A Man's Image of Heaven

Headed Home

1 Samuel 2:1-10
John 14:1-9

The cry of the human heart is this: “Where am I going?” There are those of us who have successfully stifled that cry and deadened our ear to the answer. In so doing, we have also deadened our ear to the question, “Why am I here?”

I had a friend some 25 years ago who had contracted lymphoma through exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. The poor guy had developed a resistance to the meaning and purpose of life. He cared not why he was here, and he cared not where he was going. His answer to his existence was, “We are all worm bait.”

“Worm bait!” In other words, the ultimate purpose for this intricate and interdependent Creation is to feed the worms. Worms become the object of God’s love, God’s most recent creation, then, was for the purpose of bringing survival to the worm population.

What a cynical example of the denial of the gift of life! We have arrived here for one purpose only – to feed the worms. The Great Watchmaker has designed this intricate wonder so that His glory might be displayed through the worms.

Now, unfortunately, and I say this at my peril, our view of Heaven has been crafted by the women in our lives, has it not? That image of us sitting on a cloud eating grapes and playing harps is the kind of eternal sentence that women have designed for us men who have lorded over them. They want us to be emasculated as payback. This picture of my Mom sitting enraptured at the feet of Jesus for eternity is, quite frankly, a turnoff for me as a red-blooded male. Barbara reminded me, however, that these pictures all emerged from the Renaissance. I suggested that that may well beg the question.

Jesus may very well be the image of the perfect husband, but I can’t go there. I am not looking for a husband. And I have long ago given up the idea of a perfect wife, although mine is about as close as it gets, I think. It took a couple of false starts to get there, but by the grace of God here I am.

The bottom line is that if there are no trout streams in Heaven, I can’t see the purpose of going there. Some of you may feel the same way about gardens and maple trees and golf. What I know for certain, however, is that I want no part of a Heaven where you can’t track deer and you can’t catch a rainbow trout now and then.

I wish I could answer that question for you this morning – “where am I going?” So far, the alternative is enough for me to be willing to brave the feminine Heaven. My son, Jonathan, asks me occasionally if I would opt for worm bait over Heaven if given the choice. My answer always is that if given the choice I would rather have it end here than spend eternity eating grapes and playing a harp.

The fact is that we don’t have that choice. Our view of Heaven, then, must be way off base. I’m going to try and bring it a little bit back to earth this morning.

I take comfort in Hannah’s vision of Heaven. The fact that it is a woman’s view is instructive, I think. Hannah’s Heaven is a state of being where all of our longings are satisfied. Combined with Jesus’ description of Heaven as not only a state of being but a place, we can grasp something of what it means to have hope.

Hannah’s grief was that she was barren and had had her nose rubbed in it daily by Elkanah’s other wife who had borne him many sons and daughters. There was no comfort that Elkanah could give to Hannah, even though we are told that he loved her deeply and grieved for her.

Hannah bears the son, Samuel, weans him and gives him back to God by taking him to the Temple and leaving him in the care of the High Priest, Eli. The longing of her heart has been answered and been replaced by something deeper and more lasting – a vision of the eternal God. She leaves Samuel at the Temple rejoicing rather than mourning her loss of him. She has received a vision of the future.

My heart rejoices in the Lord…My mouth boasts over my enemies.

Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the Lord is a God who knows and by him deeds are weighed.

Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry hunger no more.

The Lord brings death and makes alive, he brings down to the grave and raises up.

The Lord sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts.

He will guard the feet of his saints, but the wicked will be silenced in darkness.

It is not by strength that one prevails; those who oppose the Lord will be shattered.

He will thunder against them from heaven; the Lord will judge the ends of the earth

He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.

Somehow, Hannah has already entered Isaiah’s Highway of the Redeemed that we talk about – the Kingdom of God. Somehow she is already on the path, not to clouds and grapes and harps, but to victory. Somehow there is a strange continuity between Heaven and her life at that moment as she is walking away from her self-esteem and the deepest longing of her heart. That continuity for Hannah is summed up in the words, “God will give strength to his king (Jesus) and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

Hannah has found her hope in the Messiah who has not yet come. That hope for her is not pie-in-the-sky bye-and-bye but is present here and now. She trudges back home without her dream, her son. Instead, her dream has been realized in the revelation of God in Christ Jesus in whom He will give the strength for victory over all those longings of the human heart. Hannah’s hope is not in clouds and grapes and harps nor in sitting down and singing praises to God for eternity. Hannah’s hope is in a state of being where the longings of the human heart are fulfilled –where the emptiness and futilities of this life are no more. There is a connection, you see, between the emptiness of this life and the fulfillment of the life beyond death. There is a continuity between who and what we are right now – all our limitations and our talents; our strengths and our weaknesses – and what we are to become.

