Hope in Heaven Changes Today

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, you and I and a number of folks from Desiring God recently traveled to Orlando

00:00:09.200 | for the Gospel Coalition National Conference.

00:00:13.080 | And looking back on the trip, is there any overflow from our time there that you want

00:00:16.120 | to share here with us now?

00:00:18.560 | And we should probably begin with the conference theme.

00:00:21.960 | The theme of the conference was "Coming Home, the New Heavens and the New Earth."

00:00:30.280 | And one of the things I did there, I did about 12 things, I was just blown away with how

00:00:35.080 | much there was to do, but God was so good to give grace, as He always is.

00:00:39.640 | But one of the things I did was a little seven-minute conversation, video conversation, with Scott

00:00:45.400 | Swain of RTS Orlando and Randy Alcorn, and the question that was pitched to us was popular

00:00:53.560 | misconceptions about heaven.

00:00:56.000 | And of course, Randy is the global expert.

00:00:59.960 | He wrote the big, excellent book on heaven.

00:01:02.640 | So we began to talk about that, and both Randy and Scott called attention to the popular

00:01:10.080 | notion that the final destiny of believers is to be with God in a realm of the sky, beyond

00:01:19.520 | space and time, where we go when we die.

00:01:22.900 | And both of them, of course, wanted to stress that, yes, we certainly do go to be with Christ

00:01:30.300 | immediately after we die.

00:01:32.440 | 2 Corinthians 5, 8, Paul says, "We are of good courage, and we would rather be away

00:01:37.320 | from the body and at home with the Lord."

00:01:40.160 | Philippians 1, 23, "I'm hard-pressed between the two.

00:01:43.200 | My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better."

00:01:47.080 | They both say, "Yes, yes, amen, we will be with Christ immediately when we die."

00:01:52.640 | And Randy, however, the first thing he wanted to qualify in that conception was beyond time,

00:01:59.080 | or time will be no more.

00:02:00.520 | He said that old song that, I guess, my generation sang once upon a time, "Time will be no more."

00:02:06.920 | He said, "That's not right."

00:02:08.320 | He said, "There are a lot of indications that in heaven, in the new heavens, in the

00:02:12.400 | new earth, there will be time."

00:02:14.240 | And I suppose the best example would be that Jesus Christ has a body.

00:02:21.880 | He took his bodily incarnate self back to heaven, and it's just mind-boggling to me

00:02:29.280 | to think that the second person of the Trinity has a body forever and ever.

00:02:35.980 | But a body means space and time.

00:02:38.960 | And so that was the first qualification Randy wanted to give, that immediately after we

00:02:44.960 | die, we go to be with Christ, who is an embodied person there, and we wait for him to come

00:02:52.480 | and give us a new body here.

00:02:55.280 | And both of them, Scott and Randy, wanted to say that, "Yes, we will be with Christ

00:03:03.000 | immediately when we die, but," Paul said, "that's not our final and best hope for what's

00:03:14.960 | coming in the future.

00:03:17.580 | We will be with him, but we are going to be with him on a new earth, under a new heaven,

00:03:26.240 | because Revelation 21 pictures the coming down to earth of heaven, as it were.

00:03:33.880 | It says, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first

00:03:37.960 | earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

00:03:41.080 | And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride."

00:03:49.340 | So this is the church adorned for her husband.

00:03:52.920 | "And I heard a loud voice from the throne, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with

00:03:58.000 | men.'"

00:03:59.000 | So here's God and man coming down for their final settlement on a new earth.

00:04:06.240 | And that's, they both agreed, often in the Christian church not clearly perceived as

00:04:12.280 | we comfort people and give them their final and best hope.

00:04:17.960 | It is not merely to die and go to be with Christ, but to be with Christ in the new heavens

00:04:26.240 | and the new earth.

00:04:27.280 | So I expected us to go there, but the part of this conversation, this seven-minute conversation,

00:04:34.120 | that made the trip worth it for me was the direction it took in asking how the hope of

00:04:44.760 | heaven now affects life now.

