The Ultimate Journey - Part B

Some people get annoyed with us even talking about heaven. In fact, they would say, well, you know, I have a problem with people who don't think about the here and now. I mean, here and now we have responsibility on this earth. I don't want to work around somebody who's always thinking about heaven.

They're not going to be focused on what's important. That old favorite saying of some people, you can be so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. I would contend, those who are the most earthly good are those who are the most heavenly minded. Because once you have eternity settled, you'll have between now and death live very confidently. The ultimate thrill is out there somewhere, isn't it? And when it comes to extreme sports, there is no lack of those thrills from cliff diving to parachuting from the upper atmosphere to bull riding. There are plenty of thrills to be found. So whether you're an adrenaline junkie or not, there's one adventure that will eventually find all of us. And today here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, Skip Heitzig reminds us that we have a choice from how we face it as he opens up more of it. Our current teaching series is From the Edge of Eternity, and Pastor Skip is in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 today. So let's join him there. Here's Skip Heitzig. You go to a modern college, you'll find a course on Thanatology, the study of death, what happens to the dying person and what do they think will happen to them after death.

Thanatology from the Greek word Thanatos, which means death. And why is that? Why that interest? Because God put eternity in our hearts. That's why. It's the same reason your children ask you, Daddy, what's heaven like?

What will we do all day long? And sometimes when our kids ask us those questions, we don't have really great answers. We don't even like those questions. Like little Cliff who asked his parents, up there in heaven, does Jesus have to keep his room neat like I do? A four-year-old Jenny asked her mom, does heaven have a floor?

How would you answer that? Does heaven have a floor? Well, her mom was quite clever and sort of stepped back from the question and said, well, Jenny, what do you think heaven's like?

And Jenny was very pragmatic. She looked up and saw the sky and the clouds. She goes, well, it doesn't look like it has a floor, so I guess people are up there on coat hangers, she said. One parent told their nine-year-old daughter Heather, one day we'll have glorified bodies. Now imagine what that sounds like to a nine-year-old. One day we'll have glorified bodies. And the nine-year-old responded, does that mean we'll all look like Barbie?

That's the mind of a nine-year-old. The people are the creatures that are fascinated with what happens after death. And verse 11 of Ecclesiastes 3 explains why. God planted that seed within us, put eternity in our hearts. And this is, of course, the same reason that people are interested in the near-death experience, a favorite topic that over the last 30 years has come out in all sorts of different books, hasn't it?

And the story is basically the same. A person goes into the hospital and dies. That is, they experience clinical, though not biological, death. And during that period, they get out of their bodies and they're hovering over the emergency room table or the operating table and they're watching the doctors and hearing the conversation. And then they get revived. They go back in their bodies. But during that time, they're experiencing certain things that they see and they come back and they write about them.

What are we to make of that near-death experience? We'll talk more about that later, but it's enough to say, why are we so interested in those things? Because for the same reason, God put that seed of eternity in our hearts. Some people get annoyed with us even talking about heaven. In fact, they would say, well, you know, I have a problem with people who don't think about the here and now. I mean, here and now we have responsibility on this earth. I don't want to work around somebody who's always thinking about heaven.

They're not going to be focused on what's important. That old favorite saying of some people, you can be so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. I would contend those who are the most earthly good are those who are the most heavenly minded because once you have eternity settled, you'll have between now and death lived very confidently.

C.S. Lewis responded to that sentiment by saying if you read history, you will find that Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think about the other world that they've become so ineffective in this one. Aim at heaven and you'll get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you'll get neither. And Solomon would say, and I'll add to that, we were meant to aim at heaven.

Something God put within us. Some years back, I went to a baseball game here, an isotope game. I love going to baseball games.

I just love the whole environment of baseball. But right in front of me were a couple of guys drinking beer after beer after beer. And I don't know what they were seeing in the game, but we were losing. We were down. And even though we were down and the wind kicked up and it was quite sandy and windy like it's been the last couple days, this one guy holding a Budweiser turns to his friend and says, it doesn't get any better than this.

And I thought, man, that's sad. A baseball game in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we're losing and it's sandy and windy and it doesn't get any better than this? For some people, it doesn't get any better than that. But most human beings want there to be more to it than this. Wonder if there's something more to it than this. And for the believer, it gets a lot better than this. Well, how better?

How good? How can we know? It brings us to the next point here. Though we're bound by mortality, we're made for eternity.

And therefore, we long for certainty. We want to know what happens after we die. There's a few questions that Solomon asks in this chapter.

And really, I'll sum them up by saying there are two big questions that he asks. Question number one, where do we go? Where are we going after we die? Question number two, what do we gain? Where are we going and what do we gain here and now for the hereafter? First of all, where are we going?

