00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
Alright, if you'd like to join
me, we're going to begin our study this morning in the book
of Colossians chapter 3. I'll apologize in advance for
my voice. I've got post-mountain voice
syndrome. Every time I go up to the mountains
and come back, for the first couple of days, my voice is a
little bit ragged. So it may be a little bit worse as it goes
along today, but I hope you can endure and bear with me. What
we're doing is we're going to continue and pick up our study
that we've been pursuing this for, gosh, a number of months
now. We've been looking at together the last things, what theologically
is called the study of eschatology, God's plan for all of history,
God's purpose in all of history, and how all things are ultimately
going to culminate and conclude at the end of history, and then
what follows the end of history as we know it. And in our most
recent focus, we've spent in the last seven weeks that I've
been teaching, we've, and I congratulate those of you who were here for
all of those to make it through a study for seven weeks straight
on the theme of hell. It's not an easy thing. It's
not an easy task. Certainly well worth it. I hope that your heart
is better informed. I hope that your heart was impacted
and affected by a focus on hell in all of the right ways that
it should be. I know mine was in refreshing
my own mind and heart in those things and rehearsing those things
in my own study. I hope your heart was blessed
by that also. As they say in the political
arena, it's time to give equal time now to the other side of
the coin. What we're going to do is we're
going to look at what the Bible teaches about heaven, how heaven
fits into God's plan at the end of history, and what follows. But also we're going to take
a look at, just like we did with hell, the history of heaven,
and that heaven itself has a history. Heaven is one of those realities
that's in the back of all Christian understanding and all Christian
perspective. But it is like the study of hell and what we saw
with that. It's one of the most commonly misunderstood topics
that you can focus on in the Bible. And of course, beyond
what the church misunderstands about heaven, we have the many,
many misunderstandings of the world about heaven. Just let
me name off a few of the most common ones, the most basic ones.
Going all the way back to ancient history, of course, there were
different concepts of heaven. Ancient cultures had... their
own understanding of heaven and heavenly realities. Some believed
in, and there are too many to actually list or mention, but
I'm just going to name a couple of them as examples. One ancient
culture believed that heaven was the upper half of a cosmic
egg that had been constructed by God, the lower half being
earth, and the upper half of this egg being heaven itself.
You know, that's kind of a strange concept, but there were other
practical ones. One that you're probably more
familiar with was the Greeks, who were very influential in
the ancient world, and this was picked up later by the Romans.
They believed that heaven was located where? What was the reality
of heaven to the Greeks? They believed that heaven was
on the highest mountain on the Greek peninsula, which was Mount
Olympus, and that the gods lived on this high mountain. And of
course that established a very physical kind of understanding
of heaven. It was something that was high
and lifted up and above them, but yet something very approachable
and something not that distant from them. In more modern times,
and this of course stretches back to ancient times, but extends
up to current beliefs, Buddhists believe in a kind of heaven that
they call Nirvana. Heaven for the Buddhists is not
so much a place, it's not so much even a... an experience
of a certain kind of spiritual reality. Nirvana literally means
the extinguishing of a flame. So for a Buddhist heaven, the
ultimate reality, the ultimate goal of life is just to reach
a state of nothingness, where there are no more passions, no
more desires, that the flame of your life's passion is finally
extinguished and you become part of cosmic nothingness. The New
Age teaching, of course, which is so big and so popular today,
sees heaven as kind of a spiritual reality in which individual souls
are like sparks that are rejoining some gigantic cosmic flame, which
is the reality of God himself. And that heaven is no more than
just the state of how this cosmic flame exists as these sparks
are reunited and rejoined to this giant cosmic reality. Muslim teaching of heaven, of
course, is a little bit closer to the Christian understanding
of what heaven really is. But it's, you know, it's corrupted
and perverted, and it might as well be as far away as the upper
half of a cosmic egg. Muslims believe in a real place,
a paradise, that they call heaven. But it's, for them, as I've mentioned
before, you may have heard me mention, for the Muslim they
believe that heaven is going to be a place of sensual delights. that a committed and devout Muslim
throughout the course of his life here on earth has withheld
himself from certain physical sensual pleasures in his obedience
to his God, Allah. But for him, heaven is going
to be a time when finally all of those desires that he had
in this world and in this life are ultimately going to be fulfilled.
