Identity, Hope, and the Reality of Heaven

But you who believe in Jesus are a saint, you are a holy one, you are set apart and sanctified in Christ Jesus and a saint, that is your identity. You're also brothers and sisters in the family of God, this is your family, but you are also, well you are in Birmingham, Alabama, but you are also in Christ, in union and communion with Christ and on that basis, that is your identity you are a saint, you are in union with Christ, you belong to the family of God, you are his children, and because of that, you have the hope of glory. [00:05:39]

Paul in the magnificent eighth chapter of Romans, in that wonderful peration, he tells us that those whom God foreknew he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren, and those whom he did predestinate them he also called and those whom he called he justified and those whom he justified he glorified him, he puts it in the present tense, it is the beginnings of what we call the order of salvation there is foreknowledge there is predestination, there is calling there is justification, and there's glorification. [00:07:08]

Nothing can prevent the glory that is before you, and although in one sense it is future, you might as well think of it as right now you have begun to taste the glory. What can we expect, you and I, I want to take you away for a moment or two from this world, we have our responsibilities in this world, we have our relationships in this world, there are things that we, that we want to do and places that we want to see and relationships that we want to form, but we are here for three score years and ten and maybe four score years but this world is not our home. [00:09:15]

Unless Jesus comes, you and I who are in Christ who are saints who belong to the family of God who have the hope of glory will enter heaven. Five seconds after you die where will you be, I pick five seconds at random you can say three seconds or one second or half a second or a millisecond but I'm just simply trying to make a point, when you die however you define death medically, what happens you are taken into heaven, your soul enters heaven. [00:09:55]

Heaven is a place, it is a location, it is part of creation, it exists, in my view it exists in the world of space and time, it is part of God's creation, where is it, it is where the physical body of Jesus is, after his ascension, following his resurrection Jesus ascended where did he go, he went to heaven, he went to sit at the right hand of the majesty on high, he exists in bodily form, his human nature is in union with his divine nature but his human nature remains human, it is physical it is tangible, it is corporeal. [00:10:02]

You can reach out and touch him, you can do what Thomas was asked to do whether he actually did it or not the text doesn't tell us but you, you could do what Thomas did and reach out your finger and touch him, he is in one zip code in heaven, I like to think of it as a parallel space to our own, I think you see perhaps a little glimpse at the transfiguration, when Peter and James and John were taken up into the mountain and and Moses and Elijah appear they, what did they do they, they walked through a rent in space, and they were there on the holy mountain and Jesus was transfigured. [00:11:01]

The hope of glory, that when we breathe our last, we shall still exist, and we shall still be conscious and we shall still be self-aware, you will close your eyes here and open them in another location in heaven, in the presence of Jesus in the presence of the church triumphant, we are body and soul, the church has not had a good time talking about the soul and what it means and it still finds itself adrift on many on occasion too much platonism and neoplatonism has entered. [00:13:07]

It isn't we shouldn't say that we that we have a soul, that's I don't think that is biblical understand we are a soul it's not that we have a soul it's not as as Plato thought that the soul is trapped within the body, and we need to be rid of the body in order that the soul can be released, that's not a biblical understanding we have a soul, no we are a soul we are soulish beings, what do we mean by that, well the reformers and the puritans thought of the soul as that rational, cognitive aspect of our being, that with which we think that with which we are self-aware, our self-consciousness if you like. [00:14:03]

What is it that survives death it is our self-consciousness, it is our self-awareness, some have made the confusion of saying that this is what distinguishes man from animals, and you'll hear Christians say something like you know, only Christ only only human beings have a soul and animals do not have a soul, well I'd beg to differ, the Hebrew word for soul in Genesis chapter 1 nephesh, is used of birds and fish and land animals and man, it means something along the lines of life they are alive, they have self-awareness they have self-consciousness to a degree. [00:16:18]

What distinguishes man from the rest of creation is not the soul it is the image of God, that only Adam and Eve were made in the image and likeness of God, so a death, my self-consciousness of who I am, my self-identity, I'm aware of myself I'm aware of my surroundings, and that continues, it doesn't switch off it just exercises itself in another location in heaven that's how I think about it. [00:16:18]

What will our glorification be like, and in one sense it will be incomplete, I don't know what to make of what we call the intermediate state, heaven is a temporary place, it's not, it's not the end it's not the final goal, you remember what Paul says in second Corinthians 5 and verse 1. We know that if our earthly tent that is our home is destroyed we have a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens we we have he says we have a building from God. [00:18:43]

We will see Jesus, we've spent our entire Christian lives wondering what he's like, we don't have pictures of him, how tall is he, what are the color of his eyes, brown and pretty sure, he was from Jewish stock, we will fall at his feet, we will worship him, we will call him Lord and Master and Savior and Prophet and Priest and King, we have believed in you but now our eyes see you, in all your beauty, in all your splendor in all your glory, we will see Jesus for heaven is where he is, that is his abode that is his location, and we'll be reunited with other believers, old testament and new testament believers, friends and relatives and loved ones who believed in Jesus and passed into heaven, and will see angels and archangels and cherubim and seraphim. [00:18:06]