And for Hannah, this is up front and personal. It is a hope that will bring victory to the defeats of her life. There will be a special place for Hannah, designed for her; created for her; specially thought through to fulfill the longings of her heart.

You can take that vision of bright lights at the end of a tunnel, grapes on a cloud where the sun never sets or a war in Jerusalem if you wish. I will take Hannah’s vision where the unfulfilled pains and sufferings of Stan Moody’s life are answered – where every thwarted creative energy that God has put in me as part of His image blossoms into new light. For that to happen, that place prepared for me and for you must be individual and personal.

I need to know what it is to fulfill God’s perfect will by never again lusting after the things and the people of this earth. I want to know what it is to have a relationship that grows in unconditional love. I want to know what it is to never have to fear getting old or dying. I want to know what it is to be in community with folks who love you enough to see to it that your dreams are realized so that I can feel confident enough to help them realize theirs. I want to know what it means to be able to trust everyone around you and not get burned.

Your dream is personal and has to do with your sorrows and your failures and your pain and suffering. It is different from my dream but it is individual and personal. Heaven, then, becomes the state of being and the place where everything Hannah was created to be is realized and everything you were created to be is realized

The God who makes full the hungry, makes alive the dead, raises the poor from the dust, lifts the needy from the ash heap and seats them with princes, who guards the feet of his saints and who judges the ends of the earth has a tailor-made plan for you and me that has nothing to do with clouds and grapes and harps. It has to do with the continuity between the person you were created to be and the person you will become. It has to do with the discovery of the self God intended you to be.

And the irony is that only by following the example of Hannah in giving up of the self you have become can you become the self God intended you to be.

The disciples should have taken a chapter out of the story of Hannah.

Jesus has just rebuked two of them – Judas and Peter. Peter almost lost the dream twice in these last few moments. The first time was when Jesus wanted to wash his feet and Peter refused: “Unless I wash you, you will have no part of me.” “Make up your mind, Peter, whether you want to cling to your pride or whether or not you want to follow me into a life of unconditional love and service.” The second time he almost lost it was when he insisted that he would lay down his own life for Jesus, to which Jesus replied, “…before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”

Peter, when he heard the rooster crow, went outside and wept bitterly. Peter’s Heaven began at that moment on the shore of the Sea of Galilee when he saw the risen Lord, jumped into the water and came to Him. “Do you love me, Peter?” “Feed my sheep.” Peter’s Heaven had begun in the hope that he would be able to overcome his pride and self by feeding Jesus’ sheep as a means of demonstrating his love.

Judas, on the other hand, was toast. He never wanted to get beyond his pride and self. He never saw himself as a tarnished image of God. He was never willing to become fully what God had created him to become. His now was all he wanted. So Judas’s Heaven became a place where all his dreams of power and wealth could be fulfilled in the world of commerce and industry now. He wanted no part of a future hope. His god was not the God of Hannah. This Jesus was to Judas an opportunity now.

“As soon as Judas took the bread (from Jesus), Satan entered into him. ‘What you are about to do, do quickly,’ Jesus told him…as soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.” Judas went into the night because he loved darkness rather than light.

In the 14^th chapter of John, we have the briefest picture of hope – really the only description of Heaven in the Bible.

Jesus has told the 11 that he would be with them only a little while longer and that where he was going they could not come. They are grief stricken. They have mixed up their dreams for the now with their hopes for future perfection. They thought perfection would be in a New Jerusalem here on earth, while all along Hannah’s idea of perfection was the completion in her consciousness and in her body of all that God had created her to become.

Jesus tells them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” He had just delivered some bad news. They were not going to be able to resist betraying Him and scattering. That is bad news enough. He also told them that He not only would be going away but that He would be going away not in glory but in a cloud of suffering.

They had begun to see this picture, and it wasn’t very pretty – no clouds, harps and grapes. They are already beginning to sorrow over what was going to happen to them. They are already beginning to feel deserted and vulnerable. They had given up their homes and their livelihood to follow this dream, and now it not only was to be taken away from them but it was to be under the worst of circumstances. They begin to think about their resumes and wonder if they can go back to fishing or tax collecting.

Jesus tells them not to let their hearts be troubled. A strange statement, is it not?

The Greek for that word “trouble” has nothing to do with grief or sadness. It is the word tarassestho. It is the kind of trouble like on a sea when it cannot rest. “Do not let your hearts be in confusion, ruffled, disquieted.” Keep possession of your souls when all else seems to have failed. Build with confidence on your belief in God. “I am the fulfillment of your belief in God. If you would provide for strength against this stormy day, believe also in me.”

