Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] When I was growing up, I was kind of one of those nerdy kids that loved maps.
[00:00:06] I loved to just study maps when we'd go on long road trips. And this is going to date me a little bit. But some of you might remember, remember Those big Rand McNally maps? It was like about this big by this big. I would just sit in the backseat looking at all the maps of all the different states.
[00:00:23] In my grade school that I went to. There was oftentimes there would be a globe that would be in the corner of the room, and I would just be over there looking at it and studying everything related to the globe. Even today, I like to do a lot of things out in the backcountry. I love to look at topo maps of the places that I'm gonna go.
[00:00:42] Because when you look at a map, it kind of gives you a framework, a mental map of the world that we live in.
[00:00:50] But here's the thing.
[00:00:52] You have more than just mental maps of geography.
[00:00:57] You have mental maps in your mind of your philosophy of life, some frameworks or paradigms which you function in.
[00:01:05] And you also have some mental maps of your spiritual life, maps that you have in your mind that help you navigate areas of your faith that orient and give you perspective.
[00:01:18] A framework or a paradigm.
[00:01:21] But here's a question I want us to think about.
[00:01:25] Could your mental map be wrong?
[00:01:29] Could your mental map maybe be tweaked a little bit off center, just a little bit, so that it doesn't tell the exact story?
[00:01:41] I'll just say it right up front. Here is my goal for you today.
[00:01:44] I want you to have a what I believe is a biblical and proper mental map as it relates to eternity, as it relates to heaven. How does the Bible want us to think about heaven? And so maybe a question that I would ask then is what comes to your mind when you hear the word heaven?
[00:02:06] And here's why this is important as it relates to Romans chapter 8 that we've been working our way through. In the middle of Romans chapter 8, Paul begins to talk about how there's this longing, there's this groaning for redemption, this eternity, this picture of heaven.
[00:02:24] What is it that we are actually longing for and is our mental map when we think about heaven? Does it correspond to the Bible and does it correspond to the Scriptures?
[00:02:36] Here's what I believe is what I would call a popular mental map.
[00:02:42] See if this sounds familiar to anyone. This here is the Earth, here is a timeline, and here is you.
[00:02:55] You're very big compared to the Earth.
[00:02:59] But the idea is, as we walk through life, I mean, maybe we're doing things that we think are good, we're maybe doing things that we think are not so good. We're maybe starting to think about how I believe about Jesus, how I believe about things related to the kingdom of God. But here's what we also believe is true, is that for all of us, there will be a day when we die, every one of us. If Jesus doesn't come back before we die, we will all die, every one of us. And here's what the popular mental map is, that there's two possible destinies for our life. One is a place that we call heaven, where God's at. And there's another place, the bad place that we call hell.
[00:03:52] This is a common cultural picture of our faith, what it is that we believe. And now when we think about heaven, we often think about heaven as some kind of a celestial realm, that there is this glorious dwellings that are there and we will exist there and kind of disembodied souls will be kind of spirits without bodies. We will be there with other of God's redeemed people. But there's also going to be angels there. Sometimes there's even kind of caricatures that there's harps and clouds and in this place.
[00:04:28] But here's the thing that we often think we think about heaven as a place that we're going to go and that hell is a place that we are going to go.
[00:04:40] And now hell is that place that's reserved for those people that during their lifetime they did not surrender their life to the lordship of Jesus Christ. They didn't receive his payment of his death, payment for their sin. Whereas in heaven, it's that place where we go after we die because we put our faith and our trust in Jesus Christ, his death, payment for our sin.
[00:05:10] This is a common picture of our faith.
[00:05:15] In fact, many of you are probably sitting there thinking, I, I kind of think that is the storyline of our faith.
[00:05:24] But here's the thing that I think is wrong about this picture. If this is the mental map that we have, what this mental map tells us is that the only path to heaven passes through death.
[00:05:39] That means this idea of heaven is inaccessible in any way to those of us that are still living and occupying here on earth.
[00:05:50] And so if we were to look at this as our mental map and ask ourselves what is the goal of our faith, we would say that the goal of our faith is to go to heaven and to avoid hell.
[00:06:03] And like I Said many people believe that this is the primary storyline of the Bible.
[00:06:12] But what if.
[00:06:14] What if this mental map of the Bible is off?
