We have finished our study of the Sermon on the Mount, or what I prefer to call the Manifesto of the Kingdom of Heaven. This message of Christ described and delineated the character and nature and practices of those who are citizens of the Kingdom. And yet sprinkled throughout this message are references to different aspects of the Kingdom which are what I would like us to think about today. Because as Jesus teaches it, there is a progression to the present and future aspects of the Kingdom which are not always that clear to us. Modern Christians often have a view of heaven that incorporates many preconceptions that do not necessarily line up with what the Bible teaches. And so I would like to expound on the subject of heaven today.
Right at the beginning of the Sermon, Jesus says that the characteristics of the Beatitudes are a description of the citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. He begins with that in ch 5 vs 5, with the first Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In another place, Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven has come near you. And so there is a present reality of the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus was referring to.
But as Jesus gets to the end of his sermon, He speaks of another aspect of the kingdom. For instance, in ch.7 He speaks of a future aspect; Matt. 7:21-23 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven [will enter.] Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’” The phrase “In that day”, refers to the day of judgment, which comes at the end of the age, or the end of this world. It actually seems to refer to the kingdom of heaven as something in the future, what we often think of as “going to heaven” when we die.
This connection of the Kingdom of Heaven with the end of the age, or the end of the world, is found again right after the Sermon on the Mount, in chapter 8. After healing the centurion’s servant. Jesus said in vs 11 "I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline [at the table] with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
So again we see this idea of the Kingdom of Heaven, which Christians are supposed to be a part of now, being connected to the end time, when the Lord judges the just and the unjust. And some come to their reward, and some to their condemnation and judgement. In chapter 5 vs 12, where Jesus is talking about being persecuted for His name sake, He says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great.” So there is a reward for the just, and judgment for the unjust in the future dimension of the Kingdom of Heaven.
We have learned from the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings of Christ that the Kingdom of Heaven is the spiritual realm of the Lord. Heaven is a term that is used in the Bible to speak of the atmosphere around the earth, or to speak of the space in which are the stars, or to speak of the realm of God. What all those indicate is heaven is the invisible, spiritual realm over all the earth. In the scope of time and matter it’s not finite, it’s infinite. It’s the invisible characteristics of the Lord of Heaven manifested on the earth. “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool” speaks of an infinite God in an infinite heaven ruling over a finite earth.
It might be helpful to think of the Kingdom of Heaven in three stages: inauguration, continuation, and consummation. In the inauguration, the Lord was manifested on earth. John says “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory.” God’s kingdom was inaugurated "on earth as it is in heaven.” So we should understand the fact that heaven is where God is. Thus Jesus could say the Kingdom of Heaven has come near you, it is in your midst.
With Christ's first coming, Christ on the cross broke the curse of sin and made it possible for the world to be reconciled to God. In Christ, God offered the perfect sacrifice for sin so that man might become citizens of heaven. All of Jesus' ministry—the words He spoke, the miracles He performed—showed the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. When Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead,, He was giving a foretaste of the future state of the Kingdom of Heaven when it comes in it’s fullness. That was a preview of what will eventually be a universal reality—a kingdom of righteousness and justice, without death, disease, on earth.
And the victory that Christ accomplished on earth at His inauguration as King is that He overcame death, which was the means by which Satan kept the world in chains. He now holds the keys of death and hell. He took captivity captive. He has overcome the world, and Satan and death, and provided liberty to the captives. Heb. 2:14-15 says “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” Col. 1:13 “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”
The continuation stage of the kingdom of God is the stage we are in now—living in between Christ's first and second coming. It's a stage of redemptive history often referred to as "already and not yet": the kingdom of heaven is already in existence, but not yet complete. We have been given the deposit of the Holy Sprit to live in us and govern us until Christ comes again. 1John 3:2 says,“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” So at this present time we live by the Spirit, we walk by the Spirit. 2 Cor.5:7, “we walk by faith and not by sight.”
The third stage, the kingdom's consummation, will take place when the King comes back visibly and with power and every knee will bow to Him. 1Cor. 15:51-57 says, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, [that is to die in the Lord] but we will all [both dead and living in Christ] be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory. "O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Christ has accomplished victory over death. When He returns there'll be no more sickness, death, tears, division, or tension. The "peace on earth" which the angels announced the night Christ was born will become a universal actuality.