And he's going to be given full and free reign to experience
all of the earthly and sensual delights that he withheld himself
from during his life here on earth. And all of those have
one thing in common, the cosmic egg, the concept of heaven being
on a high mountain, the idea of nirvana, the idea of a cosmic
flame, the idea of a paradise of sensual delights. They have
one thing in common, and the one thing they have in common
is that they're all horribly, tragically, seriously wrong. And the problem with that, of
course, is that people are hanging their entire life on these kind
of concepts. Meaning they're living their
lives with an orientation toward, this is where my life is ultimately
heading. And it's a fantasy, it's not
a reality. Now the problem is, in the Christian understanding,
in the Christian declaration of the reality of heaven, is
that the world has been very successful, especially in recent
generations, in pooh-poohing the idea of heaven to the extent
that it's commonly held in the world to be nothing more than
a fantasy just like the idea of the ancients believing in
a cosmic egg, that the Christian heaven, the concept of heaven
is just a pie-in-the-sky concept that suffering Christians made
up in order to have some crutch to lean on and to believe that
after this life of difficulty and suffering that we pass through,
there's bound to be, there's got to be something better waiting
for us at the end. And honestly, if it was just
that, I would join the world in saying, you know, why believe
in something that's just a fantasy designed to make you feel a little
bit better here in this present life. But the reality is that
heaven is a real place. Heaven is an awesome spiritual
reality. And the Bible, of course, teaches
us a lot about heaven. Now, I'm going to not only spend
this week but probably two or three other weeks beyond this
focused on the subject of heaven. And as we look at this, what
I want you to understand right up front, just like I mentioned
when we started our study on hell, is that the reality is
greater than anything I'm really capable of accurately, properly
describing. That doesn't mean that what I'm
going to teach you and what I'm going to say to you is wrong. It just
means that the reality is greater than whatever I'm able to properly
communicate to you this morning and in the weeks to come. We
have to lean on the Lord's grace to reveal to us the truths of
heaven and of hell, because these are experiences that we haven't
had yet. We're describing, it'd be like me describing to you
some city that neither of us have ever visited. The advantage that we have, of
course, is that we have a really, really trustworthy tour guide
booklet that we can both lean on, that we can both refer to.
And though we've never been there before, we can study together,
we can read together and learn in reality about this place together. Now, why is it so important for
us to do this, to do a study on heaven? I mean, heaven is
one of those things that I think all of us can say And I'm presuming
this but let me stop for a moment and just double check. You all,
everyone here I'm assuming is actually wanting to someday go
to heaven and experience heaven as opposed to the alternative.
Okay, so it's something that's out there in front of all of
us and it's something that is a goal for all of our lives,
a desire, a hope, The hope of heaven is uppermost in all of
our hearts and minds and yet there is kind of an unspoken
perspective among some believers that it's just not that important
to study now because it's all out there in the future and it's
all out there ahead of us. Well, nothing could be further
from the truth than that perspective. Yes, heaven is as a physical
reality of something that we've never actually been there, we've
never actually personally experienced it at that level. Yes, it's out
there in front of us, it's ahead of us, we've not been there yet.
But there is another aspect, and we'll just touch on this
today, there's another aspect in which heaven is a very present
and very critically important reality for all of our lives
today. But another reason I think it's important for Christians
to study a bit about heaven, to take some time, make the effort
to dig into what God's word reveals to us about heaven, is that there
is, even in the church, a lot of misunderstanding and confusion
about heaven, about what heaven actually is. Let me just give
you a couple of examples. I'm not going to name any particular
names here because I don't think these names would be that familiar
to you anyway. But what I'm doing here is referring to a couple
of books that have been written. If you go into any Christian
bookstore today, you'll find books in a certain section on
people that claim to have been to heaven. We talked about a
few weeks ago when we were studying about hell, we talked about people
who have what are called near-death experiences. In the world, people
that think that they have died or possibly even have died, we
don't know for sure. And then come back with a tale,
an experience to describe about what they experienced at the
end of their life. And the common theme in most of those is that
they're mostly filled with spiritual error about the reality of what
awaits people after their death. But what I'm talking about here
are books not about near-death experiences for Christians, but
people who claim to have had visions, actual experiences in
which they claim that the Lord himself brought them into heaven
and in a sense gave them a tour of heaven. And there's more than
a handful of books that have been written on this subject
or people that make this kind of claim. One of which, This
is one individual I've read. I've read both of these books
and made note of some of the more fantastic errors that are
connected to it. But these are these. This one individual went to heaven
in his telling of his vision. He says he went to heaven and
he met Jesus there, of course, and Jesus took him on a tour
of all of heaven. And what he found there was there
were various towns, various cities that existed in heaven. There
were different roadways there. There were street signs because,
of course, in heaven you could lose your way, right? We have
street signs here on earth and there is a real purpose for them.
