The Present Heaven
Heaven Bound • Sermon • Submitted
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Two weeks ago, we began this six week series entitled “Heaven Bound” and we answered the question “What is heaven’s door?”
What was the answer we found?
Exactly. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is Heaven’s door. There is one entrance to Heaven. You can’t paint enough fences or walk enough grandma’s across streets to get into Heaven. There aren’t enough volunteer projects or church services that you can attend that will usher you into Heaven. One entrance - Jesus Christ - by faith in Him - what the Reformers called Sola Fide “by faith alone” will in Sola Christus “in Christ alone” allow you access to Heaven. So that’s the door.
Have you ever watched a Youtube video on how to do something? Like how to replace a toilet. Or, how to change a tire. Or, how to get oil based paint off of the black blur. Or, how to cut a watermelon with a diaper? I’ve watched a lot of these videos and imagine if together we decided “hey, the station needs a new roof, let’s go to Youtube so we can know how it’s done.” So we watch hours upon hours of videos. We learn what type of wood is best for the beams, we learn how to shingle a roof, we learn how to insulate the attic. After a day or two of research, hours of research - we feel confident. We know what to do. So we get our team together, we get up on the roof and we realize “hey, we don’t have any of our supplies. We don’t have two by fours, we don’t have a nail gun, we don’t have a power drill, we don’t have screws, we don’t have plywood, we don’t have shingles, we don’t have insulation or the machine that can blow the insulation. We are just up on the roof with some knowledge.
Well, that is what it will be like for you if you spend the summer learning about Heaven, but you never first walk through the door by repenting of your sin and believing in Jesus Christ as your Lord.
Transition: now tonight’s message is called “The Present Heaven” and we are going to talk about (1) The Nature of the Present Heaven, then we will ask these two questions (2) Is it a Physical Place and (3) What is it Like?
Listen to what Paul wrote in :
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
Students God does not want you to be uninformed about “those who fall asleep” that’s a euphemism - new word of the day - everybody say it together - euphemism. Now what is a euphemism - it is a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing. So if Pastor Glen came to me and, with the support of the Deacon body told me that I needed to fire Trent & Jennifer. When I went up to them, rather than saying “you’re fired, pack it up” I would say “the church has to make cuts in personell and somehow I didn’t make the list.” Cuts would be a euphemism for fired. It’s softer. It’s more pleasant. So when talking about death - Paul uses the phrase “those who fall asleep”.
So here Paul wants us to understand about those who’ve died. Why? Well he tells us - so that we would have hope - that we wouldn’t grieve. He wants us to be encouraged about the afterlife - not afraid or terrified. The truth is many of us have loved one’s who have died - and the present Heaven is where any of us go who are Christian.
Transition: so what is the nature of the present Heaven?
1. The Nature of the Present Heaven
1. The Nature of the Present Heaven
First, t
When a Christian dies, he or she enters into the state which theologians call the “intermediate state” which is a transitional state between our life on Earth and the future resurrection to life on the New Earth. Most of the time, when you and I talk of Heaven, we are talking about the Present Heaven.
One thing I talk about often with Noah & Emma Kate is the fact that their grandad, my dad is in Heaven. If you ask them, on a good day, where is daddy’s dad, where is Grandad, they would probably tell you he is in Heaven with God.
Now, when we talk like that we are talking about the Present Heaven. And the first thing we need to know about the Present Heaven or the intermediate state is that it is temporary. By definition, intermediate means in-between or temporary. Even though the Present Heaven is temporary, that doesn’t mean it’s like lame or something. Listen to Paul’s words in Philippians 1:
I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.
Life in the Present Heaven is “far better” than life here because of the presence of Christ. It will be a wonderful place, but ultimately the Present Heaven is not our eternal home - it’s not what we will be refashioned for in the bodily resurrection. We are destined for life in our resurrected bodies on resurrected Earth - if we lose sight of that, we may feel disoriented when we think of eternity. So, first the Present Heaven, where you go when you die if you are a Christian, is temporary.
So a follow up question to this - will we live in Heaven forever?
If by that we mean, will we be with the Lord forever - then yes, but if we mean will we live in the place of the Present Heaven the answer is no. When we die, believers in Christ will not go to Heaven where we’ll live forever. Instead, we’ll go to an intermediate Heaven. In that Heaven - where those who died who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ - they will await the time of Christ’s return to the earth, our bodily resurrection, the final judgment, and the creation of the New Heavens and the New Earth. You cannot understand the doctrine of Heaven without understanding this.
Panama Illustration flying from Wichita, stopping in DFW joining up with a team (several hours), and then heading to Panama. When asked where are you going what would you say? Panama, by way of Dallas maybe. But probably just Panama.
That’s what the Present Heaven is like - it is not our eternal destination. It’s temporary. It’s a stop on the way to our eternal home, the New Earth. Make sense?