[00:06:21] What if this is maybe tweaked a little bit? It says things that are true, but it doesn't explain everything in the context of the full truth.
[00:06:31] Here's what we understand from what we've been studying through the Book of Romans. The book of Romans is a book about the gospel, which means the good news of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:42] Here's what I want you to think about today.
[00:06:46] What if the good news of the gospel is not about that we go to heaven when we die, but what if.
[00:06:55] What if the good news of the gospel is that we bring heaven to earth while we live?
[00:07:05] If we want to understand what the gospel was all about, don't take my word for it. We've got to listen to the words of Jesus at the very beginning of the book of Mark, a book about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what Mark says, verse one. It says the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.
[00:07:29] So if we want to hear what the good news is, this is the place to start.
[00:07:33] And then when we get to verse 14 of chapter one, Jesus begins to. He begins to proclaim this good news or this gospel. This is what it says in verse 14. Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news, proclaiming the gospel of God.
[00:07:51] And here was his gospel.
[00:07:54] The time has come.
[00:07:57] Meaning it's right here, it's right now. The time has come. He said the kingdom of God has come near.
[00:08:06] Repent and believe the good news.
[00:08:10] Now, here's what you need to understand.
[00:08:13] Mark uses this phrase, the kingdom of God. Oftentimes other gospel writers synonymously use the term the, the kingdom of heaven. Those two things mean the exact same thing.
[00:08:26] What do we mean when we're talking about the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven? When you think kingdom, you've got to think about a king.
[00:08:35] A kingdom is about who is king. And in the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, God is king, Jesus is king, and this is the place where the king dwells. This is his place and where his will is done.
[00:08:54] That's what we're talking about when we talk about the kingdom of God where Jesus rules and he reigns above everything else.
[00:09:02] And Jesus says, how is it that we access, if this is available right now, how do we access the kingdom of God?
[00:09:11] And Jesus says, it's by repentance. Repent and believe the good news. Now, repent just simply means that I go in a different direction. I'm going in this direction. I change my mind, I change my direction, actually, I change my king.
[00:09:27] I'm not gonna be the king of my life going in my direction, but I'm gonna turn in a different direction and make Jesus my king.
[00:09:34] Heaven comes to us, comes to our life when we repent and believe the good news.
[00:09:43] So here's the idea that I want you to leave with today, and I'm going to say it over and over because I want you to get it. The goal of our faith according to Jesus, is not to go to heaven when you die.
[00:09:55] The goal of our faith is to bring heaven to earth while you live.
[00:10:04] I'm going to say it again.
[00:10:06] The goal of your faith is not to just to go to heaven, go somewhere when you die, but to bring heaven to earth while you live.
[00:10:17] We've got to push back against some of those cultural assumptions that we have that the only way that we can access heaven is through death.
[00:10:27] That's not the message of Jesus. Jesus message was that heaven is accessible now.
[00:10:35] Aspects of heaven, tastes of heaven are accessible now.
[00:10:41] The message of Jesus isn't that this life is about escape to heaven.
[00:10:48] It's about this idea that heaven is at hand.
[00:10:52] The presence of God, the heavenly realm, the power of God is available to us right now. It is at hand. It is within reach right now.
[00:11:03] And Jesus did not announce that death again was the gateway to the kingdom of heaven. But I'll say it again, it's repentance.
[00:11:12] It's becoming a new king.
[00:11:14] Having a new king in your life, you're no longer king. It's a different path. It is a different king.
[00:11:21] But here's the problem. I believe for so many of us, because this has been kind of a cultural map that we've embraced in different ways.
[00:11:31] We think when we hear the word heaven again, that this is a place that I'm going to go.
[00:11:38] But I want to give you a different mental map. What I believe is a mental map that comes from the scripture, is a storyline of the Bible that explains this idea. Not that we go to heaven, but that the purpose of our faith is to bring heaven to earth.
[00:11:55] So if we're going to talk about this map, we've got to start all the way back at the very beginning. Page one, chapter one, verse one, Genesis, chapter one, verse one. It says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
[00:12:13] That phrase, heavens and earth, the way that an author uses it, the way this author uses that, is simply to say that God created everything.
[00:12:23] He created the things that we see, and he created the things that we don't see. He created the things that are tangible that we can touch. And he created things that were intangible that we can't see or touch. He created the earth below and the heavens above. And the scriptures say it was good.
