John 14:1-3
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
Somewhere between the ages of about 5 and 10, most children go through what might be called the “For real?” stage of development.
They become extremely interested in whether or not things they see on TV or video or in books are “for real” or “just pretend.”
They see a car chase scene in a TV show and ask, “Is that for real?”
We say, “No, that’s not real honey, that’s pretend.”
They see news coverage of a NASCAR crash and ask “Is that for real?”
We say, “Well, yes, that is real". "Some people really enjoy watching people drive cars as fast as they can around a track over and over again!”
They see 2 professional wrestlers named, “The Undertaker” and “The Rock” throwing each other all over the ring and ask, “Is that for real?”
We say, “Oh, yeah that’s real! Are you kidding?” (Actually, I am just kidding!)
So when Jesus says, “In my Father’s house are many rooms…” many people ask, “Is that for real? Or just pretend?”
The truth is that many people in our culture believe that heaven is not real, but only imaginary.
I was talking to a guy about spiritual things a few years ago and I asked him if he believed in God?
He said, “Yeah, sure, I guess.” Something about the way he said, “I guess,” told me he wasn’t particularly certain about his spiritual convictions. So I asked him another question.
I asked him if he believed in life after death?
He said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “I mean, what happens to you after you die?”
He said, “Oh, you mean like, heaven? I always thought that was something people made up to make themselves feel better when people die.”
Simply put, this man assumed that heaven was imaginary, make-believe.
In his essay entitled, “The Future of an Illusion”- Sigmund Freud referred to religion, heaven in particular, as a “psychological crutch” bordering on the neurotic.
Philosopher Karl Marx called it the “opiate of the masses.”
In other words, the Christian belief in the afterlife, and in heaven itself, is imaginary – created by weak people to cope with life.
But to take this view both contradicts the teaching of the Bible and makes Jesus out to be a liar!
Jesus said, in effect, “Trust me! – Heaven is real! In my father’s house are many rooms! If it were NOT SO I would have told you!”
If heaven is imaginary, why would Jesus say to the thief dying by his side:
“Today you will be with me in paradise!”
If heaven is only imaginary, this statement is both untrue and very, very cruel.
But there is another way to think about heaven. The Bible teaches that heaven is not only real, but is the world for which we were created!
When one of our boys was quite young, he had a fascination for whales. He loved whales. He loved books about whales; movies about whales – and he collected whales. Not real whales, but a couple dozen plastic whales of all types.
He had sperm whales, beluga whales, narwhals, humpbacks, but his favorite whale was the Killer Whale. He must have had 10 books on Killer Whales alone, and he even slept with a big stuffed killer whale in his bed at night.
So imagine his excitement when we finally got to visit Sea World and see a real live killer whale named Shamu! I still remember that he looked into the tank, saw the huge, glistening black and white creature and looked back at me and said in a hushed almost reverent tone: “It’s really BIG!”
Now what if, when I had suggested the trip to Sea World, my son had said to me, “No thanks Dad, I’d rather just stay here at home and play with my little plastic whales.”
But that’s kind of like how many of us think about heaven!
We like this world just fine, thank you – although we were created for a different world!
Human beings have always been aware of this truth at some level!
Consider (from Randy Alcorn’s book, “Heaven”):
Australian aborigines pictured Heaven as a distant island beyond the western horizon.
Ancient Puruvians and Polynesians believed that they went to the sun or moon after death.
Native Americans believed that in the afterlife their spirits would hunt the spirits of buffalo.
In the pyramids of Egypt, the embalmed bodies had maps placed beside them as guides to the future world.
Why is this so?
In Ecclesiastes 3:11, scripture explains this longing for another world:
“He has also set eternity in the hearts of men…”
We were created by God for a relationship with him. We were created to inhabit eternity with him. We are all therefore homesick until we find our home in him.
C.S. Lewis says it this way:
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."Heaven is real. And Heaven is the world for which we were all created. Ask God to anchor your hope in his great promise!
Pastor Brian Coffey
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1 comment:
I truly enjoyed your sermon on Sunday. I had just read the book "Heaven is for Real" and I am in the midst of reading "Heaven". On Saturday morning my Mother-in-law went to be with Jesus, the family is at peace because we all know that she is in Heaven. Thank you so much for talking about a place we should be telling others about.
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