Your religion is not enough! Belief in God is not enough! It doesn’t take you from the poor, foundering person you are to what you were created to become. “I am the bridge to your complete fulfillment,” Jesus is telling them and us. “I am the key to your individual personality becoming everything it was intended to become.” “You believe in God; believe also in me.”

Jesus shares with them how the continuity from the poor blokes that they are to what they are to become is going to happen. He has a job to do. They are going to have to let Him go so that He can complete the work that He and His disciples had begun. That will begin with Jesus abandoning self for a cross and His disciples later abandoning themselves for Him.

“The chord we have built will not be broken,” Jesus is telling them. “I have to get things ready for you before you can make the transition from what you are to what you were created to become.” “You will have sorrow, yes. But I have overcome and am the very Highway that you will travel from imperfection to perfection. Hannah saw my strength and my exaltation and rejoiced even in her great loss. Her hope was in what you are now witnessing and experiencing. Do not let your sorrow kill that hope!”

There is more. Jesus goes on to tell them what He has to do to get ready for them to finish the journey from what is to what can become:

In my Father’s house are many rooms…I go there to prepare a place for you…I will come back, not to rejoin you, but to take you with me so that you may be where I am…You know the way to where I am going.

I don’t see any clouds or harps or grapes there, do you? This is not a mansion where everyone is the same – where they all have been forced into some kind of angelic state. This is a place where there is a place, or room, especially designed for every believer whose hope is in this Christ. Every room completes the picture of perfection for every soul there. It is the home where you and I are at last fulfilled in becoming everything God created us to be.

An unknown author once wrote that as a boy he thought of heaven as a city with domes, spires and beautiful streets inhabited by angels. His little brother died, and his Heaven became inhabited by one person. Then another died, along with some of his acquaintances. Heaven began to contain several people he knew. It was not until his own children died that he began to get the point. His loved ones became part of his own treasure in Heaven. Eventually, he had so many acquaintances and loved ones in Heaven that he no longer thought of it as a city with streets of gold but as a place full of inhabitants.

These rooms that Jesus talks about and that He has to get ready are accommodations for each individual saint. It is a promise that our individuality will not be lost but will be preserved through a special accommodation for each of us. “In my Father’s house are many rooms…I go to prepare a place for you and you and you.”

The journey has only begun. Jesus is the bridge from now to everything the Father created us to become.

"A New Command"

John 13:12-20, 31-38

I have been struggling for some time now about what it means to be crucified with Christ – to follow Him in the death of self: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross daily and follow me.” “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

These verses are at the core of the Christian life. They distinguish who are God’s children among we who claim Jesus Christ as Lord. And those words are a whole lot more difficult for some than for others. Last week we talked about where we might find Jesus. You felt strongly that Jesus can be found where His people are gathered, and you were right. Conversely, God’s people can be found where Jesus is – outside the gate of the world of commerce and industry. The followers of Jesus are strangers and aliens, engaging in the world of commerce and industry but not being of the world of commerce and industry.

I don’t know about you, but these words hit me where I live. Be aware that the world of commerce and industry thrives at every place in human life, even in a prison. We might say especially in a prison. The world of commerce and industry is a world in which we use power and money to gain influence, and we use our influence to gain more power and money. It is trusting in the arm of flesh rather than in the hand of God.

In America, we have what is known as OT Christians – Christians who believe that Jesus and the Kingdom of God are away and that we must do a rain dance to get them to return to earth. That’s a form of allegiance to the world of commerce and industry. OT Christians are people who believe that the only hope that God has is in our ability to make things happen for Him.

What we are going to consider today is a different slant on the person and work of Jesus Christ that moves Christians on from the OT to the New. This is a rather subtle distinction that makes all the difference in the world. If you are afraid of being a NT Christian and would prefer to be under the law, we are going to try and encourage you this morning to look at God’s grace in a different light.

The question we are going to wrestle with today is, “What is new about the commandment to love one another?

As a background, we turn to the 12^th chapter of Mark. Jesus is debating the Resurrection with the Sadducees who did not believe in the Resurrection. They create this scenario of a woman whose husband dies, leaving her with no children. Since the essence of marriage among the ancient Jews was the producing of offspring, and since it was customary for a widow to marry the brother of her husband, this woman married 6 brothers, having no children by any of them. Their question to Jesus was, “Teacher, at the Resurrection (in which they did not believe), whose wife will she be, since the 7 were married to her (and there were no children)?”