[00:12:44] So here's the picture. If we were drawing this kind of a mental map says that God created the heavens and he created earth.
[00:12:58] Now let's think just a little bit about what are we saying when we talk about the heavens or the. The kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is the dwelling place of God.
[00:13:11] It's where the invisible, intangible realm of God exists as our Lord and the angels. That's what the kingdom of heaven is, where God in His holiness dwells. And the earth, that is the place of people.
[00:13:28] And what the scripture says at the very beginning, the place where God dwells and the place where people dwells, dwell were the same place.
[00:13:37] They were right on top of of one another.
[00:13:41] And when they existed in that place. When we read the very beginning of the story, it talks about how the people that were there, Adam and Eve, they had unhindered relationship with one another, unbroken relationship with one another. It says that they were naked and they were unashamed. There was no sense of brokenness whatsoever. They were completely known and loved by one another.
[00:14:05] But it wasn't just that they were known and loved by one another. They were known and loved by God himself.
[00:14:12] There was no broken relationship with Him.
[00:14:16] But if you know the story, you know that we just turn the page like one page, and things don't go well.
[00:14:25] People decided that this whole idea of a kingdom of heaven where God is the king, I don't want that.
[00:14:32] I actually want to be king. I want to be king of my own life. I want to decide what's right and wrong, not Him.
[00:14:41] I want to decide what's good and evil, not Him.
[00:14:46] And what the Lord said to Adam is Eve. If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he says, you will surely die.
[00:14:58] And they did.
[00:15:00] And then there's a picture that started to look like this.
[00:15:06] Where the kingdoms of heaven and earth didn't leave much space there. That's a really small arrow.
[00:15:21] The idea is that heaven were separated.
[00:15:26] And here's what you need to understand. When the Bible talks about death, what that word death means is separation. When we talk about death, we often think about biological death, which is the separation of our physical body from our non Physical part of our body or our soul or our spirit. That kind of death. But this is the kind of death that was experienced not instantly in the garden, but was experienced later. But there were other kinds of death that were experienced instantly. There was separation between Adam and Eve. There was broken relationship with one another.
[00:16:04] No longer was it naked and unashamed, but actually they felt shame and they wanted to hide from one another. They covered themselves with fig leaves. And there was broken relationship with God once. A relationship where they walked together, worked together, ruled over the earth together was broken. And when God came to them, they tried to hide because there was separation between them.
[00:16:30] This picture right here is what we call the Fall. This here is Eden. This is the Fall.
[00:16:44] But that's not the end of the story.
[00:16:47] God wasn't done.
[00:16:49] God wanted again for heaven to invade Earth.
[00:16:55] So the story continues, and it is a story that we call redemption.
[00:17:03] And it's this idea that heaven and earth were never intended to be separate.
[00:17:09] So what God is doing in and through the world right now is moving these places that were once separate and actually creating a place where earth and heaven overlap.
[00:17:24] God's presence, God's power is breaking into this world. That was the message of Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. And you can experience that for yourself. Here's why this is so important for me, especially for us looking at the. The weeks that are coming up is I want you to have this framework in your mind because this picture is going to matter. What does that overlapping space look like?
[00:17:53] What is it that we're doing to bring heaven to earth? What is the role of the Holy Spirit that we've been talking about in Romans chapter 8? How is he a part of helping us bring heaven, heaven to earth?
[00:18:06] This is what you've got to understand. The goal of your faith, friends. It is not just to go to heaven when you die.
[00:18:15] The goal of your faith, the reason that you're here, is to bring heaven to earth while you live.
[00:18:24] That's the message. That's the storyline of the Bible. Do you see?
[00:18:30] Can you see that? These are very different stories.
[00:18:34] They're very different mental maps. In this mental map, the fundamental question is just simply, what's gonna happen to me when I die? Am I gonna go to heaven or am I gonna go to hell? That's the fundamental question.
[00:18:47] But this, this map, this mental map, I believe the map of the kingdom, the map of the gospel, is us looking at this world and saying, what can I do to. To bring Heaven to earth today.
[00:19:02] That's the question that Jesus wants us asking. Not just where am I going to go when I die? How do I bring heaven to earth while I live?
[00:19:12] That's why to me, friends, when you look at just the simple things, when you start to relook at some of the things that Jesus taught in the Gospels, think about how he taught his disciples to pray. Oftentimes what we call the. The Lord's Prayer.
