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All right, if you'd like to join
me this morning, we're beginning in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
If you haven't been with us recently, we've been in the midst of a
long-term study together on Sunday mornings on the doctrine of the
last things, how God is working out his great plan in all of
history. And we've been most recently
talking about two of the most important eternal realities of
God's plan, and that being the reality of hell and the reality
of heaven. We spent a number of weeks, some
seven weeks I think, on the subject of hell. how it is a real place,
and it has eternal significance and importance, and what all
that means, and what God is doing with hell, why hell exists, and
who is going to be there for all of eternity. And in the last
seven or so weeks, we've been focused on the subject of heaven.
And as I was sharing this morning, Of course, our brother Michael
has passed from this world into the presence of the Lord. He's
in heaven right now. And what I've been trying to
emphasize these last few weeks is something in terms of timing
with Mike's passing. You know, I couldn't, of course,
arrange the timing of the fact that for the last six or seven
weeks now, we've been focused on this subject of heaven together
and that the understanding of where Mike is right at this very
moment establishes the point that I've been trying to make
in a greater way than anything probably that I could declare.
What we've been trying to establish so far is just some very basic
and simple principles about heaven. Number one, heaven is a real
place. But as a real place, it's a created place. It's part of
the creation of God. It has a very specific beginning
point in God's creation purposes. And God did create it for a purpose.
It serves a number of different purposes in God's plans, but
the first and primary one being it serves the purpose of being
kind of a headquarters for all of creation. from which God has
established his throne. And from his throne, of course,
he has been ruling over all of creation, over all of history
from the point that he first created it. We've seen, though,
that heaven is also portrayed to us in terms of social organization
as a city. It's a heavenly city. It's called
the New Jerusalem, the Jerusalem above. It's called the great
and glorious city of God. And we've seen that that city
has a reality just like this city that we're living in has
a reality. It's a different kind of city, but there's some similarities
to it. Cities, whether on earth or in heaven, are identified
as centers of population, centers of business, and centers of culture.
We've identified already, we've studied together what the population
of the heavenly city is like, who who is part of that population
and how one in a sense rates to be welcomed into the city
of God, which we identified as kind of like similar to a closed
and gated community. Not just anyone can march into
heaven just because they have the bright idea that they'd like
to visit that heavenly city. Only those that God invites and
calls and only those who come according to God's standards,
and according to God's way, His appointed way of salvation, have
the right to enter in through the gates into the heavenly city
and into the very presence of God in His throne room. We've
identified in our study the last couple of weeks that there's
business that goes on in heaven. It's not just a matter of, you
know, heaven's a real place and there are real individuals there.
We've identified that there are the spirits of the righteous
made perfect as the population of heaven, along with, of course,
the various categories of angels. And that the spirits of the righteous
are not just in an ongoing holding pattern, waiting for the final
day, waiting for the return of the Lord to planet earth, the
second coming. There is a waiting for that, but that's not all
they're doing is waiting. There's all kinds of business
that's being conducted in the presence of the Lord. Not business
like the business here entirely. Though there are a couple of
aspects of what we do that are ongoing in heaven. The business
of heaven is first and foremost, job number one as we talked about
in heaven is worship. The work of worship and flowing
out of that worship is of course intercession and then government
rulership in which we are given the awesome privilege of participating
with the Lord and the administration of his kingdom in various levels,
in various aspects, according to his assignment for each one
of our lives. Today what I want to focus on
is the last aspect of life as it is in the big city in heaven,
and that is, what is the culture of heaven like? Culture is defined
in scripture as, excuse me, not in scripture, Webster's Dictionary,
culture is described as the total of the social patterns, the arts,
the beliefs of any particular community at any given time. And every Nation of people, and
even within nations, there are more than one culture usually
that develop. Every nation of people at every
time in history have developed their own cultural identity. We all, each one of us here in
this room, are born into a specific cultural identity based upon
what culture, of course, our family came from. And we also
enter into a larger culture in terms of the location where we
live and all of the influences that are taking place in that
particular society of people. Culture on a human level here
on earth, of course, is a flawed thing. Culture is not a perfect
expression of human society by any means. Originally, when God
first established human population, there was a kind of a culture
of heaven that was established on earth from the very beginning
of creation. When God first created Adam and
Eve, and He established them and placed them in the garden
and gave them certain responsibilities and certain life priorities,
There was in that creation of God and the establishment of
the first society of people, starting with just two individuals,
there was a culture that was born out of their relationship.