Jesus’ answer is in Mark 12:24 – one verse: “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?” They thought they knew the Scriptures. They had searched the words of God and missed the Word of God. They knew something of God or about God, but they knew nothing of the whole counsel of God. Jesus’ answer to them is the same as it is to us who presume to understand what God is doing and when He is going to do it: “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.”

How often I have written about and preached about the root problem with American Evangelicalism – the failure to know the whole counsel of God and the refusal to bow to His absolute sovereignty. This morphs into a belief that we can bring in the Kingdom of God ourselves with our money and our marketing skills. Anyone who believes that strong-arming a person into repeating the Sinner’s Prayer is gaining a convert for Christ is deluding himself and denying the absolute sovereignty of God through the conviction of the HS. Anyone who believes that the pretension of being sin-free will persuade another person to want what you have has no perception of sin and its forgiveness through Christ. Such a person is an OT testament Christian – one that I refer to in my book as a Christian Atheist- believing in Christ but not believing in the power of God. God is not the God of the dead or just the Resurrected or the Raptured. God is the God of the living – Now!

Jesus is talking here with OT scholars who cannot get beyond the do’s and don’ts of legalistic religion – who want to find within themselves something good so that they can earn eternal life. They want to look good to others and somehow believe that God can also be fooled. Just like what we find in prison, they want to think that there is some gradient of goodness and that somehow God draws a line in the middle of the sin spectrum and says, “Everything to the left of this line is bad sin; everything to the right of this line is good sin.” They have forgotten that God cannot look on sin of any kind.

Another OT guy comes up to Jesus and, hearing the debate, asks Him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus tells him, “The most important one is ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

The response of this OT guy is this: “Well said, Teacher. You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” “More important,” we might add, than all the politics and all the parachurch ministries and all our own efforts to try and persuade ourselves that we are holy because we are not abortionists and not homosexuals. That should be fairly easy for most of us, I would think.

The point is this: This OT guy knew that love of God and love of neighbor was the summation of the Ten Commandments. If we love God, love of neighbor should come naturally. We will want for our neighbor the best of what we want for ourselves, especially if that neighbor is considered to be either our enemy or a weak Christian.

What we need to understand here is that the commandment to love is an old commandment obvious to more OT types of guys. Jesus, however, takes this one step further. When He saw that this OT guy had answered wisely, He said to him these words: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

In other words, to understand and to adhere to the commandment to love was short of but not far from the Kingdom of God. It would be a slight improvement on this OT guy’s understanding to compel him to come into the Kingdom. He would need to stretch the love commandment a little bit more to make it fit the New Covenant.

Jesus is acknowledging that the commandment to love was an old command. Here in the 13^th chapter of John, however, He makes it clear that He is giving His disciples a new command that, on its surface, is identical to the old command: “A new command I give you: ‘Love one another.’”

There is a sea-shift in context here. In the previous example, Jesus is sitting around debating with a bunch of OT guys. In this example, He makes clear in v. 31 that the line of demarcation is this very moment: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.” There is a sea change in the simple word, “love.” That sea change is a change in the meaning of the word. The glorification of God through and in Jesus Christ is the shift that changes the way we look at love. Put very simply, the difference between the OT guys and the NT guys is the meaning of the word “love.” The difference between being not far from the Kingdom of God and being in the Kingdom of God is a new spin on an old commandment.

For our OT Christian friends, then, who somehow prefer to depend on the old interpretation of the word love, they tend to put the Kingdom away somewhere and want to do a rain dance on the Mount of Olives to bring it back. They miss the significance of the glorification of God in and through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus demonstrates this new interpretation of love by washing the feet of His disciples. You will recall that Peter, as an OT guy, wanted no part of that. Jesus tells him that, “Peter, unless I wash you, you have no part of me…I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is the messenger greater than the one who sent him.”

The example Jesus gave them was that they were to abase themselves and lower themselves as did He. Jesus was their Master – their teacher and Lord. Yet, here He was being a servant to His servants. Unless they, and we, are willing to permit God, in the person of Jesus Christ, to become our suffering servant, we will have no part of Him. The believer in Jesus Christ, then, should not be focused on being better than others but must focus on getting under others. That’s what it means to follow Jesus.

So what does the glorification of God in Christ Jesus do to make new this old commandment to love? What is novel about this new commandment, and what is the spirit of this new commandment to love one another?

What is it that would propel the Apostle Paul to cross oceans, not to conquer other nations, but to spend himself? On they went, a glorious band of brothers, over oceans, through forests, through dungeons to the throne of the human heart. Vast armies of ants moved across nation after nation, drowned in thousands of rivers, burned to a stake, consumed by wild animals, always to be replaced by fresh hordes of others. Why would they do this?