[00:19:27] The Lord's Prayer starts out Our Father, meaning God himself. Our Father who is in heaven. Yeah, absolutely. He resides, he dwells in the kingdom of heaven.
[00:19:42] And he, his name is holy.
[00:19:46] Our Father who is in heaven, Holy is your name.
[00:19:52] But what's the very next thing that he asks us to think about and pray about and have on the forefront of our mind every time that we're talking to Him? It's this.
[00:20:03] Your kingdom come. Meaning your kingdom, God. The kingdom of God. The kingdom of heaven. Your kingdom come. Come where? To this earth.
[00:20:14] That's how we pray. Your kingdom come, you, your will be done. Because a kingdom, again, it is where God rules and he reigns, meaning what he wants happens. And what we're to pray is that God, would you do that?
[00:20:29] Right here, right now, in this place? Bring heaven to earth, on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:20:37] That's how we're to pray.
[00:20:39] But this isn't a prayer that we just pray and just say, hey, God, do this. I out there somewhere in this earth.
[00:20:47] The assumption would be that we're inviting God to partner with us, to be a part of making this happen.
[00:20:55] So as we're praying, it's like your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and use me to do it.
[00:21:02] That's this picture we've got to be thinking about every day.
[00:21:07] The point of our faith is how do I bring heaven, heaven to earth?
[00:21:12] That is the goal of my faith is to grow that overlap between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth.
[00:21:26] But that's not the end of the story either.
[00:21:30] Pastor Jim talked about this last week.
[00:21:34] There's another part of the story that we're going to call restoration.
[00:21:42] God will be doing this throughout history, throughout time, but there will be a day when once again, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth are like this.
[00:21:59] That's what Paul's talking about in Romans, chapter eight. That's what we're longing for.
[00:22:05] That's what we want. We want to see the restoration of this earth. We want to see the restoration of ourselves because it's Easy for us, is it not, to look at this world, to look at the things that are going on and say, this world is sinful, this world is broken, this world is evil. All those things are true. And you know what else is true?
[00:22:28] We are broken, we are sinful, we have evil in us.
[00:22:35] And so this redemption story is about what God is doing to bring heaven, the kingdom of God, into our life. That's what we've been talking about as it relates to the Holy Spirit, as he begins to push out the sin and the brokenness and the evil that's in us, and we become like Christ. That's the story of redemption, but that's not the end of the story either. But we're to be his agents in this world, to continue to bring heaven to earth even as he's doing that in our own life. That, my friends, is the story.
[00:23:10] The story of the good news, the story of the gospel, is not that somehow, man, this world just stinks. This world is broken, and I just want to escape it when I die.
[00:23:23] The story of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, is that we look at the brokenness of the world and even the brokenness of our life, and we say, jesus, use me to bring heaven to earth.
[00:23:35] That's the story.
[00:23:37] And here's the picture. When we. When we say things like redemption, restoration, it means we're looking back to something.
[00:23:46] We're taking ourselves back to something. What are we taking ourselves back to?
[00:23:52] It's this, what God intended.
[00:23:55] That he in his presence would live with us in our presence here on earth, that we would walk with him, work with him, with physical bodies that are restored and redeemed. This is the picture.
[00:24:13] Restoration is about Eden, that picture working, walking with God.
[00:24:21] And now what that's going to be like. I mean, the scriptures say that no mind has seen, no ear has heard, no mind or no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived of what it is that God has prepared for us. But it's going to be awesome, and we're going to be redeemed in the midst of it.
[00:24:38] Here's what we see at the very end of the book of Revelation, Revelation 21. Jim read this last week, but I want to say, I want to read it again. This idea of being redeemed and restored.
[00:24:49] Verse 3, it says, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among his people.
[00:24:59] He and he will dwell with them.
[00:25:03] They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be Their God.
[00:25:11] That's the picture of restoration.
[00:25:15] That's what we're longing for, friends.
[00:25:18] That's what matters to us.
[00:25:20] I hope that we don't think that the biggest thing is just about going to heaven when we die, but we actually think the biggest thing is that we can be used by God redemption story to bring heaven to earth while we live.
[00:25:39] There's something that I haven't talked about in this story that is in this story up here, and that's hell.
[00:25:47] I'm not trying to leave that out. Hell, my friends, is very real.