I am grateful for the reality and existence of street signs.
I wouldn't be able to find my way from point A to point B most
often without the use of street signs. There's not going to be
a need for street signs. Yes, there are streets, and we'll
be talking about that. There is a city, we'll be talking
about that. But there are not towns, as in plural towns. There
are not street signs, because the reality is, you'll know exactly
where to go in heaven. You won't have a question about
where to travel, what's located where. You won't need things
like street signs. This individual in his continuing
tour, the Lord took him to a set of warehouses. And believe me,
this is going to sound fantastic, like I'm maybe making this stuff
up. I couldn't make this stuff up. I don't have an imagination
this active to make up this kind of stuff. But the Lord took this
guy into a warehouse, and when he was in the warehouse, what
he showed him was hanging around on the walls of the warehouse
were a collection of body parts. various body parts. There were
eyes, and there were noses, and there were ears, and there were
legs, and there were arms, and hands, and fingers, and toes,
and all kinds of different body parts. And when the man asked
the Lord, you know, what is this all about? What the Lord answered
was, well, these are the body parts of people, you know, these
are the parts that are available for people on earth. And if they
will simply, you know, pray and ask, then I provide these body
parts for them. You know, people that have a
missing limb or a, you know, a damaged eye or something of
that nature. In other words, this was the spare parts in heaven
for people's physical bodies. Now, as I'm telling this, I'm
speaking a little bit facetiously, but I'm really sad to describe
this kind of thing to you, because the reality is that's nothing
like what heaven is actually like. And this individual, I
don't know what his heart's motivation was in telling this story. Maybe
he did have a dream. Maybe he actually dreamed what
he described in the book. Maybe he made the whole thing
up in order to sell some books. I don't know. But the reality
was he didn't go to heaven. The reality was he didn't have
a tour. Jesus didn't show him a body part warehouse. There
weren't street signs. He didn't have that experience
in the way that he claimed to have it. How can I know that
to be true though? Because he says it's true, and
I'm saying it's not. The only way we can know the
reality of heaven, like I said, is because none of us have been
there, is are we willing to dig in and study what the book actually
teaches us about heaven. And are we willing to speak where
the book speaks and be silent where the book is silent? Because
that's what God wants us to know about heaven. We can't know beyond
what God has revealed because we've never been there. But what
he has revealed, we can know and we can be confident about
and we can proclaim and declare and study together. And that's
what I intend for us to do. I'll mention one other example.
I've mentioned this a couple of times over the years, but
I had a very good Christian friend early on in my early days in
the Lord. who had a fond hope of heaven
and a very specific reality that he was expecting to experience
and his belief in heaven is a very common Christian belief actually
and that was that he believed that heaven is a place in which
the Lord rewards us in a very specific kind of way with a certain
kind of experience for all of eternity and what that reward
will entail is that whatever is your fondest and most enjoyable
experience here on earth is going to be given to you and magnified
for all of eternity. And my friend, his favorite hobby,
the thing that he enjoyed to do for his recreation more than
anything else on earth was surfing. He was a surfer. He loved to
surf. And he believed, he really believed, that heaven for him
was after he met the Lord, the Lord was going to take him to
the perfect beach. He was going to be riding forever
and ever and ever the perfect way. Now that's a, you know,
that's not a bad picture of what you might want to experience
forever and ever and ever, especially if you're a surfer who enjoys
surfing. What's the problem with his view, his understanding,
his perspective? It's just not true. That's the
only problem with it. And the reality is heaven is
not a fantasy. Heaven, I'll say it this way,
heaven is every bit as real as what we're experiencing right
now in this room. Every bit is real because it's
a real place with real dimensions. It has spatial reality. It has spiritual reality. And we're going to look at what
the Bible actually does teach us about heaven. But let's start
with Colossians chapter 3 and we'll read just the first four
verses together. This is a word of exhortation
in relationship to heaven. that was written or given by
Paul the Apostle. He doesn't specifically mention
heaven in this passage, but I think it'll be clear to you that this
is what he is referring to, what he's talking about. Therefore,
if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things
above. where Christ is, seated at the
right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above,
not on the things that are on earth. For you have died, and
he's speaking here, of course, spiritually. You have died, and
your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our
life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in
glory. Now, a few weeks ago when we
were doing our study on hell, I was introducing the ultimate
realities at the end of all of history. I mentioned a common
saying that has, I don't even know when this was first spoken,
who came up with it to begin with, but it's become a fairly
common saying in Christian circles. And the saying goes like this,
you're all familiar with it, a person can be so heavenly minded
that they're no earthly good. And it's one of those things,
I remember when I first mentioned it here, you know, kind of laying
a... a teaching trap for your feet.
