184: Bible Questions: What does the Bible say about HEAVEN?

I ended the last episode on what does the Bible say about the eternal destiny of the lost with the statement that while we may grasp the passion of the Scripture to have us recoil from the horror of Hell, most of us don’t grasp the teachings of Scripture to woo us to the eternal destiny of the saved – those whose sins have been covered by the shed blood of Jesus.  In this episode, I want to answer the question, What does the Bible say about the eternal destiny of those saved by the shed blood of Jesus?  I’d say, What does the Bible say about Heaven, but as we will learn, the images we have of Heaven from art and culture and even sermons is at best incomplete and at worst a distorted charicature of what the Bible teaches.

Im going to use the same approach as the last episode.  I am going to give ten overall principles – landmarks – of the eternal destiny of those who are saved by the shed blood of Jesus..

#10.  The eternal destiny of the saved is indescribable.  Paul summarizes it in 1 Cor 2:9:  “No eye has seen…those who love him”  In other words, in seeking to answer this question, I am trying to unscrew the inscrutable.  At best a shadow.  In 2 Cor 12, we learn Paul is saying that as an eyewitness.  In that Chapter, Paul tells us there was a time he was caught up to the third heaven.  Personally, I have a hunch I know when that was – 1^st missionary journey, Lystra, stoned to death.  Episode 127 if you want to learn about that.  But maybe it was a vision.  Paul called it Paradise and said even the things he heard he could not find words to repeat.  To the theif next to him on the cross who went all in in faith “remember me when you come into your kingdom, Jesus said, Today you will be with me in Paradise.  Whatever we can learn about the eternal destiny of those who go all in in faith in jesus, it is just a glimpse of something mind-blowing.

#9.  We are with God, with Jesus.  As we learned in Wordpictures, the entire theme of the OT was, “I will be your God…”  The angel told Mary her child would be IMMANUEL, God with us.  In Mark 3, Jesus picked 12 men ‘that they might be with him”  The night before his crucifixion Jesus told his troubled disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you…that where I am you may also be.  Writing to the Thessalonians, Paul carried by the Holy Spirit wrote of the destinies of those with faith in Christ who had died, they would be resurrected so that “we will always  be with the Lord”  In Rev 21, speaking of the end of Human history, on a new heaven and a new earth, repeating twice that God would be among them, would DWELL among them. 

#8.  We are there in resurrected bodies.  So often in medival art, popular culture, and in the songs and sermons of the church, we get this wrong.  In Job, likely the oldest book of Scripture, we hear Job state this  check this out…

 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and at the last he will stand upon the earth.^[a]
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
    yet in^[b] my flesh I shall see God,
²⁷ whom I shall see for myself,
    and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
    My heart faints within me!

Resurrection of our bodies is modeled vividly by Jesus in the Gospels.  On that first Easter morning, and for 40 days after, Jesus gives us a prototype of what a resurrected person is like.  When they saw him, the dsicipels though it was a spirit, a ghost.  I mean, what else could they think?  He was dead and there he stood.  They thought the same thing earlier when they saw Jesus walking on the water in a storm.  Jesus clears the confusion up

³⁸ And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹ See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” ⁴⁰ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.  In the hours and days ahead, Jesus walked with them, ate with them, made them breakfast.  It was basically the Jesus they all knew including his voice (all he had to say at outside the tomb was,. “Mary.”).  It was upgraded (he came through a locked door). 

It sure sounds like we will have a body.  Some ready passages like 1 Corinthians 15 “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God… and several times Paul contrasts the natural with the spiritual.  You can see why some conclude at death we shed this sinful fleshly cocoon and become fleshless spiritual beings.  But what if that means bodies that are not longer sinful but wholly spirutal – filled with and guided by the Spirit?  That’s a better fit with what we learned in our OT study.  1) as physical beings, we were made in God’s image, 2) woven together fearfully and wonderfully by our creator, to 3) manage his created world.  If we were made that way, why wouldn’t God remake us in a very similar way.

#7:  We may well be back on a new earth.  Twice in Isaiah God states he will create a new earth.  Heres what he says in Chapter 66: 

“For as the new heavens and the new earth
    that I make
shall remain before me, says the Lord,
    so shall your offspring and your name remain.
²³ From new moon to new moon,
    and from Sabbath to Sabbath,
all flesh shall come to worship before me,
declares the Lord.

Peter writes in his second letter,  

¹² waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! ¹³ But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

And the Revelation closes out with this promise in Chapter 21: 

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”

As with our resurrected bodies being recreated to be similar to the way God originally designed us, one could argue the new earth will be recreated similar to the way God originally designed it. 

Let me give you a word picture…A dozen years teaching…a dream (playground) … a bully ruins it…bully dealt with.  Wouldn’t I want to see my kids play on the playground?  New playground. How much like the first?  Maybe bigger and better, but similar? 