He really asks that. Go all the way down to verse 21. It's a question. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men which goes upward and the spirit of the beast which goes down to the earth? He begins the chapter by saying, this is what I've observed. There's a time to be born and there's a time to die. Now he's saying, where do we go when we die? He wants certainty.

Then look at verse nine. What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? The first question is, where do we go? The second question is, what do we gain?

Now follow me here. In verses one through eight he makes observations about predictable patterns, the balance of life. You're born, you die. You scatter, you gather.

You tear, you sow. Twenty-eight different activities. Fourteen matched up with fourteen.

You might say fourteen positive and fourteen negative. And for every positive activity it's canceled out by a negative activity which leads him to the bewilderment. What is the gain of all that? It's simple math.

Fourteen minus fourteen equal zero. Vanity is his word. Emptiness. What's the point?

What's the gain of all this activity? Here's a guy longing for certainty and the bulk of this book is that quest for certainty. By the way, he gets to the right answer at the end of the book. Now if I had the opportunity to counsel Solomon at this period of his life, and I know he's wise and God gave him great wisdom. But at this juncture of his life, I don't know if he was in a midlife crisis or what, but if I was there and had the opportunity to counsel Solomon, I might put my arm around him and say, dude, or I couldn't call him dude, could I? King. Sir.

Solomon. You can know. You can know the answers to these questions.

They are all available, but not simply by observation. Solomon, it takes revelation for you to understand the answers to these questions. Because here's the problem, Solomon. I've been reading your stuff lately and I noticed that you are asking these questions and you're looking at life by observation and experience only and it's not enough. You'll never really get the full answer by just making observations and just by your own experience. You need something else and that something else is God's revelation, but you can know answers to your questions.

And I would say that to anybody today. Everybody wants certainty for the future. You can know the answers. The Bible is filled with those answers. Now somebody will object and say, well, how can you really know for sure what happens after you die? I guess you listen to somebody who's been in eternity a long time and has revealed it to us. That's where the Bible comes in. But you know, I'll have people, and I've heard it, I bet you have too, people quote this verse and I want to bring it up. They'll say, well, the Christian can't really know for certain what happens after death because the Bible says, and they'll quote 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 9. Let me quote it to you. Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of men the things that God has prepared for those who love him. And this is where they stop and they'll interpret it by saying, see, it's so amazing there's no way to even describe it.

Why bother trying? That's why the Bible, they say, doesn't say anything about heaven. Because eye hasn't seen, ear hasn't heard, it hadn't even entered the heart of man the things God has prepared for those who love him. And my answer is always the same.

It's this. Why stop there? Why not read the very next verse?

Now let me give you the whole context. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the things or the heart of man the things God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed them to us by his Spirit. You see, it says the very opposite of what some people will cite that verse to mean. Yeah, we can't know it naturally by observation, but you can know by revelation. God has revealed what it will be like and there's a lot of scriptures for that. Then others will point to Paul's own words in 2 Corinthians chapter 12.

Remember where Paul describes a man who was caught up into paradise, the third heaven? He said he heard inexpressible words, unlawful for a man to utter. Or as Eugene Peterson puts it, it was forbidden to tell what he heard. So they will say, look, Paul didn't even talk about heaven because God said, shh, don't tell anybody. It's unlawful to even write this stuff down. Don't even talk about it.

Well, that's one instance, one guy. But what about John who had a prolonged visit to heaven and God said, now John, write this down and reveal it to people. That's the whole book of Revelation.

What about that? What about the words of Isaiah the prophet or Ezekiel, all giving us glimpses into heaven and different stages of the future? And there's a lot of words spoken by Paul that indicate our glorious body, the resurrected body, the incorruptible body, and what happens after death.

That was just one instance. So God has in his word explained to us what heaven is like, and yet he hasn't done it in an exhaustive form. It's not completely, totally revealed. We still see through a glass darkly.

I'll admit that. In fact, look back at our text at verse 11. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity in their hearts except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. You see, I think that as much as God has revealed, and we'll see what that is in the next several weeks, there's a lot of truth that are undisclosed that he will disclose in the future.

It sort of has to be that way. Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 7 that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. I think there's going to be countless surprises in heaven. This is the way I believe it's going to happen. Let's say you were to keel over and die today. God forbid. But if you were to take your last breath on earth today, I have a hunch that your first breath in eternity would be something like this. Wow!

I don't think you go, yeah, I read about that. I knew that was coming. I think it would be to really see it and hear it and experience it. It's going to be amazing. It's going to take God, according to Paul and Ephesians, to all of eternity to reveal all of his great truth and grace and love, his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

And I think that gasp will be followed by a whole bunch of other ones for on and on and on and on. Marco Polo was the famous 13th century explorer and he told people that he had traveled to China and all sorts of places. They didn't believe that he actually went to some of these places. When he was on his deathbed, people who attended that urged him to take back and recant all of those fanciful stories that he told them about these fanciful places he had visited.