I asked you if you agreed with it, and not all of you, but many
of you agreed with, yeah, that makes sense. A person can be
so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good. And then what
I mentioned in response to that is that that is absolutely contrary
to what the Lord wants us to see and to understand. It's not
possible to be so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good.
The only thing that's possible in terms of spiritual reality
for a Christian, in terms of perspective of heaven and perspective
of earth, is that a Christian can be so earthly minded that
they're no heavenly good. But the reverse is not even possible.
Let me ask you this, is it possible for you as a believer to be so
focused on heaven that you become completely useless in terms of
what God wants to accomplish with your life here on earth?
And that's essentially saying the same thing as so heavenly
minded as to be no earthly good. And the answer to that question
is no, you can't become so heavenly minded. Now what you can become
is you can become so fantasy minded that you're no earthly
good. What I mean by that is any one
of these fantasies of heaven. There's one other I didn't even
mention, I should probably bring this in at this point, and that
is the most common Christian perspective of heaven down through
the ages, talking about the last 2,000 years. Heaven is kind of
a place of Clouds, and this is the common cartoon depiction
of heaven, right? Clouds, and Christians in glory,
seated, kind of floating on those clouds, and there's a halo around
their heads, and they're equipped with a harp, and the experience
of heaven is what? That the Christians are going
to be just kind of floating around in an ethereal spiritual reality
forever and ever, strumming a harp, and just kind of hanging out
forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Now, you know,
if you've lived a very hard, tiring, troublesome life, the
idea of that kind of eternal reality might hold some promise
for you for a while, you know, because it is a restful picture,
it's a peaceful picture, But the bottom line is, that is no
hope in my heart, and it shouldn't be any hope in your heart, that
God would design such an eternal reality. We're talking about
forever and ever and ever and ever, that what you're going
to do is just kind of hang out, floating around, strumming on
a harp. That is not what's waiting for us. That's not even close
to the reality of what's waiting for us. Something far greater,
far more significant, far more important is waiting for all
of us. But, if we have our minds set
on that fantasy or any one of the other fantasies about heaven,
then yes, absolutely, it can negatively impact and affect
the way you live out your life here on this earth. But if you
have a right understanding of what heaven is, if you have a
right understanding of what is waiting for us, what God has
planned for our lives for all of eternity, if you really understand
the perspective of what is coming at the culmination of God's plan
for all of the ages, then that's going to affect and influence
and impact the way you live out your life here on this earth.
And it's only going to have a good, godly, healthy, energizing kind
of influence on you. It's not going to make you no
earthly good, it's going to make you the best earthly good, because
it's going to equip you to serve God in the way that He wants
you to serve Him. Excuse me while I get some water.
Okay, so what is the reality of heaven? Let's just start today. We're not going to get anywhere
close to through this. Turn with me to Genesis chapter
1. is that heaven is a place. Why is this important for Christians
to be really clear on? Because most people in the world
today believe that heaven is a state of mind. If they believe
in heaven or anything heavenly at all, they'll tell you heaven
is a state of mind, it's a spiritual kind of thing out there somewhere,
floating around around us all the time. But it's not a real
place where you can come and go from. The Bible teaches us
otherwise. Heaven is a real place. And you
come from heaven and you go to heaven. It's a location with
reality, just like this is a location with reality. How do we know?