Now it’s to this third phase of the Kingdom of Heaven that I would like to speak for a while. The consummation of the Kingdom, the idea of heaven, future. And I would suggest to you that there are two stages of the future Kingdom of Heaven. There is the intermediate state, and the glorified state. Unfortunately, most Christian’s theology makes little distinction between the two. There is a nebulous view of heaven that you go there when you die, and there is no distinction. To add to that confusion, there is the idea of the rapture of the church, which they are usually taught happens at the beginning of the tribulation at the end time. Then there is another belief that there is a 1000 year reign of Christ on earth called the Millennium where Christ will reign with a rod of iron and yet there will still be unbelievers on the earth. And then they believe that there is another rebellion, and then Armaggedon, and then finally, sometime in the far future, there is the eternal reign of Christ. I don’t have time this morning to deal with all the various views. But I feel that it’s important that we understand what the Bible calls our “blessed hope.” I think it’s important that we understand what we have to look forward to in heaven. I think that the problem with most Christians is that their view of heaven is so dim, that the reality of this world far outshines heaven, so that it has no future appeal.
But that was not the case with the earlier saints. Hebrews tells us that they looked eagerly for a city “which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”
Now the simple teachings of Christ and the apostles is that one must be born again spiritually into the Kingdom of God, which is the spiritual reign of Christ in the hearts and minds of His people. It was inaugurated by the appearance, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is entered into by faith in Christ’s finished work. And though Christ our King has ascended into heaven, His Spirit was sent into the hearts of His people to dwell in us and rule over our soul and body. Paul tells us in 2 Cor. 5:5 that the Holy Spirit was given to us as a deposit in this intermediate state of the future glorification that we will enjoy. We have new life in the Spirit. We walk by the Spirit.
I would like for you to look at 2 Cor. 5, because it speaks to this principle of the intermediate state as well as the glorified state. Notice vs 1, Paul says, 2Cor. 5:1 “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Those of you who are part of our Wednesday night studies will remember that 1 Cor. 3 says we are God’s building. And Paul here says that this building that is in us, is not made with hands, but is eternal in the heavens. So there is already an aspect of heaven abiding in us. That which is eternal. We have new life in the Spirit, even eternal life. And that eternal life which is from God is, according to Ephesians 2:5, already seated in the heavenlies. “[God} made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” So heaven is not just a place, but a state of being. It’s a spiritual state.
But this body which we are in Paul compares to a tent. A tent is a temporary dwelling. It’s not permanent. However the building we have from God is permanent. It’s spiritual. It’s our soul and spirit. And I would point out that all men were created as living souls. In Genesis 2 it says God breathed His breath into man’s nostrils, and man became a living soul. Man will live forever in his soul. But because of the curse of sin, “it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.” This body will be torn down. It will be folded up. It will die. But Paul says the spirit of the Christian is eternal in the heavens. We already have been given eternal life. Jesus said in John 11:26, “everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”
Then in 2Cor. 5:2 Paul says, “For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.” What Paul is referring to is perhaps the statement in Ecclesiastes 3:11, that God has set eternity in their hearts. There is a consciousness of something more, something beyond the grave. Man wasn’t designed to be temporal, but eternal.
Paul speaks further on this subject in Rom 8:19-23 “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for [our] adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”
Now this is speaking of waiting for the redemption of our body. That is the glorified state, when we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. When this corruptible shall put on the incorruptible. But that is speaking of the resurrection of the body and the recreation of the heavens and the earth in the glorified state.
Paul speaks of that day in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of [the] archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
The second coming of Christ then ushers in the consummation, the completeness of the Kingdom of Heaven. But notice the reference to those who are asleep. That’s talking about those who are dead in Christ. In the scriptures, sleep refers to those who are believers who have died. And Paul says here that those living when Christ returns will not precede those who are asleep (that is dead in Christ) but the dead in Christ will rise first. Now this is speaking of the resurrection of those believers who have died in the time between the first and second coming of Christ.
But why would they need to be resurrected if they are already in heaven? That they have not already been raised into heaven is evident because the resurrection follows after the Lord descending with the trumpet of God. That’s the second coming. And so it behooves us to understand what constitutes this being asleep in Christ.
And to answer that, perhaps the best answer is found in Luke 14 in the story that Jesus tells of Lazarus and the rich man who both died, and Lazarus was taken by the angels into Abraham’s bosom, which was a reference to Paradise, and the rich man lifted up His eyes in torment. Jesus said that in between the abode of these two men was a great chasm, and no one could cross from one to the other. That was in keeping with the Jewish tradition of what was known as Sheol in the Hebrew, or Hades in the Greek. It is the abode of the dead. It is believed to be in the center of the earth. It is the intermediate state of the soul while waiting for the resurrection. And as we have seen in 1Thess. 4, the resurrection of the dead comes at the last trumpet and the descent of Christ at His second coming, which ushers in the consummation of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Now I do not believe that this is a parable. The writer does not identify it as a parable, for one. And two, there is no other example of a parable being told by Christ in which He uses actual names of people. So I think our understanding should be that this is an actual event, though some aspects might be allegorized. But we should understand the setting and events as realistic descriptions of an actual place and actual people.
