Sermon Tone Analysis

How We Will Relate to Others in Heaven \\ \\ *Selected Scriptures*

*by* \\ *John MacArthur* \\ *All Rights Reserved** 

*(90-312)*

There seems to be a significant amount of indifference toward the glory of our future.

There is minimal interest in what God has prepared for them that love Him, a whole lot of preoccupation with how Jesus is supposed to fix life here and make it idyllic.

That is really not what the Bible promises us at all.

Our great hope is ahead of us in the glory of heaven.

And we’ve been talking about the doctrine of glorification and when we talk about the doctrines of salvation, we’ve gone through a whole lot of things.

In fact, we started backwards, didn’t we?

We started with the perseverance of the saints and we backed our way into the great doctrines of our salvation.

And then we came out the other end talking about the doctrine of justification, that declaration by God in which He states that we are no longer guilty.

We are not longer to bear the punishment of our sin, that sin having been borne by Christ on the cross and His very righteousness imputed to us by faith, that is the great doctrine of justification which delivers us from the penalty of sin.

We’ve talked about the doctrine of sanctification which is the second phase of salvation by which through the power of the Spirit and the granting of regeneration and a new nature we are no longer under the dominion of sin but we are slaves of righteousness.

We heard that testified to tonight, new appetites, new longings, new desires, new hungers, new love for the truth, love for the Word.

Those are the elements of our ongoing salvation which is sanctification.

But the end of it all and the purpose for which it all is designed by God is our eternal glorification.

It’s about what God has prepared for them that love Him in the glory of heaven.

And as I said, we live in a time today when even among Christians there is not a great amount of interest in the future.

There is a kind of fascination with the future in an even obvious preoccupation with fantasies that talk about the earthly future and the interesting and amazing events that might happen on this earth, but it seems to end at that point and very little interest seems to be there in regard to heaven.

That’s if you’re in this society.

If you’re in the Third World, if you’re somewhere in a remote part of this world where life is very difficult, there’s an intense interest and eagerness for heaven.

\\

So we’ve been talking about glorification.

We’ve been talking about the future for believers.

Science comes out of the dissecting room, scalpel in hand, to report its failure to find anything in the human organism that bears the mark of immortality.

No surgeon has sliced anybody open and found the immortal soul, eternal spirit.

That immortal spirit, that true person no scalpel has ever laid bare, nor will it.

No microscope has ever seen.

It has no material components yet it exists and it is sovereign and it conducts itself sovereignly over all matter.

That spirit thinks, that spirit reasons, that spirit plans, it wills, it loves, it hates, it hears, it sees, it enjoys, it feels, it suffers and it has the ability to reach into the realm of matter and subdue it to all of those purposes.

It is the spirit that uses the mechanism of the body to think and to feel and to speak and to act.

It is the spirit of the man that uses the brain and uses the senses and uses the muscles and uses the limbs and uses the faculty.

It is that spirit in which the brain has no real part, for it will die, in which the senses have no real part for they will disappear, in which the muscles and the limbs and the faculties of the body have no part, it is that living spirit that is forever, immaterial, un-discernable, invisible and real, part of what it means to be created in the image of God who is that eternal spirit.

It would be as ridiculous to say that God does not exist because He cannot be seen as it is to say that you do not exist because that which is your true self is invisible.

Every living person is an eternal soul.

Every living person is an eternal spirit.

The operative word there is eternal.

Every one who has ever lived will always live, no one goes out of existence.

Everyone whom God has created is eternal.

We are all designed to live forever and will indeed.

It is God, Zechariah said chapter 12 verse 1 (Zech 12:1), who forms the spirit of man within him.

And that spirit of man is an everlasting spirit, everlastingly self-conscious, everlastingly able to reason and think and feel and understand, everlastingly alive.

It is the spirit of a man, Job 32:8 says, it is in the spirit of the man that the breath of the Almighty has given understanding.

This is self-consciousness.

This is understanding.

To be a human being is to have self-consciousness.

It is to exist and know you exist, it is to think and know you think, it is to reason and know you reason and why you reason and to what you reason.

It is to feel and know you feel, it is to love and know you love, it is to hate and know you hate.

That’s what self-consciousness means.

And that will never change.

None of us will ever go into an unconscious state.