Well, the first thing to understand about heaven being a place is
that, like we saw with the teaching of hell, here in Genesis 1-1,
we realize that heaven is created. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. Heaven didn't always exist. You know, a lot of Christians
believe that heaven always existed. Why would any Christian believe
that? Because we believe that God always existed, of course.
That God always existed in our finite minds of how we understand
reality. If God existed, he had to have
some place to exist. Because for us, we can't exist
without a place to exist. But God is not limited in the
same way that we are limited to spatial realities. And God
existed before heaven existed. But at a certain moment, God
chose to create the heavens and the earth. Now, one of the things
that you might notice about the wording in Genesis 1.1, let's
read it again. In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth. Earth is very clearly singular,
meaning how many earths are there in God's creation? One earth. Only one earth. This is just
one, this is a little bonus point. That's, more than anything else,
that's why there's no such thing as UFOs, okay? That's why there's
no such thing as, and I'm a big science fiction fan, I think
some of you know that, you know. I love Star Wars, Star Trek,
all that kind of stuff. But it's not real, okay? There's no aliens out there.
Why? God created one earth. Now eventually,
and we'll talk about this in the weeks to come, eventually
there are going to be other places in God's universe that are going
to be populated. But right now, no. Just one earth. Period. But heaven is in Hebrew
here, And they've carried this forward in the translation into
English. Heaven is plural. What does that tell you? More
than one heaven. Are we all clear with the implication
at least? We haven't looked at the details.
The implication that there is more than one heaven in God's
creation. Alright, let's look at John chapter
6. Turn over with me to the Gospel
of John chapter 6. We're going to look in a moment
at what the Bible teaches about there being more than one heaven.
But first I just want to get established this most basic point,
which is our foundation, and that is that heaven is a place
with actual reality of location. John chapter 6. We're going to read a couple
of different portions. I'm going to read first verses
50 and 51, and then 60 through 62. This is part of a larger teaching
that the Lord Jesus was doing to his disciples, and here actually
it's part of a An event shortly following the Lord having multiplied
the loaves and the fishes in front of a whole crowd of people.
And he took that occasion to teach the people. And here in
verse 50 we'll pick up where he's talking about the bread
from heaven. He said, This is the bread which
comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not
die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he
will live forever. And the bread also, which I will give for the
life of the world, is my flesh." Let's skip down to verse 60.
Therefore, many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, this
is a difficult statement. Who can listen to it? But Jesus,
conscious that his disciples grumbled at this, said to them,
does this cause you to stumble? What then, if you see the Son
of Man ascending to where He was before? Alright, now Jesus
here is just talking about himself, his own personal experience.
He's not talking about something that any of the rest of us have
experienced at this point. But in describing his own experience,
in verses 50 and 51, he's referring to himself symbolically as the
bread of heaven, God's provision for mankind. And in talking about himself
as the bread from heaven, he says specifically, this is the
bread which comes down out of heaven. And then in verse 51,
I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. Okay, this
phrase, came down out of heaven, It's a phrase, it's a passage
that you wouldn't normally just, okay, we're going to start a
teaching on heaven, let's go and read what Jesus is teaching
on this day about eating bread from heaven. But what we need
to understand is the clear implication of His words is that heaven is
a location, He was in that location, He came out of that location
and he came down. That tells us that heaven is
a place just like earth is a place and in relationship to earth,
of course, heaven is up. Now the world will look at this
and say, that is just so ancient and that is so quaint that you
believe that heaven is an actual place that's up in relationship
to the earth. Because in terms of astronomy
and stuff, which way is up? If you start from planet Earth,
astronomically, and you're going to go up, which way are you going
to go? See, the point is, the world
looks at things like that and says, it's ridiculous. But what
we need to understand is, the Lord Jesus is not stupid. He
knows what He's talking about. He understands these things,
and believe it or not, He even understands astronomy. And when
he is talking, he's talking from human perspective. We're here,
and whichever way you go in the universe, it's up from where
you start. And so the whole idea is that
heaven is a greater reality, it's higher than the earth, and
it's a location in which, in order to get there, we have to
leave here and go up. Alright? That's all we're establishing
so far. In verses 60 through 62, He says this, verse 62, What
then if ye see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? Because Jesus uses the term where
here, and it's the same concept in the Greek language as it is
in English. He is very clearly thinking about a spatial location
reality. A place that you can leave and
a place you can return. And that's what the Lord was
doing. And He's speaking here about the end of His life here
on the earth. And at the end of His life here on this earth,
He is going to return to the same place where He was before. Now let's turn to one other passage