But, of course, something happened. And what happened is Adam sinned. And when Adam sinned, it changed
everything. And human culture, as we know
it, as we know it today, began to develop out of the combination
of Adam and Eve existing as people that bear the image of God. And
so there's godly influence in culture. And now the combination
of that with human sin. human failure, human corruption,
and combining those elements together we have the culture
that we know today. For instance, the things that develop cultural
identity are things like a culture's recognition of what is beautiful. values in terms of beauty, both
in human form and architecture and artistic endeavor, all kinds
of things like that, that has a lot to do with cultural expression. Wealth, of course, riches, finances
have a big influence on culture. Power and authority in terms
of government have a big influence on culture. And of course there
is more and more, it seems like this is developing more and more
in the last generation of time, there's always in modern culture
the coolness factor in terms of what is perceived as being,
and I mean cool is probably not even the cool word to use to
describe this anymore, but there is this factor of what is considered
to be cutting edge, what is considered to be really the hip cultural
thing to do. And all of those things have
their own influence and bear very significant kind of power
over all of our lives. If I mention just a few names
to you and ask you, you know, what cultural influence did these
names have? Just individuals and cultural
changes that developed from the influence of these individuals.
What kind of influence did Elvis Presley have on this culture
back a generation ago? What kind of influence did Hugh
Hefner have on this culture? What kind of influence did the
Beatles have? Remember, you know, some of you
are not young enough or old enough to remember this, but I remember
this. I was young at the time, but I can still remember John
Lennon saying publicly in the newspapers and television magazines,
whatever, in some interview that he did, identifying that the
Beatles at that time were more popular than Jesus Christ. Now,
the sad thing about what John Lennon had to say was it was
true. When he said that, they were more popular than Jesus
Christ. There was a lot more attention
being paid to the Beatles when they first came here in their
British invasion of the United States than there was being paid
to Jesus. in, you know, the radio and the
television and the newspapers and all of the popular media.
And then things began to change from this influence that the
Beatles brought over. I mean, there are little things like
hairstyles immediately started changing, you know, clothing
styles, musical taste started changing, but all kinds of other
subtle things based upon what the Beatles themselves thought
was cool to them and everybody else wanted to be a little bit
more like them so that they could be a little bit more hip themselves.
What about the influence that Madonna has had on our culture
in the last, you know, say just 10 years or so, 15 years or so.
And of course recently, I won't go into the details of this,
but recently there's been kind of a passing of the torch to
Britney Spears and others. And if you think that these people
don't have influence, if Britney Spears starts wearing hip-hugger
jeans, what happens in our culture? Every girl of a certain age starts
wearing hip-hugger jeans. Why? one person decides that
this is the cool way to look, this is the way that girls are
supposed to look, this is the way that I want to look, and
therefore, people that are under the influence of this kind of
cultural thing, they see that, they're impressed by that, they're
affected and influenced by that. So, what does this all have to
do with the concept of the culture of heaven? Well, what I want
us to understand is that heaven has its own culture. It's just
a lot different than our culture. It's a lot different. There is
a sociologist, people that study human society, they use a term
that they describe as culture shock. And what this simply means
is that if you or I who are, you know, I was born and raised
in Southern California, I've lived a couple of other places
for periods of time, but I spent most of my life in Southern California.