In the new command is a new voice in human history that was like no other voice before – the cry of a young church branching out from Israel, the narrowest, most bigoted, most intolerant nation on the face of the earth at that time (and some say even today).

The old commandment to love your neighbor was to the Jew a love of fellow Jews, narrowing down to his select friends. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.” To the Gentile, then as now, the old commandment referred to friendship, patriotism, domestic relationships, etc. But Jesus gives us a new commandment.

“You have heard it said, ‘’Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies.’” We move from a close circle of friends, our country and our relatives to all the possible people in life with whom we have contact, whether we like them or not; whether we like their political affiliation or not; whether they are nice people or not.

We move from a law of obedience to a new principle. Christ’s new religion is not a law. It is a spirit. It is not a creed. It is a way of life. To the one principle of love, God has entrusted the whole work of winning the souls of His elect. The heart of man was made for love. Only in Christ can that heart expand. This new love, then, is the fulfillment of the law – the principle placed in our hearts by the HS that cannot be obeyed in the flesh.

The new commandment to love one another is the Easter message. We can love one another with an unconditional love because in Jesus Christ we have been showed how. We have met the living, loving God face-to-face. Because we have met Him face-to-face, we have been given the tools we need – the evidences – to love Him with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength. To love God that way empowers us to love our neighbor in a new way never before conceived by mankind.

The measure of that new command is “as I have loved you.” How has He loved us?

He gave all that He had to give. His love was not a sentiment. It was the giving of self, a concept unheard of in times past. The very fact that He was mocked from the foot of the cross with the words, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save,” proves the point. How could He, having saved others, keep for Himself what He has given? How can anyone live for self when he is living for others? These enemies were declaring the very principle of Christianity – the grand law of all existence – that only by losing self can you save others and yourself.

What that means for us is letting go of our pseudo morality, our superior biblical understanding and our desire to be greater that others in order to save them. We want to be above others so that we can reach down and rescue them. How He loved us, however, is to get beneath us and reach up.

Recall how Jesus fed the multitude: “I have compassion on the multitude because they continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat.” There is a tenderness there that we don’t often see. Unspoken is that Jesus Himself had had nothing to eat for 3 days. To His disciples He once said, “Come apart with me into a desert place and rest awhile.” While He Himself was overworked, His eye was on their welfare. From the cross we hear the words, “Son, behold your mother. Mother, behold your son.” Too exhausted to say more, His concern was for His mother’s welfare rather than His own suffering.

We live in a time when people are out to do great works. Someone once said that “All sin goes back to ‘I want to be somebody.’” The fact is that while many of us wait for great opportunities to do great works, life passes us by, and acts of love are not done at all. Opportunities for doing great things seldom occur. Life is made up of infinitesimals – little victories and little defeats. The sum of happiness in any given day is not the great things that happened but the small attentions, kind looks and charitable gestures that make the heart swell.

Inasmuch as we are to love as Jesus loved, we are left, of course, with the question of how Jesus loved. His was a love that was never thwarted by the unworthiness of those around Him. It was a love that human faults, desertion, denial and unfaithfulness could not dampen. It was a love that trusted Judas, even though Judas was committed to an act of treason against God at the very time he dipped in the same dish and managed the budget.

The Pharisees called Him “Good Master,” even while they plotted to have Him killed. The people shouted “Hosanna,” while 3 days later they were shrieking for His blood. A disciple was ashamed of Him and denied Him. Three fell asleep while He was sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane for the agony just ahead.

In a day in which we have all learned not to trust anyone until they have earned that trust, the only preservation from this withering of the heart is love. Love is the ultimate fount of strength. The Savior loved His disciples infinitely more than they loved Him because His heart was larger. His was a love that knew that once you and I were exposed to its power, it would be irresistible.

The only way that power could be seen, however, was in obedience to the Father. In the Resurrection we have love made effective. Because He lives, love trusts on – ever hoping; ever longing; ever expecting. His last prayer was for the hope of the race who had rejected Him so that we also might hope in love for our enemies.

The way, then, to life abundant, is to hold fast to that kind of love commanded of us who have witnessed the glorification of the Father in and through His Son, Jesus. We win by serving; we conquer by forgiving. We are strong by being meek in an overbearing world.

Go forth, then, children of the Cross. Carry everything – your own cross – before you daily. Win victories for God, not through politics or military might or power or money but through the conquering power of a love like His. That is the spirit of the new definition of an old command – “love one another as I have loved you.”