in John. This one we're all familiar with,
John chapter 14. We're going to read the first
few verses. And again, sorry about my voice,
but I'll get through this, if you will. John chapter 14, verse
1. Do not let your heart be troubled.
Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house are
many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have
told you. For I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to
myself, that where I am, there you may be also, and you know
the way where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we
do not know where you are going, how do we know the way? Jesus
said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one
comes to the Father, but through me. Okay, there's some very important,
obviously, some very important salvation information in verses
5 and 6. But what I want to focus on is
a couple of the details in verses 1 through 4. And that is, that
in the Lord's mind, this is the mind of the Lord Jesus, heaven
is a place. And he is going, he says, to
prepare something for his followers. He's going to heaven to prepare
a place for his followers. Jesus doesn't say, I am going
to prepare a state of mind for you. I am going to prepare an
ethereal reality that has no spatial circumstance connected
to it. I am going to prepare a place. Okay, I don't want to beat a
dead horse here. I just want us to all be clear in all of
our future conversations with each other and with the world
out there. If anyone calls into question
whether heaven is a real place or not, do not, do not, do not
be ashamed to say, yes, heaven is an actual real place. Just because you've never been
there doesn't mean it's not real. That's the reality of it. It
would be, for a person in the world, to deny the reality that
heaven is a place, would be as foolish as someone that's never
been to New Zealand, saying, you know, New Zealand, I've heard
about that my whole life, but I don't think it's really real,
because I've never been there. And I personally don't know anybody
else that's been there. It's just a rumor. It's a fantasy.
That New Zealand thing is just a concept. New Zealand is a state
of mind. But if you knew someone that
really had been there and was able to describe the reality
of it to you, you would have a different perspective about
New Zealand. And in the same way we have a
different perspective about the reality of heaven as a place
because we know the one who came from there and we know the one
who has returned to there and we know the one who is coming
again from there to receive us unto himself and to take us there. Alright. What else about heaven? I said that heaven is plural.
Let's just spend a few minutes talking about that, and then
we'll end for today. Turn with me, if you would, back to Genesis
chapter 1. How many of you have seen the show
on TV? I think it's still on. Seventh
Heaven. How many of you watch that show?
You guys like that show? I mean, I don't want to burst
anybody's bubble here. I don't really like that show. I tried watching it a couple
of times, but I couldn't hang with it. But what I want to focus
on here, I'm not doing a criticism of the show. The name of the
show is called Seventh Heaven. Where in the world does that
come from? And that's a pretty, actually a pretty popular concept.
It's a pretty well-known concept. And that is the concept that
heaven is a reality with different levels, a reality with different
different stages or categories. Remember how in our study of
hell we talked about how hell is not just a singular reality.
There are different segments or categories or sections of
hell. And there is a concept throughout
history that there are seven levels of heaven. You know, the
seventh heaven. It's actually a phrase, and this
is where they got the show from, It's a phrase which, when a person
says, I'm in the seventh heaven, what they're referring to is,
heaven is staged in terms of the higher you go, number seven
being the very highest level of heaven, the most wonderful
experience you can ever have. Now, there's only one problem
with this, of course, which is, it's just not true. There are
not seven levels of heaven, but where did this come from? Because
you can go back and read Christian history and find a lot of Christian
references to seven heavens or seven levels of heaven. Where
did this come from? Well, the concept was first introduced
in a teaching, a heretical teaching back in the early days of Christianity
known as Gnosticism. And the Gnostics were the people
that that call themselves, it's from a Greek word which means
knowledge. Gnosis is the Greek word for
knowledge and it means the knowers. Those who have the understanding
of the deep hidden spiritual realities of life. And what they
did was they joined with the early Christian churches. and
blended their, what are essentially to us today, new age teachings,
new age beliefs with true Christian beliefs and ended up with kind
of an amalgamation of truth and error. And one of their teachings
was that heaven was not a place but a spiritual reality that
was to be progressively experienced through various levels or stages
of spiritual development. And there were seven levels or
stages in the Gnostic progression through heavenly realities. Now
later on in history, this concept actually trickled down into Islam.