Marco Polo responded and said, I haven't told you the half of what I saw. And so though we will peek into the portals of heaven and get a glimpse of the eternal state, the New Jerusalem, the intermediate state, the resurrected body, I don't think it's all disclosed and we're in for some great surprises. But suffice it to say and close with this morning that we ought to live our lives now in the light of what we find out about this journey we're going to go on.

You know, we want to get as much information about the journey we're going to take and read about it in advance and get a grip on it as much as we can. And doing that ought to change the way we live now. I've always loved that great quote by a Scottish cleric named Duncan Matheson who said, Lord, stomp eternity on my eyes. Stomp eternity on my eyes. Imagine if we were to live with an eternal perspective, it would probably change choices about where we live, what job we do, who we marry, etc., etc., etc.

Stamp eternity on my eyes. It certainly ought to make us happier people. Charles Spurgeon, not only my favorite quotable preacher from Victorian England, but he taught a pastor's school every week attached to his church called the Pastor's College.

And he told his young students this. When you speak of heaven, let your faces light up and radiate with a heavenly gleam. Let your eyes shine with reflected glory. And when you speak of hell, well then, your everyday face will do. I've got to say, by being around some Christians, you'd think that they were speaking of hell every day. What about heaven? What about the future?

What about the glories? Where's that excitement shown in their lives? Well, the only thing that satisfies us in this time prison that we're in is eternal stuff. Material stuff will never satisfy.

Activities will never totally satisfy. Because we weren't made for it. We were made for eternity. And being eternal creatures, we need eternal things.

That's why Jesus said to every person born on this earth, you must be born again or you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. There has to be a spiritual life that takes place inside of you. And the whole reason people experience boredom.

I've met so many people. I'm just bored with life. It's because you weren't meant for this life.

You were meant for another. So what about the journey? Go back to the opening illustration. If for one cent you could travel a thousand miles, meaning you could take a trip around the world for 25 cents. For $2.38 you could make it to the moon. For $930 you could go to the sun.

For $260 million, if you got that lying around, you could get to the nearest neighboring star. I wonder what it would cost to get from earth to heaven. Whatever it costs, the price has been paid.

The price has been paid. Because the only way to get from earth to heaven isn't by millions and millions of dollars or lots of good works and well intentioned ideas. But it's only by the death of God's perfect holy son that washes away our sins so that anybody anywhere can say, I believe in that.

I believe in him. And God will say, great, I made it easy by me paying the ultimate price so that you can take the ultimate journey to heaven forever. That's where we begin. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you will and have in your word revealed to us what happens when a person dies and leaves this world.

This world that we only understand by experience and observation. Lord, one day, should you tarry, we will all have people planning our memorial service. And at that very moment we'll be conscious. We will feel and experience things. Lord, I pray that every one of us in hearing this message will be born again and have everlasting life. And be prepared to take the inevitable and ultimate journey. And that everyone will be ready to take the journey to heaven. Because Jesus Christ, who is the first fruits of the resurrection, has enabled us to do so. I pray everyone here will make that choice to follow Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen. We'll all have an encounter with eternity.

And as Skip reminded us today, we do have a choice. The teaching you just heard is titled, The Ultimate Journey. And if you missed a portion, or if you'd like to listen again, you can do that right now at ConnectWithSkip.com. This teaching was part of our series, From the Edge of Eternity.

And it touches every life with answers to deep questions about life after death. And if you want to take your Bible knowledge to a deeper level, here's a great opportunity for you from Calvary College. Calvary College is now open for registration. Calvary College is offering select online classes as an opportunity for individuals to take their life's calling to a whole new level, with an educational emphasis in Biblical studies. With our unique partnerships with Veritas International University and Calvary Chapel University, you will have the opportunity to obtain your bachelor's or master's degree with complete online programs. Whether you're looking to obtain an accredited online degree or take individual courses to become better equipped in your knowledge of God's unchangeable truth, Calvary College has you covered with a range of opportunities. For updates on classes and registration information for Calvary College, please visit calvaryabq.college. That's calvaryabq.college.

For Calvary College, calvaryabq.college. Pastor Skip has always wanted to encourage believers in their walk with God and in their study of God's Word. That's why we've created the Skip Heitzig Teaching Archives Library. You can browse transcripts of hundreds of teachings, take notes, and listen to over 3,500 teachings from Pastor Skip. That's all part of the teaching section at connectwithskip.com. What's it like to die and what happens to believers once we do? We'll find out next time when Skip Heitzig begins this teaching View from Death's Door. Connect with Skip Weekend Edition is a presentation of Connection Communications. Connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.