If you or I who spent most of our lives being raised under
this cultural influence were to suddenly pick up and move
to You know, like the Hammersleys just came back from China. If
we were to move to China, or like I had the opportunity, as
you know, to visit India a couple of years ago. If I was to move
to India, and just, that's not just, I'm there for a visit,
I'm not just there for a specific short-term purpose, but this
is now the rest of my life. Or like the Delafleins who spent
so many years in Costa Rica. It's a lot different in those
places. It's a lot different. And you
can experience what sociologists call culture shock if you're
not prepared for the differences. And if you're so locked in to
the culture that you're familiar with that you don't recognize
that there are other ways to live life than the way you're
familiar and the way that you've been brought up and the influences
and the aspects of this is the way you're supposed to dress
and this is the music you're supposed to listen to and these
are the movies you're supposed to watch or even you have movies
to watch versus no movies whatsoever. Those kind of things are aspects
of what sociologists call culture shock when a person is transplanted
suddenly from one culture to the other and they're not prepared
for the change. Well, what I want us to do in
this study today is simply prepare our hearts for culture shock,
which is the moment like our brother Michael, who took his
last breath here, fell asleep and woke up in the presence of
the Lord in the midst of the culture of heaven. And that is
his culture from now on. and whether or not we'll be shocked
by that transition. I mean, praise God if we're in
the transition and we wake up in the presence of the Lord.
But whether or not we're shocked by that transition, I think has
a lot to do with the way we perceive the effect of the world's culture
on our lives versus the influences of God Himself on our culture.
Turn with me, if you haven't yet, to 1 Corinthians 15, verses
20 through 28. I want to ask the question first, What is the culture of heaven
like? Keeping in mind that culture is a combination of certain things. Culture is the beliefs of a social
group, the social patterns, the behavior patterns, The artistic
expressions of those people, the laws, the languages, all
of those things have every effect and influence on the development
of a culture. In 1 Corinthians 15, we'll read
from verse 20. This is part of a much longer
section on the reality of the resurrection. I'm not going to
be going into detail on all of that, but I want to just emphasize
one particular aspect here from this section. 1 Corinthians 15,
20. But now, Christ has been raised
from the dead. the firstfruits of those who
are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came
the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also
in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ
the firstfruits, after that those who are Christ's, or who belong
to him, at his coming. Then comes the end, and this
is what we've been studying for the last year, the end, the last
things, how all things are going to culminate in the purposes
of God. Then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to
the God and Father, when he has abolished all rule and all authority
and power, for he must reign until he has put all his enemies
under his feet. The last enemy that will be abolished
is death. For he has put all things in
subjection under his feet. But when he says, all things
are put in subjection, it is evident that he, the father,
is accepted who put all things in subjection to him, the son. When all things are subjected
to him, then the son himself also will be subjected to the
one who subjected all things to him, so that... Two little
words. You've heard me emphasize this
point before. This is an important connecting phrase in God's Word. This is a little phrase that
God often used to describe all the things from verse 20 through
28 that he's just been describing are all dovetailing to the accomplishment
of a single goal. This is where it's all heading.
This is what it's all aiming at. So that God may be all in
all. And when Paul uses the term,
God may be all in all, he's done all of these things in all of
history from the beginning of creation until the end. He's
done it all so that God may be all in all. He's not saying it
as though, I sure hope that eventually God will be all in all. Maybe
it will happen, maybe it won't. It's just his way of expressing
this is where it's all heading. It surely will happen. The goal
of all of creation is that God eventually will be all in all. All right. What does that mean?
It means a whole lot. And it means more than I can
possibly try to describe this morning. But let's just think
about what it means in terms of what is the culture of heaven
like. Because what he's describing
here is the culmination of God's plan and purpose in the earth.
Because right now, God is not all, in all, on the earth. That's why we pray, Lord, your
kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The implication of that prayer is that the will of God is not
fully being done on the earth as it is currently being done
in heaven. So what we know from this, or
what we should understand from this, is that right now, God
is all in all in heaven. And later, as He finishes His
plan and culminates His purposes for the earth, He will be all
in all in the earth also, in all of creation. There will be
no aspect in which this part of creation God is not all in
all, but this other part He is. Right now, heaven as a created
place, He is all in all. On earth, which is also a created
place, he's not yet fully revealed as being all in all. The plan
of God has not been fulfilled to that degree yet. But, what
does this tell us about the culture of heaven? I said that earthly
culture is formed around social behavior patterns, the beliefs
of that social group of people, and the artistic expressions,
the languages, the laws, all of those things of that group
of people. If God is currently, and I believe He is, all in all
in heaven, what implications does that have for the culture
of heaven? Well, the culture of heaven is perfect. But when I say that, what are
you picturing? Because it's nothing like what
it's like here. It really isn't. Now, as believers, God gives
us moments, glimpses of what it's like to live in a perfect
culture. But our daily life, our average
day-to-day, minute-by-minute life, we're not living in a perfect
cultural environment. We're living in an imperfect,
corrupted, defiled cultural atmosphere, so to speak, that we're breathing
in and out day after day. The Lord Jesus described it when
in his prayer for his own disciples toward the end of his life, right
in conjunction with the Last Supper, knowing that his life
on earth was coming to an end, he prayed for his disciples,
interceded for them before the Father. And he described that
his disciples were in the world, but they're not of the world.
