Our Relationship with God in Heaven (Section 6)

January 16, 2008

Prayer

Rock stories

Joke?

Intro: Who is one famous person you would like to spend an hour with? Why?

John Donne quote, p. 171

What comes into your mind when you think about spending time with God in eternity?

  1. Is being with God one of the things you long for? Ps. 63:1. Do we desire nothing on earth besides God? Ps. 73:25
  2. What will it be like to see God’s face?
  3. Before, no one could see his face Ex. 33:18-23, I Tim. 6:16, Num. 12:8 (unclear)
  4. They will see his face. Rev. 22:4, Matt. 5:8, Job 19:25-27, Ps. 11:7
  5. John 1:14, 14:6ff If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. See God when we see Jesus. In what way? Heb. 13:8 Same yesterday (on earth), today (intermediate heaven) and forever (in permanent heaven). What does it mean for Jesus to be God-man forever?
  6. Can enter his presence now Heb. 10:19, 4:16 in Most Holy Place, throne.
  7. Would God want to be with you? Celebrities may be bored with us (Nicklaus, Woods). But God and Jesus, hard as it may be to believe, will want to be with us and spend time with us.
  8. Do you think it would be interesting to be with God? Is he like the person you know is good but you really don’t want to be around for long periods of time, who wouldn’t be fun?
  9. Would God have time for you? Or Jesus? Do we imagine getting to see God is like standing in line to see the department store Santa? Jesus, although he is man, is also God. So he may be omnipresent, and able to be in all places, with all of us, at once. On earth the man part may have limited the God part, but in earth the God part may win. We know God can be everywhere. In a sense Jesus is already in many places at once now, in heaven at the right hand of God, while at the same time with us. Matt. 28:20 He may indwell us there too, unimpeded by any sin or distractions from our side.
  10. What questions do you want to ask God when you get with him? Inquisition? An accounting? What stories in the Bible do you want to know the “back-story” on?
  11. What would you do with him? P. 180 being with him, gazing at him, eating, talking, worshiping, walking, laughing.
  12. God is source of all pleasures, and in enjoying them we enjoy God. Read quote, p. 177, All secondary joys…
  13. Do diagram of God at center, us around circle with other people, things, events, all of whom in some way transmit a part of God to us. Rom. 1:20
  14. Other people, events, and pleasures in heaven are not competition with God, but rather extensions of him, ways he provides us with pleasures indirectly from him.
  15. I Tim. 4:3-5 Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. Only wrong when the gift replaces the Giver.
  16. I Tim. 6:17, Richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment, so we should enjoy it!
  17. Rom. 8:32 Will graciously give us all things, along with Jesus
  18. We should be grateful for it all. And we should look forward to being with this One most of all who is the source of all this pleasure, interesting activities and things.
  19. We are with God, he will be with us. Gen. 3:8, Rev. 21:3, Lev. 26:11-12, Ez. 37:27, quoted in 2 Cor. 6:16
  20. We will live in the presence of God, and we know that he cannot be around anyone or thing unholy or sinful in any way, so we shall be perfect.
  21. What would be like when you’re perfect? Have you had perfect minutes? Hours? Days? We will have them, “we will be perfect” (Matt. 5:48), because we are always in his presence.
  22. In a sense we’re already participating in heaven life now, Col. 3:1, Heb. 12:22-23 We already should be rejoicing in and reacting to things the same way heaven’s inhabitants are, and this should affect how we act now. “A man who sees himself seated with Christ in heaven, in the very presence of a God to whom the angles cry out, “Holy, holy, holy,” won’t spend his evenings viewing Internet pornography.
  23. No wonder the devil doesn’t want us to think about heaven, because he will lose power over us now.
  1. Worshipping God--“To imagine that worshiping God could be boring is to impose on Heaven our bad experiences of so-called worship.
  2. Heaven will be bright, active, interesting, and loud!
  3. The church will be there, as God’s people, but no temple, and no services?
  4. We’ll worship him always.
  5. Not just on our faces
  6. But in all we do, because all is worship. What other way is there to make sense of passages like I Th. 5:16-18?
  7. What will singing with millions (in tune!) be like? Ex. of ACU singing the Lord bless you and keep you to James Dobson.

Conclusion: Experience of being on a long trip, maybe months or years, maybe in hardship or danger. Anticipation of homecoming, and pleasure of finally being back with, hugging seeing, loved ones.

Even better in heaven.

“Hearts on earth may say in the course of a joyful experience, ‘I don’t want this ever to end.’ But invariably it does. The hearts of those in heaven say, ‘I want this to go on forever.’ And it will.

There is no better news than this.” J.I. Packer