and became a Muslim teaching. In the Muslim teaching there
are seven levels or seven realities of heaven. The seventh being
the highest level, the level that is available for the martyrs
and those who are the greatest servants of Allah. And some Christians
have even taken this concept and some Jewish rabbis all through
history have taken this concept. And so you'll see this blended
in all over in various spiritual teachings. But as I said, it's
not a true teaching. You won't find any reference
anywhere in the Bible to seven levels of heaven. It just is
not true. It's not real. So what is the
reality of heaven? Heaven is plural. I've already
mentioned that from Genesis chapter 1. Let's read again verse 1 in
the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. If there
are heavens and it's literally plural heavens, that means there
is more than one heaven. More than one, and I'm going
to say but, not seven. So how many heavens are there,
biblically speaking? Some of you have heard this before,
you have studied this before and you understand this. The
biblical teaching is that there are three heavens, not seven. And this is real. This is not
fantasy, this is not made up. How many of you have heard before
today that there are three heavens? Okay, most of you. Some of you
have never heard this before, though. So I need to explain
this a little bit. I'm going to do this briefly
and then we'll end here today. The first heaven is what? Genesis
chapter 1, verse 6. Then God said, let there be an
expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters
from the waters. God made the expanse and separated
the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which
were above the expanse, and it was so. God called the expanse heaven. Chapter 1 verse 8, God
called the expanse heaven. Heaven number one equals what is called in my translation,
the expanse. In the old King James, the language
was firmament. In modern lingo, the term is
atmosphere. Heaven number one is the atmosphere
surrounding this planet. You look up and you see what? Sky. You see blue sky. That extends a certain number
of miles beyond the earth and then it ends and something else
starts where the atmosphere ends. What starts where the atmosphere
ends? Physically, astronomically, scientifically. what we call
space, which is kind of another thing we're catching the scientists
in their own terminology. That's kind of ridiculous because
aren't we in space right here? I mean, we're part of the universe,
right? Of course, we're part of space. But we do this in order
to just shape our own perspectives in terms of putting things in
proper categories. So here's the Earth. And around
the earth, in a thin layer around the earth, is the expanse, the
firmament, the atmosphere. Beyond that is a much, much bigger
circle, so big I can't possibly draw it, which we call space. So here's the earth, here is
the expanse, and here is space. First heaven is the atmosphere
around the earth. Second heaven is what we call
space. and that is what we know as the physical universe, the
universe that you can see with a telescope, that you can get
out the cheapest set of binoculars or you can get out the most expensive,
well actually you can't get it out, you can, you know, you can
go and visit the biggest and best telescope made by human
hands and look out there as far as you can look and what you
see is a physical reality that we know as the universe or space. Okay? Including all of the stars,
and all of the planets, and all of those things. Look in verse
14 of Genesis 1. Then God said, Let there be lights
in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the
night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days
and years, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the
heavens to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made
the two great lights. The greater light to govern the
day, and the lesser light to govern the night, he made the
stars also. God placed them in the expanse
of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the
day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness,
and God saw that it was good. This is all description of what
we call space. Now the one thing that we need
to be clear on is it describes it as though space, the stars,
the sun, and the moon, it says are set in the expanse. Does
that mean that the people that wrote this, and this is actually
Moses that wrote this under inspiration of the Spirit of God, does this
mean that Moses was trying to describe that the sun and the
moon and the stars are actually in our atmosphere? No. But from our perspective, what
do we see? We look through our atmosphere to see space, to see
the sun, to see the moon, and to see the stars. So in the sense
of human perspective here on earth, it looks as though they're
in the expanse. But the point is, it is a second
level of heaven. So heaven number two is space. Heaven number one is the atmosphere
around this earth. That leaves us only with the
third heaven. Third heaven is what? I'll read one last passage.