Because of that, because they are not of the world in their
essence, in their core, but they are living in the world, he was
concerned for them. And he began to pray for their
protection in a world, in a culture that is so defiled and so corrupted
that they would be, as he knew, breathing this culture in and
out, day after day. And you know, it's something,
we get affected and influenced by the culture that we live in,
and we don't even understand the degree to which we're influenced
by it. I don't even understand the degree to which we're influenced
by it. But, by stopping for a moment and considering and thinking
about what it would be like to live as part of a perfect culture,
what the Lord intends to accomplish in that moment's glimpse, that
stopping and meditating together and studying together, is He
means for us to be affected in a preserving way while we're
living in a defiled culture here and now. And, We're called, as
a group of people, not just us, of course, the whole entire body
of Christ worldwide, we're called to be these things that the Lord
says, you are, as my church, the light of the world. You are
the salt of the earth. And what he means to happen by
that understanding is that those of us who are affected by the
understanding of where we're heading, that we're meant and
destined and designed for a perfect culture that is being expressed
perfectly in heaven, We're meant to bear that cultural influence
in a greater degree in the midst of a defiled and degraded culture
of this world. And we're meant to influence
it toward godliness. Not that the culture in this
world will ever be. mirroring the culture of heaven until the
Lord returns. Because, of course, that is the
end point at which God will be all in all here in this world.
Now, let's talk about some of the details of what this heavenly
perfect culture is like. Culture on earth is all about
dominant social influences. I just named a few, you know,
talking about the Beatles and Hugh Hefner and Madonna and Britney
Spears and all of these individuals that have so influenced our culture.
Who's the dominant social influence in heaven? God. Only. Period. End of story. When we say God is all in all,
that means no one else has any dominant social influence in
heaven. I'm not going to influence the
way that heaven's culture is going to unfold, and neither
are you. God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Spirit are the total dominant influence in the culture
of heaven. So let's look at some of the
details of that, as I said. Turn from here back a couple
of chapters to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. One of the things
we identified as part of the makeup of any culture, this includes
the culture of heaven, is the beliefs of a culture. If you
don't think belief or concepts affect and influence a culture,
go and take a trip to Saudi Arabia sometime and walk around there
in Saudi Arabia and just observe the cultural difference. between
the United States of America and Saudi Arabia. Why is there
such a dramatic cultural difference between the two countries? There's
different beliefs that are at the core of those two societies,
those two cultures. 1 Corinthians chapter 11, I'm
going to read verses 18 and 19. Paul is describing what goes
on in the church in the city of Corinth at the time that he's
writing the letter. For in the first place, when you come together
as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part
I believe it, for there must also be factions among you, so
that those who are approved may become evident among you. Paul, in describing the way the
church in Corinth was living out its own little culture, because
culture is based on groupings. You can have a huge culture of
a ton of people, but an individual church has a culture of its own.
We have a culture as a church. And the Corinthians, excuse me,
had a culture of their own. And in the Corinthian culture,
they had these two elements that Paul described as divisions and factions. Now, there are
different aspects of of what these mean. There's some social
grouping aspects of this, but the core of this is, it's all
about what people believe. Ideally, in heaven, when we get
there, what we're going to see, what we're going to wake up into,
when our moment comes to go into the presence of the Lord, When
it comes time to ask questions, and I'm speaking in purely natural
now human terminology, when it comes time to ask, you know,
can I see, you know, I've never been here to heaven before, can
I see the statement of faith on record here in heaven? What
is the doctrinal statement here in heaven? I just want to be
sure that I'm tracking with the group and that the group believes
what they should believe. when I arrive in heaven. Will
I be doing that? Will I be asking the Lord for
his statement of faith when I get there? I won't be asking. Why won't I be asking? Because
everybody in heaven believes the exact same thing. What's the problem now? None
of us believe the same thing. None of us do. If we went around
this room and we talked about every topic that we could talk
about in the Bible, I would find something to disagree with every
single one of you on. And I'm sure you'd have something
to disagree with me on, right? And yet, by the grace of God,
and this is purely the grace of God, we are able to maintain
a certain group culture of unity because we do believe in these
things that the Bible describes as essentials of the faith and
non-essentials of the faith, as we've recently been emphasizing.