One of the road bumps to understanding this is coming to terms with the fact that Heaven can change. Students only God is eternal. Even Heaven was created. Heaven is not essential to God’s character, it is not a place that He must live, but it is a place where He chooses to live. Because God created Heaven (), it had a beginning and is therefore neither timeless nor changeless. So, once we abandon our assumptions that Heaven cannot change, it all makes sense. God does not change; He’s immutable; He’s eternal. But God clearly says Heaven will change. It will be relocated according to :
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.
And the same thing goes for Hell:
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
So, the Present Heaven, the one where all Christian’s go now when they die - is temporary and will change. So the Present Heaven is like an angelic realm, whereas, the Eternal Heaven - called the New Earth will be here on Earth, but it will be renewed and remade. They are two different places.
Another question that should be asked is: when we die and go to the Present Heaven, will we be conscious and aware?
At death, our human spirit will either go to Heaven or Hell. When Jesus told the parable of Lazarus, he was fully aware moments after death. What did Jesus tell the thief who was dying on the cross next to him ()? Today you will be with me in paradise. teaches us:
Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
It’s important for us to understand that we will be aware and we will have consciousness as soon as we die. There are people that will tell you that when we die we go into “soul sleep” where we have no consciousness - that’s a lie. That is not biblical. We will be fully aware, whether we are in Hell away from the Lord or in Heaven with Christ. Think of it this way when we die - our bodies await their resurrection, but our spirit will be fully aware and will be with Christ.
And here is why it’s important to understand that we will be aware. Immediately following our death we will experience our first judgment (we will go through 2): it’s called the judgment of faith. This judgement will be about what we’ve done with Jesus. Have we trusted in His death, burial and resurrection - that He was God’s spotless lamb who would take away the sin of the world - or did we deny Him. And this judgment will place us in the Present Heaven and Present Hell. This judgment is different than the Great White Throne Judgment that we read of in where we will be judged for our works.
The Present Heaven isn’t some place that if we could just go up high enough we could get there. It’s more to be understood as another universe or dimension. That’s why I love Narnia, because it picks up on the idea that Narnia is another universe or dimension. If this sounds weird listen to the words of Stephen the first martyr:
But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
Stephen saw heaven with his eyes. It was another universe or dimension that the other’s could not see. It was no dream. Wayne Grudem puts it this way, “It was rather that his (Stephen’s) eyes were opened to see a spiritual dimension of reality which God has hidden from us in this present age, a dimension which none the less really does exist in our space/time universe, and within which Jesus now lives in his physical body, waiting even now for a time when he will return to earth.”
What is amazing is that this scene helps us realize that it is fully possible that the Present Heaven is actually physical.
2. Is it Physical?
2. Is it Physical?
Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of a guy named Plato?
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Okay, he was Greek Philosopher who lived almost 400 years before Christ and he believed that material things, including the human body and the earth, were evil, while immaterial things such as the soul and Heaven were good. This is what is called Platonism. Well, the early Christian church was highly influenced by Platonism and this idea that the material is bad and the spiritual or unseen is good has been passed down. In fact, many in the early church rejected the notion of a physical resurrection or that the New Earth - our final home - would be physical - because the physical is less or worse than the spiritual.
This is false doctrine. The physical is not bad. Think about Jesus. He took on flesh - He lives eternally with a body, hands and feet pierced stomach with a spear hole. Even now, in the Present Heaven Jesus has a physical body.
How we need to think of Heaven is like this: Heaven is the substance and earth is the shadow. CS Lewis put it this way, “the hills and valleys of Heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy is to an original, nor as a substitute is to the genuine article, but as the flower is to the root or the diamond to the coal.” AKA Heaven is the original - it is the Mona Lisa, whereas earth, as good as it is, is more like a copy.
So is it physical in the Present Heaven?
Maybe. In the Eternal Heaven, the New Earth, it will be physical. There are absolutely no doubts. The Scripture is more than clear. But in the Present Heaven we seem to see pointers that it will have some physical aspects like:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
There are people there with “Palm branches in their hands.” That seems physical, right?
Or:
and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.
So there is a sanctuary in the Present Heaven that is filled with smoke - so is this just metaphorical or is it literal? Seems to be a physical location.
Also, think of what Jesus said to the thief on the cross:
And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Paradise here in the Greek actually comes from a Persian word that carries the meaning of a well tended garden or a walled garden.
So what is the most famous well tended garden you can think of?
Eden, right? And what good tree was in Eden?
The tree of life.
Now, look at what tree is in the Present Heaven:
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’
And it will finally find a home in the Eternal Heaven or the New Earth:
through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
So, in the Garden of Eden, in the Present Heaven and on the New Earth - the physical tree of life - is there.
This is not conclusive, but it seems to indicate that even in the Present Heaven it is physical. And that matters because we can’t understand a place that is not physical. We cannot grasp and hope for a Present Heaven that is completely outside our experience.