We'll end with this today. This is in 2 Corinthians. And we'll pick up with this next
time. 2 Corinthians chapter 12. And this is an experience of
someone who actually was caught up into heaven and had a real
experience of heaven, not a dream, not a pizza dream, not a made-up
story in order to sell books. This was a real experience of
being caught up into heaven. And Paul is writing about this
experience as though another man has had this experience that
he knows. What we need to understand is
that Paul is actually describing in a humble way his own personal
experience. Reading 2 Corinthians 12, verse
1. Boasting is necessary, though
it is not profitable. What he's talking about here
is that his ministry has been called into question by the very
people that he established as a church. It's happening because
there are evil workers that are undermining Paul's reputation
in the church. And so he's saying to them, in order to defend myself,
it's necessary that I boast about myself. And he says, it's necessary
that I boast, because otherwise you won't listen to what I have
to teach you. But it's not profitable. In other words, he's reluctantly
going to tell this experience. Paul had this experience sometime
before this. He didn't immediately run out
and publish it in order to sell the experience. He had the experience
and was very reluctant to speak about it and only spoke about
it because he had to in order to preserve the integrity of
the ministry God had given him. Boasting is necessary, though
it is not profitable, but I will go on to visions and revelations
of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14
years ago, he had held this experience for 14 years without speaking
to anyone about it. Whether in the body I do not
know, or out of the body I do not know, he wasn't, to this
day, 14 years later, he wasn't clear whether the Lord bodily
lifted him into heaven, or whether he took him spiritually to heaven
and left his body on earth. And that's a detail that's not
even important. Whether in the body I do not
know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows, such a man
was caught up to the third heaven. Which clearly implies what? There's a heaven number one and
a heaven number two. Without mentioning them specifically,
that's clearly implied in Paul's teaching. However, there's nowhere
anywhere in the Bible that refers to a fourth heaven, a fifth,
a sixth, or a seventh. The third heaven is the ultimate
heaven. And I know how such a man, whether in the body or apart
from the body, I do not know, God knows, was caught up into
paradise. and heard inexpressible words
which a man is not permitted to speak. So all he does is tells
them that he had this experience, but he doesn't go into details
about what he heard while he was there. In fact, he even goes
on to say, I'm not allowed. to tell you what I heard when
I was in heaven. Alright? So, I'm just emphasizing
that as a comment about some of the books that you can find
on the Christian bookshelves today claiming such an experience
when that experience didn't actually happen. But for Paul, he was
caught up into the third heaven and for Paul, the third heaven
equaled Paradise. Now we've already studied
recently when we went through our study on hell. We studied
about paradise. What I'm going to do is I'll
leave off right here. We'll pick up our teaching next week, Lord
willing, and we'll see if we can come to grips with how it
is that paradise is in the third heaven and what that means for
what I'm calling the history of heaven itself. Let's pray
as we come to an end of our study today though. Father God, as we just stop and
think about and study together and consider the realities of
heaven, Father, we are completely dependent and lean on you that
you would take these words that you've preserved for us and revealed
to us, you would apply them to our hearts, and we're exhorted
in your word, Lord, to set our minds on the things above and
not so much on the things here on this earth. to become more
heavenly minded. In order to do that, Lord, we
need to understand the reality of what heaven is, what you reveal
to us, what the nature of that reality actually is. Father,
I desire to be a person, and I believe everyone here has this
same desire, Lord, that we want to be people that live according
to truth and according to reality and not basing our lives in any
measure upon fantasy. So I pray, Father, that you would
Take our hearts and you would instruct us and you would reveal
the truth to us and you would open our perspective and our
eyes to see what heaven really is all about and what you have
planned for us. And I pray that in doing that, Lord, you would
make us more earthly good in the days that we have left than
we've ever been up until now. And I ask you for that grace
in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. The copyrighted product
of Tree of Life Christian Church of Canoga Park, California. You
are welcome to pass this message along to others as long as it
is not sold and it is passed along unaltered in its entirety
with source credit given to Tree of Life Christian Church.
Heaven
Series Eschatology series
Heaven is not just an ethereal state of mind, but a real place with a history and a created beginning.
Copyright 2003, Tree of Life Christian Church. All rights reserved.
| Sermon ID | 81003193243 |
| Duration | 50:49 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | John 14:1-3 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.