And that, at least on the essentials of the faith, We need to say,
and we need to believe, and we need to declare the same things
about those essentials. And to that degree, the church
does reflect and model the culture of heaven here on earth. But
on the non-essentials, and unfortunately through church history, too many
times even on the essentials, there have been divisions and
factions, which mean disagreements are at the core of those. And
those disagreements lead to us separating from one another and
forming our own groups in opposition, so to speak, against one another. The whole story, and I know you've
all asked this question at one time or another, where did all
these Christian denominations come from? How many denominations
are there, by the way? Anybody know? Nobody knows. Why? Because there's new denominations
being formed every single day. And denominations have all formed
not on the basis of our Christian unity, on the essentials of the
faith. Every single denomination has been born out of a division
and a faction within the church. Every single one. The good ones,
the bad ones, and the in-between ones. Okay? So what does this
mean for us? It means that when we reach heaven,
we need to understand that there's no longer going to be any divisions,
any factions, any disagreements. We're going to say and believe
and understand the exact same things. Let's turn over to another
passage in 1 Corinthians 2. Verse 12 through 16, Paul says, Now we have received
not the spirit of the world. So we know he's describing the
believers experience, but the spirit who is from God, so that
we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things
we also speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those
taught by the spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual
words. But a natural man does not accept
the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him,
and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually
appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he
himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of
the Lord, that he will instruct him? But we have the mind of
Christ." Now that's a glorious statement. that Paul makes about
the believer's experience. We have the mind of Christ. Let me ask you this. I'm talking about here and now.
Is this a true statement or not? Yes. Yes and no. Leslie here is learning. I can only catch you guys so
many times on this, okay? The answer is yes and no. Of course we have the mind of
Christ, or else, if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to agree
even on the essentials of the faith. Because there are people
out in the world, of course, that deny all the essentials
of the faith, for all kinds of different reasons, and all different
kinds of personal agendas that lead them to that disagreement
and denial of those essential things that we're caused by the
Spirit of God to believe. So we have the mind of Christ
right now. But are we fully operating, so to speak, in the mind of Christ,
in total and 100% harmony, agreement, and conceptual unity? Absolutely
not. Absolutely not. There are just
so many non-essentials. Even if we are able, by the grace
of God, to agree on the essentials, there are so many non-essentials
that we still don't see eye to eye on. And part of that is serving
God's purpose. As he described in the earlier
passage about divisions and factions, Paul even said it's necessary
for there to be divisions and factions among you. It's because
God is working in that iron sharpening, iron that friction that's created
by our disagreements, to shape and mold our characters, to motivate
us to dig into His Word and to study more diligently and in
a more committed way to learn the things that we should believe
and we should understand. But the point being that when
we enter the presence of the Lord in heaven, will it still
be a yes and no answer to this question, do we have the mind
of Christ? Thankfully, on that day, when we stand in the presence
of the Lord, it's yes and yes and yes only. There is no no
to that answer. We will fully have the mind of
Christ, which is, we will see things as He sees them, we will
have His perspective on every question that we ever ask, throughout
the duration of our entire life, and any new questions that might
be generated by our experience of being there for the first
time, are also going to be seen and understood and answered in
the perspective that Christ Himself bears in His mind at that moment. We'll see it the way He sees
it. And of course, the implication of that is, we'll all be right
then, because He's right on everything. There's not a single thing that
Jesus is wrong about. He's got all of the right ideas
about everything that you can possibly think about. The problem
is, right now, we've got a mixture of, you know, we're to some degree
discerning the mind of Christ. Now, to some degree, we're not
fully discerning it. And so there are these differences
among us. But there, that will end. Turn with me, if you would, from
here to 1 John, chapter 1. Let me just touch on I'm kind
of in one of those stuck places here because there's so much
more I would like to stop and describe about this that I'm
thinking about, but I do want to finish up these three main
points that I have about what the culture of heaven is like
and not just focus on the beliefs of heaven alone. The second aspect,
we talked about social patterns are a big part. Social behavior
patterns, what the social life is like in heaven. And there
is a social life in heaven. What's your social life like
now? Who do you mostly spend your
time with, hang out with? What's that all about? Why do
you hang out with the people that you hang out with, spend
time with? Usually it's about shared things, shared enjoyments,
shared perspectives, shared experiences. And it's going to be similar
in that way in heaven, but the nature of our social interaction
is going to be so much better than what we experience here.