Now there are some important things we can learn from this story concerning this intermediate state - what happens when a person dies. One is that the dead are conscious. This is not soul sleep. That is not taught. The body is correlated to sleeping but the spirit is alive and conscious. Peter says that Christ also descended into Hades during the time of His physical death. Though His body was dead, He was alive in the Spirit. 1Peter 3:18-19 “For Christ also died for sins once for all, [the] just for [the] unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits [now] in prison.” Paul makes it clear in Eph.4:9 that Jesus descended into Hades, the abode of the dead, in the lower parts of the earth.
Furthermore, the story of Lazarus teaches us that the believer is comforted, while the unbeliever is in torment. It teaches a common refrain in the OT that the saint is gathered unto his fathers, as we see Him seated in Abraham’s bosom. Furthermore, we learn that they engage in conversation. That they are conversant about current events, even the present condition of things on earth. We also see that point confirmed at the transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah appeared with Christ on the mountain and they talked about things to come. So we can be certain those qualities of our life immediately after death, in what we call the intermediate state, awaiting the final appearing of Jesus Christ.
And if we go back to the passage in 2 Cor. 5, we see in vs 6-8 that when we are absent from the body we are present with the Lord. Vs 8 “we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” Now I cannot say exactly how this is accomplished. The mystery of God that He can be everywhere at once. He is omniscient as well as omnipresent. Christians all over the world, at all times, are promised the presence of the Lord. Jesus said “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.”
Jesus said further on that subject in John 14:16 "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; [that is] the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, [but] you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” So millions of Christians have the presence of the Lord with us now, and I think Paul indicates that we shall have His presence with us after death in an even more intimate way. Because we are spirits in the intermediate state, we can know the Spirit in a more direct way. And remember, the Spirit is called the Comforter, and Jesus said He will be with us forever. Notice also that Abraham was described as comforting Lazarus in Luke 14. In that sense, I think that Abraham, though an actual forefather to Lazarus, was allegorically a figure of our Heavenly Father who comforts us and welcomes us into His presence. And I would remind you that where God is, there heaven is.
The glorification of the Kingdom is the last act of the consummation of the Kingdom of Heaven. Paul only speaks of one aspect of it in 2 Cor. 5, but it is a major part of what is involved in it. And that is the judgment for all men that occurs when Christ comes the second time. Paul says in vs 10, 2Cor. 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”
Jesus speaks of that in conjunction with HIs coming, in Matt. 25:31 "But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ... 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; ... 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
This same event is described in Revelation 20, as the second death for those whose names are not written in the book of life. And it says that they were cast into the Lake of Fire. But there is another outcome for those who are saved, who are the church, the bride of Christ. And that is described in symbolic language in the next chapter, 21. Rev 21:1-4 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer [any] sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be [any] death; there will no longer be [any] mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
This is then the city the patriarchs looked for whose architect and builder is God. This is the heavenly Jerusalem which will be the eternal dwelling of God with His saints, the church. And notice that this heavenly city came down out of heaven, to a new heaven and a new earth. As Peter says in 2 Peter 3 at the day of the Lord this present heaven and earth will be burned up, and we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth. This is the consummation of the kingdom of heaven, a place of no more death, no more pain, no more sorrow.The Kingdom of Heaven will be on earth as it is in heaven. And God will dwell among them. He tabernacles among them. This city is described further in the vision as a cube, the same shape as the Holy of Holies in the old tabernacle. We will dwell in the unadulterated, unveiled presence of the Lord God Almighty in all His fullness. We will dwell in the beatific vision, in the midst of the source of all life, all wisdom, and all power. And we shall be given a glorified body like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. We shall rule and reign with Christ, as co heirs with Christ in a body that is glorified, immortal, incorruptible, forever and ever in the Kingdom of Heaven.
This is the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven. If you would enter it, you must do so now, in this age, in this life, by faith in the life and work and word of Jesus Christ. You must be born again spiritually, that you might have eternal life, which will never die, so that you might attain through the resurrection of the dead that which is imperishable, incorruptible, reserved in heaven for you.
1Peter 1:3-5 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to [obtain] an inheritance [which is] imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
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