00:04:49.040 | And it was the two ways that came together that struck me as fresh.

00:04:55.960 | Scott pointed our attention to 1 John 3, 2, and that says, "Beloved, we are God's children

00:05:03.160 | now, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we'll

00:05:09.040 | be like him, because we will see him as he is.

00:05:13.600 | And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure."

00:05:20.000 | In other words, if you believe that you're going to see Christ and be changed by him

00:05:26.520 | into his likeness and you thus hope in him, it says, you will purify yourself as he is

00:05:36.160 | pure.

00:05:37.160 | And that clobbered me in a powerful way, more than it ever had.

00:05:43.040 | It's huge.

00:05:44.320 | People who are not purifying themselves with a passion to be pure like Jesus are saying,

00:05:52.960 | "He's not what I'm hoping for."

00:05:58.040 | And think about that.

00:05:59.240 | The Bible says everyone who thus hopes in Jesus, that is, hopes to see and become like

00:06:07.480 | Jesus, purifies himself as he is pure.

00:06:11.700 | So the test of whether we're hoping to see Jesus in his purity and be like him at that

00:06:19.760 | moment in his purity, because if we're not, we'll be consumed, the test of that is whether

00:06:26.440 | we're purifying ourselves now.

00:06:30.140 | So that's huge.

00:06:31.140 | I mean, if you have a hope for heaven, that means seeing Jesus as he is and being changed

00:06:37.360 | into his likeness, because you're seeing him as he is, that will be what you are doing

00:06:42.040 | with your life now.

00:06:44.640 | And then the second one, the second way that hoping in heaven impacts our life now is so

00:06:52.280 | related to it in a way that I hadn't seen before.

00:06:55.480 | The second way is that hoping in heaven, having this great reward of heaven makes us so happy

00:07:04.200 | now, so secure now, that we can joyfully endure any mistreatment here as we pursue purity

00:07:17.520 | or righteousness.

00:07:18.520 | So here's the text, Matthew 5, 10.

00:07:20.560 | "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom

00:07:24.760 | of heaven."

00:07:25.760 | So our persecution is for righteousness' sake, which is the same as the purity we're

00:07:29.120 | pursuing in 1 John.

00:07:30.720 | "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil

00:07:35.360 | against you falsely on my account.

00:07:37.760 | Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven."

00:07:43.260 | So this is another absolutely astonishing statement.

00:07:47.400 | When we are mistreated and slandered with every kind of vicious slander, we can and

00:07:55.840 | should rejoice and be glad and press on with living for righteousness' sake or pursuing

00:08:03.920 | that purity that 1 John spoke about.

00:08:08.180 | So the hope of heaven and the greatness of our reward affects us in two ways, both of

00:08:15.880 | which empower purity of life here and now in the face of opposition.

00:08:23.720 | It makes us passionate for purity because the one we hope to see and be with and be

00:08:29.280 | like is pure, and it makes us fearless and happy so that people can't stop us from

00:08:37.560 | pursuing this passion for purity and righteousness here.

00:08:42.400 | So that, Tony, was a great encouragement to me, to see the nature of heaven made real

00:08:48.640 | in the new heavens and the new earth, and then to see how this double way of hope affecting

00:08:56.200 | my passion for purity and righteousness was a great incentive for me to get on with the

00:09:01.480 | work.

00:09:02.480 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:09:04.280 | And if you have a question for John Piper, or if you want to catch up on the recent episodes

00:09:07.640 | of this podcast, or if you want to see a list of our most popular episodes of all time,

00:09:12.280 | you can do all of that at our landing page.

00:09:14.200 | Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:09:19.160 | And there you can also find a number of episodes we recorded on heaven in the past with John

00:09:23.720 | Piper and with Randy Alcorn.

00:09:26.400 | Type heaven in the search bar.

00:09:28.200 | Well, do false ethics qualify as false teaching?

00:09:32.240 | It's a very important question, and Pastor John will tackle it tomorrow.

00:09:35.840 | We'll see you then.

00:09:36.360 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Hope in Heaven Changes Today

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