In 1 John 1, right at the beginning of the letter, The Apostle John
describes the foundation of our social experience in heaven. And he describes it from the
standpoint of what we already are experiencing now, but like
with the mind of Christ, we are only partially experiencing the
fullness of what this really will be like once we arrive in
heaven. Reading from 1 John 1, verse
1. What was from the beginning?
what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have
looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of
life. And this is John's way of describing
the Lord Jesus himself. And the life was manifested and
we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life
which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we
have seen and heard we proclaim to you also And here are these
two little important connecting words again, so that. In other
words, the whole goal in one sense of the apprehension of
the gospel by the apostles themselves and the proclamation of the gospel
to others was to accomplish this, so that you too may have fellowship
with us. And indeed, our fellowship is
with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. These things
we write so that our joy may be made complete. The fundamental
social pattern in heaven is a social pattern identified as fellowship. Now, we use this term to describe
what we do in church life today. For instance, we're in a few
moments here. We're going to end this message
and I'm going to invite you to the fellowship hall, we call
it, where we get together and talk and eat a little bit of
a snack together and just share each other's company. We call
it the fellowship hall because it's a Bible word. But it's one
of those words that the rest of the culture just doesn't really
use anymore. It's an old English term. Back in older days in England,
it was something that the world itself would use to describe
social interaction. But, you know, when is the last
time that some guy in the world that doesn't know the Lord said
he was just going down to the bar to share fellowship with
the guys at the bar? You know, we just don't use that
terminology anymore, except in Christian circles. And because
of that, it's not wrong that we use the term, because the
term does occur in our English translations of the Bible, but
it's just a translation of a concept. And the concept means something
more than just light. We'll spend a few minutes together
in this room over here and eat some donuts and bagels together
and say our goodbyes and go about our separate ways and live our
separate lives. It's a word which means life partnership, being
so connected to each other or with someone that you are sharing
their life. You know, when Michael passed
away, you know, we had fellowship around his bed. It's not just,
you know, Mike's just one of those guys that was eating donuts
in the in the fellowship hall last week. And you know, so now
he's dying and that's sad. And we're going to go on from
there. There's a connectedness that the Lord means to establish
among us where we're partners with each other in life itself.
It's not just I see you on Sunday morning for an hour. I mean,
you know how it is. We can't just from practical
terms, we can't spend 24 seven with each other. But We are meant in whatever time
the Lord gives us to spend with each other, to understand how
deeply connected we really are. Because when we get to heaven
and we experience the fullness of what it means to have fellowship
with the Father, as John emphasizes, fellowship with the Son, and
then flowing out of that, fellowship with each other. it's going to
blow us away. We're going to be so completely
connected to one another in a way that we never fully understood
that we were even here in this present life. But the fullness
of that awaits. What does that mean for us? Well,
it means that, you know, all this stuff that flows out of
our culture, so much of our culture nowadays, especially in Southern
California, we're so disconnected from each other, we live our
separate lives, generally speaking, A lot of our culture is based
on alienation, based on being disconnected from each other.
