HEAVEN PART 1 | WHAT IS HEAVEN?

Heaven, Part 1 – August 6, 2023

Heaven is the place where believers dwell with Jesus forever

This dwelling place is different at different times

We live in the church age

Believers go to the present heaven as soon as they die

2 Corinthians 5:6-8 (NIV2011)
6  Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7  For we live by faith, not by sight. 8  We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

John 11:26 (NIV2011)
…whoever lives by believing in me will never die. 


Application: Our faith becomes sight; know Jesus intimately

The present heaven is a physical place

Example: Physical things are there

Location?

Acts 7:55-56 (NIV2011)
55  But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

Application: Death of a believer is merely a relocation

In the present heaven, believers are conscious and identifiable

First, the rapture

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NIV2011)
16  For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

1 Corinthians 15:51-53 (NIV2011)
51  Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52  in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

Second, what about before the rapture?

Matthew 17:1-4 (NIV2011)
1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2  There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3  Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. 4  Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

Example: Awareness of Tribulation Martyrs

Revelation 6:9-10 (NIV2011)
9  When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10  They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”

Heaven is prepared for the prepared

John 14:6 (NIV2011)
6  Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Revelation 21:27 (NIV2011)
27  Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

1 Peter 3:18 (NIV2011)
18  For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.
 
But we must prepare by believing in Him.

John 3:16 (NIV2011)
16  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Example: Reservation at Restaurant