#6:  We will problaby do in eternity what God originally designed us to do here originally.  Episode 15.  Walk with God, manage the earth, love each other.  ‘I thought eternity was about worship?  Working in obedience to God and to the glory of God is worship.  In his letter to the colossians, Paul writes, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all to the glory of God (3:17).  Worship and serve are hooked together several dozen times in Scripture (Jesus in temptation – you shall worship the Lord your god and serve him only).  Jesus told the disciples they would sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.  He told parables that those who are faithful in a few things here and now will be given more things to be faithful over in the hereafter.  Rev 22:3 makes it explicit:  ³ There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; Put away the harps and get ready to roll up your sleeves.  We’ll still have work to do!

#5:  There will be relationships with each other, and they will be amazing.  In creation God was with Adam in perfect conditions and GOD said, this is not good.  He made Eve to be his partner, to corresponding to each other, fully transparent to God and to each other.  When we are resurrected – recreated in eternity, why would it be any different?  Just me and God – that would STILL not be good. God is love, and love requires objects to love, and the more the merrier.  1 Cor 13, what we call the love chapter, tells us what love is to look like in this fallen world then promises that some day we will know fully and be fully known.  That is relationship. 

I know what some of you are thinking…Jesus said there will be no marriage in Heaven – that we will be like the angels.  That’s maybe where some of those medival artists got their inspiration for turning us into those wing things.  But how are we like the angels and why will marriage be obsolete?  I’ve been waiting for 183 episodes to tell this story I tell to my students.  One day Jimmy came home from preschool…

…the reason marriage will no longer be in place is probably because with our new, sinless resurrected bodies in a God-filled and glorifying world, we will have a relationship with EVERY brother and sister that is fully transparent, joy-filled and intimate.  Taking marriage from our fallen earth to eternity will be like taking Billy on our honeymoon. 

#4:  It’s very likely we will remember our life here in the hereafter.  That came as a surprise to me as I studied the Bible.  I had the idea that when Revelation tells us there will be no more tears and pain that implied we wouldn’t remember the anguish of life on our time on this earth.  I thought death brought a memory wipe.  But I’ve changed my view.  Throughout the Old Testament, God commanded the people of God to remember what He had done to care for and deliver them.  We are told several times the actions of believers on this earth will be judged by God.  That requires recall, at least for that event of eternity.  The pictures we get of what people and angels in the hereafter will say to God is telling.  Like this…

Finally, what do you think will be our response if we can see the anguish of our lives in the context of how God redeemed it for his glory and the benefit of others?  Will that not bring a smile to our faces and incredible delight?  Frankly, I not only expect to remember the events of my life, I expect to see the relicks of God’s salvation throughout human history – the ark, the stone tablets, the cross, and I expect to hear testimonies of millions of believers how God redeemed their pain and plight to His glory.  Don’t you love great stories?  Get ready for redeemed stories.

#3:  We will still be finite in eternity.  I kind of thought we would be the complete package – just like Jesus.  Kind of the complete package from the get-go.  1 John 3:2 says Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. 

How will we be like him?  In eternity we will be the creature, not the Creator.  Will we be all-knowing, present everywhere at once, all-powerful?  Im not sure I can answer how we will be like him.  Best I can do is how we were like him originally in creation before sin – beings who could choose, love, rule… only now, able to do those things without the stain of sin.  A clearer reflection of God’s face in us. Still finite creatures  having an infinite time to discover and grow in an infinite perfect new heaven and new earth.

#2:  God left the story of what happens in the new heaven and what happens on the new earth a bit foggy.  One of the 8 themes of Scripture we studied in Wordpictures was Reign – God, and His son, Messiah, will rule and live among us. Perhaps the most astounding chapter in Scripture concerning this is Daniel 7 – (episode 73)  giving the sweep of human history from Daniel’s time to the end of time and into eternity.  Here it is: 

The Son of Man Presented

¹³ “I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven
One like a son of man was coming,
And He came up to the Ancient of Days
And was presented before Him.
¹⁴ And to Him was given dominion,
Honor, and ^[l]a kingdom,
So that all the peoples, nations, and populations of all ^[m]languages
Might serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one
Which will not be destroyed.

Other passages describe this everlasting kingdom:  lions lying down with lambs, children playing with cobras, the desserts blooming, righteousness covwering the earth as like the waters cover the sea.  The question for many is, when is Scripture talking about and where?  Several times a 1000 year reign of Jesus on earth is mentioned.  Read the first portion of Revel 20.  Some think that will literally happen on earth then believers will be wisked away to where we REALLY belong (after all, Hebrews calls the heros of faith ‘strangers and exiles’ here).  Others say, not so fast.  I think it makes more sense those verses are mostly speaking of Jesus reigning on a NEW earth living with us and ruling over us.  After all, Earth is the place God custom designed for us.  We are aliens and strangers on a broken planet earth, but a resurrected earth ruled by Jesus and chock-full of his glory and righteousness sounds like HOME to me.

And #1:  The eternal destiny of the saved happens because of Jesus.  Rev 5 is my wife’s favorite chapter in the Bible.  She cant hear it or read it without weeping for joy.  For jesus.  Here is what reverberates through eternity from the saved:

“Worthy are You…You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation.”

The old hmn I learned growing up is spot on.    Jesus paid it all…all to him I owe.  Sin had left a crimson stain.  He washed it white as snow.