There's no longer any town square where people come together and
just spend time with each other in this culture. Everybody lives
their own separate little life. And yeah, of course there's the
internet where people are connecting to each other in a certain way
there, but most of that, as you know, is corrupt and unhealthy
itself. and certainly no expression of heavenly fellowship. And so
the church is really in a position in this culture, in this society,
to reflect and to model and to demonstrate the way human society
and interaction is meant to be lived out. But sadly, what usually
happens? The world looks at the way that
church interacts with each other and they say, why in the world
would I want that? You know, I've got that and worse
already in my own life. Why would I want to go to church
to be, you know, yelled at? Or why would I want to go to
church to be hated or gossiped about? Or, you know, all of those
things that go with social patterns of the world. And we're called
to live out our lives with each other differently. One more thing. Let's look. Also,
let's turn from here to the book of Revelation. Let me give you
one more thing to think about, about what the culture of heaven
is like this morning, before we end here. Revelation chapter
15. What about the arts in heaven? What about the arts? Some of
you are more connected to the artistic expressions here in
this world. Art includes things like theater, it includes movies,
television, well, there's a lot of artistic on television, but
it includes music, it includes dancing, it includes sculpture,
paintings, all of those kinds of things. What about art in
heaven? Is there such a thing as artistic expression in heaven?
The answer is absolutely. Why? made human beings in his
image. And because we're made in his
image, we have an impulse for artistic expression. And it is
meant, that artistic expression is meant by God to bring glory
and honor to his name, because we are his image bearers. Of
course, so much of our culture, in terms of artistic expression,
just glorifies the sinful defilement of the fall of man, rather than
glorifying the Lord who created us for a higher purpose. But
I just want to focus on one particular artistic expression in heaven,
and there is more than one, and that is the music of heaven,
the songs of heaven. Turn with me, if you haven't
yet, Revelation 15. I'm going to read verses 1 through 4. What
is the music of heaven like? We just spent, you know, 30,
45 minutes, whatever it was this morning, in a time of musical
expression, artistic expression, here in our worship time, what
we call our worship time. And we had instruments, and we
had songs that we sang, and there's lyrics that are part of that,
and our hearts are involved in that. the culture of heaven,
the music of heaven, the artistic expression of heaven like that?
And the answer is yes and no. Let me ask you this. Music here
has form, it has structure. I'm no musician, but I understand
a little bit of the concept. It has structure to it. There's
a beat, for instance, to music here. There's such a thing as
4-4 timing in the beat of music, right? What's the timing of the
music of heaven, do you suppose? What's the form and the structure
of the songs of heaven? The book of Revelation is filled,
and there's more than one. We're just going to read one
of them. It's filled with songs that are sung in heaven. In every
single one of the descriptions of the songs of heaven, there's
not a single mention of the form, the structure of the song in
terms of beat, rhythm, timing, any of those things. None of
those are even mentioned. Which tells me it's not unimportant,
it's just not as important as some other detail about the songs
of heaven. And that is more important in
the form of the songs of heaven as the content. And that is very important to
the Lord. The content of our artistic expression is the Lord's
priority. Revelation 15 verse one. Then I saw another sign in heaven,
great and marvelous, seven angels who had seven plagues, which
are the last, because in them the wrath of God is finished.
And I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and
those who had been victorious over the beast in his image and
the number of his name standing on the sea of glass, holding
harps of God. These are redeemed, perfected
spirits of the righteous standing in the presence of God, and they're
standing there with harps. Harps are what? Musical instruments. This is an expression of art,
expression of music and song. And they're holding these harps,
and the implication is they're doing something with them, they're
not just holding them, you're using them. But again, it doesn't
give how they're strumming it, because that's what you do, you
pluck and strum harps. I don't know, I'm no musician,
but you play a harp by plucking and strumming, I think. So it's at least implied, but
we don't have any details of how they're doing that. All that
the Lord is concerned about is the content of what they sing. As they sang, it says, the Song
of Moses. Now, it's called the Song of
Moses. We don't have time to go back and develop this. It's
worthwhile if you want to take a peek at this yourself. Exodus
chapter 15 gives the full description of what the original Song of
Moses was all about. This song is very similar to
it, and it's called the Song of Moses to connect us to that.
worship that took place then, and the circumstances of that
worship was the deliverance of the people of God out of Egypt
into the glorious liberty of becoming, for the first time,
the people of God. And they sang the song of Moses,
the bond-servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,
and here is the content of their worship, Great and marvelous
are your works, O Lord God, the Almighty. Righteous and true
are your ways, King of the nations. Who will not Fear, O Lord, and
glorify your name, for you alone are holy. For all the nations
will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts
have been revealed." And after these things, I looked, and the
temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened.