Finally, there were two guys taken into the Present Heaven before they died - Enoch and Elijah - both had physical bodies and were taken up - do they still have those bodies? I’m not sure, but we do know that Jesus has his physical body and that when Stephen looked up and saw Jesus standing by God - he was actually standing on something - like ground - he wasn’t just floating.
So what is it like, right now, in the Present Heaven?
3. What is it Like?
3. What is it Like?
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.
So, this passage helps us understand a peek into what it will be like in the Present Heaven.
(1) The souls are clothed with a white robe and they are able to rest and they are able to cry out or yell. That seems to indicate that these souls are somehow physical - how can you yell without vocal cords? How can you rest without a body to sleep? And can souls where white robes?
(2) Those in the Present Heaven do remember life on Earth. Here they remember (at least) their martyrdom. “How long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on Earth?” According to :
But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.
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People will be comforted because of the hardship and trial they received on earth. The fact they are comforted means they will have memory of the hardship - or they would be like, huh? Why all the comfort?
Also we will have to give a thorough account of all that we did at the Great White Throne Judgment - the final judgment.
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,
And:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
And if we must, that means we will have to remember, all that we did, with greater clarity than we even have now. I love what Randy Alcorn says, “Memory is a basic element of personality. If we are truly ourselves in Heaven, there must be continuity of memory from Earth to Heaven. We will not be different people, but the same people marvelously relocated and transformed.”
(3) People in the Present Heaven know what’s going on Earth. The martyr’s in Heaven know that God has not brought down his judgment according to that means that the residents of the present Heaven have some awareness of what’s going on.
Think of :
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
This imagery “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses” those who’ve ran the race of faith before us - seems to suggest that those saints, the spiritual “athletes” of old, are now watching us and cheering us on from the great stadium of Heaven that looks down on the field of Earth. That’s what seems to be depicted.
Look here, even the Angels are watching Earth:
For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality.
So if the angels are watching the drama of the consummation of God’s plan - why in the world would believers not be enthralled too?
Even Jesus says that when one sinner repents there is more rejoicing in heaven over them than when 99 righteous persons need no repentance () which seems to suggest that we know the comings and goings of people on Earth. So in the Present Heaven we will have knowledge of people down to whether they are converted or not.
(4) People in Heaven pray to God. Therefore, they pray for those on Earth. However we are never to pray to anyone in Heaven but God. Look at how people in the Present Heaven pray to God:
They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
So here they are praying God’s judgment upon enemies upon earth. But think about this, if people know what’s going on on Earth, don’t you think they would pray to God about these things more, not less? If we believe that the Present Heaven is a place of ignorance or disinterest about Earth, we will naturally assume that people in Heaven don’t pray for people on Earth. However, if we believe that people in Heaven are aware of events on Earth, and that they talk to God about his plan, his purposes, and his people, we will naturally assume they do pray for people on Earth. Scripture seems to assume that they do this. Let me be clear - this does not mean that we pray to people in Heaven. We are never told to do this - and it is idol worship. Yes, they likely pray for us, but no we never pray to them. We pray as Jesus taught us: Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
(5) But here’s the issue with all this: if people in the Present Heaven know about their past (good and bad), about what’s happening on Earth, and they pray to God about these thing: can it really be Heaven if they are aware of anything bad? Many books and people think some of the things we’ve talked about: remembering our life on earth and knowing what’s going on here on Earth cannot be true - because in Heaven we don’t have any awareness of bad things.
But again, we must look to Jesus as our example: Jesus both grieved for people while he was on earth and now that He is in Heaven.
he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Saul wasn’t persecuting Jesus, but His followers, and because of Jesus’ identification with His followers he was persecuting Jesus. So if Jesus grieves in the Present Heaven, can we? When we see Jesus in the Present Heaven with scars on His hands and feet will we not be moved? I believe we will - and the famous verse about tears being wiped away in Heaven is about the New Earth.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
R
This will take place after the great judgment of works and once the New Earth is established. On the New Earth, our eternal home, we will never face sorrow. But in the Present Heaven, our happiness will not be based on ignorance, but rather on our perspective. We will understand what it means that all things are becoming right in Jesus. We will not live by faith anymore but by sight.
So here is what all this means for us:
We are here on this dying earth - that is unwinding itself, but we can relax and rejoice for our loved ones who are in the presence of Christ. My dad is there. It’s a far better place to be. He knows what is going on in my life, he prays for me. Isn’t that a sweet thought. It brought me to tears when God gave it to me.
Let’s look at the Scripture we began with:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
My dad’s parting is not the end our relationship only an interruption. We have not lost our loved ones who believed in Jesus - we know where they are. They are experiencing great joy in a place Jesus called paradise. And one day we are told that they and we will be with the Lord forever.
Pray