None of us will ever go into some kind of condition of soul sleep in which we feel nothing, think nothing, reason nothing, have no idea about what is reality around us.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 11 (1 Cor 2:11) Paul says, “Who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him.”

We are self-conscious.

It is the spirit of a man that knows what’s in the man.

It is that immaterial part of you, that part of you that is not matter, that is not visible, that cannot be seen that is conscious of its very existence and conscious as well of its opportunity to use the physical faculty to express itself.

We are eternal spirits.

Every one of us will live consciously forever.

When Job asked the question in Job 14:14, “If a man dies, shall he live again?”

The answer is, of course, yes, a resounding yes.

You will live forever, every one will live forever.

There have been through the years philosophers who spoke and wrote on this.

I remember reading one of the earlier presidents of Yale University who had the idea that there had to be an afterlife because there was the tug of the afterlife in the human spirit.

And he described it as if it were a blind boy flying a kite and though the blind boy couldn’t see the kite, he could feel the tug of the string in his hand as the wind pulled against the kite.

And he said, “Every mortal being feels the tug of immortality, else how can you explain why the Egyptians made solar boats so people could float across the mystic river into the next life, or why Indians buried their braves with their ponies so they could ride through the happy hunting ground, or why the Greeks put a silver coin in the mouth of someone who died so they could pay their fare across the river of death into the land of life?

There is the sense of immortality that tugs at the soul.

\\

But there’s more than that, there’s the testimony of the Word of the living God.

And this is absolute, this is not something that is some kind of indefinable tug, this is fact as articulated by God Himself.

In John chapter 5 (John 5:28) is a good place to look at this, very familiar verse.

“Do not marvel at this.

An hour is coming in which all who were in the tomb shall hear His voice and shall come forth."

Everybody who has ever died and whose body has now disintegrated into whatever location, be it earth or sea, “Everybody will hear the voice of the Son of God, the Son of Man, in this text, and come forth, some to a resurrection of life, others to a resurrection of judgment.”

But in both cases it is a resurrection.

“So that...we’ve already spoken of this...not only is the soul eternal but that soul will be accommodated in its eternal existence by a resurrection body.”

There will be in the future at the return of Christ at the time of resurrection a body joining the soul of all the redeemed, the spirits of just men made perfect, as Hebrews 12 (Heb 12) says, now in heaven will receive at that time a body to go with that already perfected spirit in which they will then serve the Lord forever in the eternal state.

Same with the unredeemed.

They will receive a body fitted for the eternal Lake of Fire which is the final form of hell into which they will be cast at that time in the future.

We will live forever.

We will all live forever.

We will all live forever consciously, self-consciously aware of our surroundings and aware of our response to those surroundings and we will all live forever with a body suited for our surroundings.

In the case of those who are raised to life, there will be a body like the resurrection body of Jesus Christ that can absorb all the glories of eternity and manifest our eternal spirit through that glorified body in praise and in service and in communion with God and all the redeemed.

To those who are given a body fit for hell, it will be a body suited to feel the agonies of that eternal judgment.

Here we are in earth and Randy Alcorn(?)  said this, “Earth is an in between world touched by both heaven and hell.

Earth leads directly into heaven or directly into hell, affording a choice between the two.

The best of life on earth is a glimpse of heaven.

The worst of life is a glimpse of hell.

For Christians this present life is the closest they will come to hell.

For unbelievers it is the closest they will come to heaven.”

And so we will live forever.

We will also talk about reprobation.

We will talk about what awaits those who do not know God.

What awaits those who will be punished for their own sins forever.

But we’re talking in this study about glorification.

We’re talking about the future for those who are saved, who have been justified, are being sanctified, and will be glorified.

We’ve talked about all the elements of that salvation which secures our future glory, the doctrine of perseverance, the doctrine of security, and all of that.

And in the last couple of discussions about our future salvation, we have been kind of launched from 1 Peter chapter 1 (1 Pet 1).

This little phrase, “Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Live your life fixed on the future.

Another way of saying that is Colossians 3 (Col 3), “Set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth.”

Another way of saying that, the words of the Apostle Paul, very wonderful words which really summed up his whole approach to life, “This one thing I do,” I love it when people can reduce it to one, “forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

I live with a view to being called up face-to-face with the Lord Jesus.

I live with a heavenly perspective.