This is a song that is sung in heaven. It's not the only one.
There are numerous ones in the book of Revelation alone that
are described. And the lyrics are written for us. and they
all know the lyrics. We hold song sheets because in
our limited natural capacity, we have a hard time understanding
to sing the same lyrics of a song here, and so we have these helps.
No song sheets in heaven. They're singing with the mind
of Christ. They know what to sing as they're singing it, but
they're all singing the same thing with very specific content. And is the content of their song
like or unlike the songs that we sing? It's very much like
the songs that we sing. It's very similar in that they're
singing about what? They're singing about the Lord.
They're singing about the glory of the Lord. They're singing
about the power and authority and majesty of the Lord. They're
singing about His plan and purpose in history and how God is sovereignly
working out His plan and purpose. They're singing about the resistance
that that plan faces in the earth, but how God is overcoming that
resistance and accomplishing the victory that He had planned
and purposed from the beginning of the foundation of the world.
They're singing about the same kinds of things that we sing
about. So to that degree, we as the church, in our work of
worship, our service of worship, we are able to reflect and model
on earth some of the culture of heaven. But let me ask you
this, other than the church, who else in the world is singing
songs with this as the lyrics? Okay, this is kind of an unusual
assignment I'd like to give you today as we come to the end.
All of you are going to get in your cars and drive home. Does
everybody here in your car have a working radio? Does anybody
have a working radio? Nobody? Anybody? Okay, get home. If you don't have one in your
car, fulfill your assignment at home. The rest of you, I'm
going to ask you to do me a favor. In your car on the way home, I want
you to find a radio station that has music on it with lyrics.
Other than a Christian station. I don't care what station you
pick, it could be country, it could be rock and roll, it could
be whatever. Oldies, golden oldies, whatever
it is. And just listen to two or three songs. And listen not
for the beat and all of that stuff, because that's secondary,
even in heaven. Listen for the lyrics. Listen
to the content of what these people are singing about. The
fact that they're singing isn't an expression of them bearing
the image of God in the earth. But what they're singing is evidence
of the corruption of that image. And the fact that this is all
that matters to them, to sing about those things. In heaven,
there's not going to be any songs about lost love. You know? There's not going to be any songs
about the things that we sing about here in this world, other
than when we come into the place of worship and recognize and
acknowledge who God is and what His great plan is. And really,
when you get to heaven, what you're going to see is it's the
only thing really worth singing about. It's not going to be like we
can only sing these things and we've... Gosh, Lord, can't we
have something on the song sheet this week? Because we're tired
of singing the same songs about how glorious you are. It's not
going to be like that. It's going to be clearly understood
by all of us. It's the only thing worth singing
about. But here on earth, it just seems
like there's so much more interesting stuff to sing about. Is that
true? No. It's just as true here as it
is there that it's the only thing worth singing about. the glory
of the Lord himself. It's just that we have so many
distracting things here that seem to be so much more worthwhile
to sing about, to write about, to make sculptures about, to
paint about. And yet the expressions of the
artistic endeavors in heaven that are going to continue for
all of eternity, there will be art throughout eternity. but
it will all be focused on Him and expressing His glory. All right, we'll stop here for
today. Let's pray and entrust our study to the Lord. Father God, as we have just for
a few minutes this morning stopped and considered what it's like
in heaven, in your presence, what the culture of heaven is
like, and considered how you want that to flavor and influence
the way we live out our own cultural experiences here, and even you
want to work through us to affect and influence the culture around
us. I pray, Father, that you would cause these words to be
like seed, and that you would plant those in our hearts, cause
them to be watered, to take root, and to bear fruit, Lord, that
would truly honor and glorify your name. And I pray that you
would prepare us as a people so that we will not be shocked
on the day that we make our transition into your presence. And I thank
you for that in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
The Culture of Heaven
Series Eschatology series
All cities have a culture, made up of things like beliefs, behaviors, laws, language, and artistic expression. Heaven also has a culture, very unlike what we find in the world.
Copyright 2003, Tree of Life Christian Church. All rights reserved.
| Sermon ID | 92803175523 |
| Duration | 49:49 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 |
| Language | English |
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