will be this new heavens and new earth
where sin cannot touch. It cannot touch us, it cannot
touch the Garden. that will be an even greater paradise for
us. This garden will be infinitely greater, and it will be completely
incorruptible. So there's Jesus' promise to the thief on the cross.
Look with me, since you may be in 2 Corinthians already. 2 Corinthians
chapter 5, verse 1 to start with. Paul has just spoken in chapter
four of the many ways that he's been afflicted as a servant of
Christ. And yet he says in verse one
of chapter five, for we know that if our earthly house, this
tent, referring to his earthly body, is destroyed, we have a
building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens. I believe that's a reference to his, not the house of that is heaven itself, but rather
that, since he's talking about bodies in this sort of figurative
way as houses and buildings, he's talking here about his resurrection
body. Verse six, we are always confident knowing that while
we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for
we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased
rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the
Lord. So here, there's two places where you can be. You can be
in the body, absent from the Lord. You can be absent from
the body and present with the Lord. There is no middle ground
there. Then we see also Paul's hope in Philippians chapter 1
verse 23. Paul again, in this context,
is talking about his physical death, which will occur at some
point. He doesn't know exactly when. Verse 21 says, for to me
to live is Christ, to die is gain. If I live on in the flesh,
this will mean fruit for my labor, yet what I shall choose I cannot
tell. For I am hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart
and be with Christ, which is far better. So again, we have
these two different states. Paul would be in the flesh, ministering
or he is departed from the flesh and with Christ. He doesn't anticipate
any sort of intermediate step for him. And you might think,
well, maybe Paul, because he's a super apostle, would go straight
to the presence of God. And maybe for us, peons, us lesser
Christians, we need to be purged in some way. We need to sort
of go to a holding tank. Well, Why would Paul communicate
his hope to those who don't have quite the same hope? That would
really be a way of dashing their own hopes. He doesn't put people
like us in a separate category from himself. Paul always includes
us as fellow workers, as fellow saints in Jesus Christ. Paul's
hope can be our hope as well. Why don't I stop here? I want
to talk further next time, Lord willing, about the phrase in
the Confession that talks about the souls of the righteous being
made perfect in holiness. We have something of a conundrum
here. We know in our flesh, though we are redeemed, we are in Christ,
we've been forgiven of our sins, we are new creatures in Christ,
we still have this sin that hangs on to us. How is it that we,
even after we die, are fit to enter the presence of God? What
happens there? How is it possible that... You
can almost have some sympathy for this idea of purgatory because
you know that you are sinful. You know that you need cleansing.
Even as Christians we need continual cleansing and there is this flesh
that hangs on to us. And flesh is not just a physical
thing. How is it that we are fit as
Christians to enter the presence of God? How does that that sanctifying
work of the Spirit sort of wrap up as we go to be in the presence
of Christ. And we'll look at that a little
bit next time. Any questions before we close? Yeah, Job is
an interesting book to look at and it's You need to always, of course,
when you're studying the Bible, interpret what is unclear on
the basis of what is clear. For one thing, saints in the
Old Testament didn't have a very clear idea, as far as we can
tell, of what awaited them after death. We see that David says
in one of the Psalms, I believe, that those who are dead cannot
praise you. If I die, how am I going to praise
you? That doesn't mean that nobody
praises God after they die. But David's thinking of himself
in sort of physical earthly terms, is that his voice will be silenced
on this earth as a testimony maybe to God. In a similar way,
those who are dead are insensible maybe to the things on this earth.
They go to another place where they don't really participate
in things in this world. And so I think from that perspective,
I think it's where Job is coming from. Yeah, so he had some idea
of a resurrection. Well, I think he said, when he
says, in my flesh I shall see God, that was his hope of a resurrection. And we don't know how much he
understood about it. He didn't have 1 Corinthians
15 to read about, or Christ, the firstborn from among the
dead, to look at. But they had some idea of that.
I guess he wasn't stating it. Possibly. I need to look at the
passage to find out. Yeah. Sure. I do remember, though,
in my studies, people bringing that up in a way of affirming
the idea of soul sleep. But I think it's more clear to
see in Paul's explicit teaching, sort of non-poetic discourses
on the subject. It's a lot safer to go that way.
Yeah, Tom. Yeah. If it's an inspired book,
then he should add some clue as to what's going on. I took
it the same way, that he's just talking about he's here on earth,
and when he goes to the grave, his physical body can't minister
to other people with praises and that sort of thing. It's
the only book in the Bible that I know of where he says, yet
in my flesh will I see God. And so I just hate to take anything
away from Job on that. I'm kind of curious about, I'm
just not sure if that's the direction you're going or not, but are
you setting up like two scenes of heaven, the one heaven that
we have in Revelation, which is the heaven that's currently
there where the elders and the saints and all are gathered around
the throne and they're praising God, and another heaven that's
at the end of the world where we get a new earth and a new
heaven and just a different existence whatsoever, or is this, A lot of features of it will.
The praise and the glory will all be there. But when you look
at Revelation 21-22, you see this new Jerusalem coming down
out of heaven. We see this place where God and
his people will dwell forever. And it's, well, it's still heaven. It's sort of a merging, if you
will, of what we see now is the physical dwelling place where
we live and the place where God dwells. When they sort of come
together in their perfection, the consummation of God's plan,
really. Much like we have a physical
body now, eventually we'll have a spiritual body. It'll be physical, and
yet it'll be spiritual in a way, and it will be incorruptible.
I'm not sure if that clarifies things for you. Right, so that's
a new habit. Well, we have some of it in Revelation
at the end. It's still, even though the scriptures
talk about it, it's still something that we can't really comprehend.
Ultimately, it's something that's still veiled to us. We'll have
to take a wait-and-see approach to what heaven really looked
like. Did you have a comment, Brian? Well, even the prophetic
picture of the judgment that will certainly be there between
the transition between the older and the newer indicates that
all the nations will be shaken. There will be incredible upheaval
physically, as God is purging and preparing the planet to be
the new earth. To be, you might say, the consort
of the new heavens in the eternal state. One other feature, Jonathan,
the Seventh Day Adventists, who believe in soul sleep, play fast
and loose with the comment there in Luke 23. I've always found
this to be interesting when I've debated that. It would be a nonsense thing
for Jesus to say. What else is He going to say? I say to you, Wally, tomorrow, It just doesn't make any logical
sense. Yeah, because there are no commas
in the original manuscript. But yeah, again, you try to take
what the Bible clearly says and make it fit your preconceived
notions. It's always dangerous. Any final comments? We're way
over time. Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the clear
teaching of Scripture in so many ways. even for that which is
unclear for that. It makes us study harder to come
to understand what you will teach us. It also keeps us humble that
we might not set ourselves up as masters of this Word that
you've given to us, but to remember that there are many things that
are as yet unrevealed to us. Help us to have that humility
and that anticipation that you would continue to teach us from
your Word, even things that we've read many times before, that
you'd open them afresh to us. We thank you for the start of
heaven, for the hope it gives to us, the comfort, for the anticipation
of being in that place where Christ is, for that will be truly
heaven for us. In Jesus' name, amen.
1689 Confession, ch. 31, State of Man After Death, Part 19, What Happens After Death1
Series 1689 31 After Death
| Sermon ID | 6612030412698 |
| Duration | 31:01 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Language | English |
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