[00:25:55] Hell is for people that want Jesus to be their king.
[00:26:00] As this process, as this redemption process is happening here in this world, on this earth, there are people that say, I don't want Jesus to be my king. And Jesus will not make them be. He will not make them make him his. Their king. He won't do it.
[00:26:17] Here's I love how CS Lewis said it in his book the Great Divorce.
[00:26:22] It says there are only two kinds of people in the very end.
[00:26:26] Those who say to God, thy will be done, and those to whom God says in the end thy will be done.
[00:26:38] All that are in hell, choose it.
[00:26:41] Without that self choice, there would be no hell.
[00:26:50] This is the story that we live in, friends.
[00:26:54] This is what we're called to be a part of with God. Not go to heaven, but to bring heaven to earth.
[00:27:02] I wanted to just share just a couple things that I think might change in our life if we let go of this picture and grabbed ahold of this picture as the mental map for eternity.
[00:27:16] One would be this. I believe that it would change radically how we view our time, how we view our talents, and how we view our treasures.
[00:27:26] Because here's the deal. When I read the parables of the kingdom. Go read them for yourself. In all of the gospels, Jesus talks over and over about what the kingdom is like.
[00:27:38] If.
[00:27:39] If this is the story, then oftentimes what I hear people saying is, I don't have time for the things of the kingdom because this life on earth is incredibly short. I need to soak in all the things of this life.
[00:27:56] Now, people do that all the time. But I don't want to give my time to that. I don't want to give my energy to that. I don't want to give my money to that.
[00:28:06] But when, when we understand that this is the story, we realize, yes, this time on earth is incredibly short. Incredibly short.
[00:28:17] So we've got only a little time to do whatever we can to bring heaven to earth. And that's why when you read the parables of the Kingdom, there's urgency about it. This matters. This is the greatest thing happening. It should be the most important thing, not something that you do just in the margins of your life. It is the thing.
[00:28:38] That's why we've got to have a right picture, a right mental map.
[00:28:46] A second thing that I think would be transformative for us if we actually believed that this is the story that we're living in.
[00:28:55] And this relates back to my message from a couple weeks ago. It would matter to us that the body of Christ was unified, that we had great relationships with each other. Relationships characterized not by the kingdom of this earth, but by the kingdom of heaven. That's why at the end of Jesus life, at the end of John 17, he was praying that we would be one the way he and the Father are one. That relationship in heaven, he wants that to be the kind of relationship that we have. 1. Why is that so important?
[00:29:31] Friends?
[00:29:32] When we experience that, when we experience that idea of being completely known and loved, accepted, it is powerful. It is a powerful thing in our life.
[00:29:46] And for us, we want to show the world what that looks like. That's why Jesus said, this is how they're going to know that all the things that you're talking about are the real deal, how our relationships are with one another.
[00:30:00] That's why it matters so much that we grow in our relationships. We learn to have the kind of relationship that Jesus had. Relationships that are marked by unconditional love. Caring about people more than caring about ourselves. When the world looks in and sees that they're saying we can't replicate that. There's something different about that. Why is it different? Because it's heaven coming to earth, friends, and we can be a part of it.
[00:30:27] And lastly, I want to say this.
[00:30:31] If we believed that this is true, that heaven is coming to earth, we would celebrate baptisms like nobody's business.
[00:30:43] It would be the biggest thing happening. It would be the biggest celebration. The things that cause us to cheer. It would be the biggest by far. Why? Because heaven is coming to earth.
[00:30:56] In Luke 15, when Jesus talked about the parables, the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, he said, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one person that repents than all the rest of us who do not need to. That's heaven coming to earth. That's why we celebrate it, and that's why we make it such a big deal around here. And there's going to be a lot of singing, and there's going to be a lot of shouting around here in just a few minutes. Buckle in.
[00:31:29] But I'm going to ask the same question that I asked in the video.
[00:31:33] Is today your day?
[00:31:36] Is now your time?
[00:31:38] Maybe today is that day of repentance. It's like I. I've had the wrong king.
[00:31:43] I want to have the right king.
[00:31:45] I want to turn to him. Maybe today is your day. Maybe that's a decision that you've already made. But you've never gone public with your faith. You've never acknowledged it to the world. That I'm all in with Jesus.
[00:31:59] He is mine and I am his.
