Hello friend, this is Phil Johnson and you've tuned in to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. And with John, our pastor and beloved teacher, in mind, I have some important news to pass along to you. After dealing with some significant health challenges dating back to early 2023, John has gone to his heavenly reward. His earthly ministry is ended, and he has gone to be with Christ. For today's program, you'll understand we've decided to preempt our regular schedule.
So, starting in just a moment and continuing for the next couple of weeks, we're going to bring you John's best-known series of messages on the eternal home of every believer. The series is called simply Heaven. John preached these lessons in nineteen eighty seven and nineteen eighty eight, but they are as timely as ever, and that's because Biblical truth is timeless. And John's goal in every sermon he preached was to present Biblical truth as accurately and thoroughly as possible.
Now, we're going to have some important information to pass along after the lesson, but for right now, stay with us as John MacArthur shows you what Scripture says about what heaven is. We live in a society of instant gratification. A society where people want to delay and defer absolutely nothing except payments. This is They certainly don't want to defer the gratification. They just want to defer the pain that goes with it.
As a result of living in a society of instant gratification, a society of materialistic indulgence, the church has fallen prey to that, and we no longer have set our affections above, as Colossians 3 calls us to, but we have set our affections on things on the earth. We really are not interested in some nebulous future, some place in space, as some people have chosen to call it. We are not committed to laying up our treasure in heaven as Jesus told us to, but rather laying up our treasure here. The church in America in general doesn't have heaven on its mind. And as a result of that, it tends to be indulgent and selfish and self-centered and weak.
It is consumed with its own indulgences. It desires to be comfortable. with only passing thoughts of heaven. Contrast that with the fact that just about everything that's precious to us is in heaven. Everything we love is there.
Everything we cherish is there. Everything valuable is there. Everything eternal is there. And yet, here we are in the Church of Christ in the United States in this century. Committed to indulging ourselves in this alien land.
Self-indulgent Christianity is the kind of Christianity that's lost its heavenly perspective. The church today doesn't hope for heaven. They hope they won't go to heaven. They don't want to go to heaven. until they've had all that earth could possibly deliver them.
And when that's exhausted, and they finally are too old to enjoy it or too sick to enjoy it, then they'll be glad that heaven is there to receive them. But please, God, don't send me to heaven yet. I haven't been to Hawaii, I haven't gotten my new car. I want to go to the Bahamas. I want to get a raise.
I want a new house. God, please. No, not heaven. What a jaded perspective. We need to learn to live in the light of heaven.
That hope should fill our hearts, should change our lives, filling us with a joy of anticipation that loosens us from this passing world. We can get so tied down to this world. We consume things in this world that will perish instead of laying treasure in heaven.
Now let's talk about some basic things regarding heaven to help us kind of get a start. If we're going to be heavenly-minded and we're going to long for heaven, we've got to know a little about it.
So we'll have something to kind of pull us that way. Let me just give you this. Thought From the Apostle Paul. In 2 Corinthians, he says, chapter 12 verse 2 that i was caught up to the third heaven Okay? 2 Corinthians 12:2, caught up to the third heaven.
Now, that is very clearly an indication that there are three heavens.
So, let's talk about the three heavens, all right? The first one is what we could call the atmospheric heaven. The atmospheric heaven. That is the space immediately above the earth. That is the air we breathe.
That is generally called the troposphere.
Sometimes, when the Bible talks about heaven, it is referring to that first heaven. For example, there are several places, but I think in Isaiah 55. Verse 9, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and snow come down from heaven. Yes, the first heaven.
The first heaven is the atmospheric heaven where the rain and the snow come down. It says they don't return there without watering the earth and making it bare and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater. The hydrological cycle, which is the water cycle, occurs in the first heaven. It's the atmosphere around the earth. The second heaven, and scripture refers to this as well, and that is the planetary area, the area where the stars and the moons and all of the planets move about.
Scripture also refers to this heaven. In fact, way back in the first chapter of Genesis, God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens. Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens. And what he meant by that, he goes on to say, lights. Two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, the lesser light to govern the night.
And he made the stars also. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. And again, heaven there is the heaven of the planets, the heaven of the stars and the moons. That's the second deck. Then the third heaven, moving beyond the second heaven, is the divine heaven.
Now that's where God dwells. And that's where he dwells with his holy angels, and that's where he dwells with all the saints of all the ages who have been redeemed. That's the heaven we want to concentrate on the heaven where God Lives. Where the holy angels dwell, where all the redeemed of the ages dwell and will dwell forever and ever.
Now let me give you a little bit of a quick trip. through Matthew, just to kind of solidify this thought in your mind.
Alright, open your Bible to Matthew 5:16, and let me see if I can't nail this thought down and show you how important a thought it is in the New Testament.
Now, follow Matthew 5:16. Get your Bible ready and see if you can't pick up the obvious trend. Let your light so shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, whose where? Who is in heaven? Verse thirty-four.
But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God. Verse 45. In order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. Chapter 6, verse 1. Beware of practicing your righteousness before men, to be noticed by them, otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
Verse 9. Pray then in this way, Our Father, who art in heaven. Chapter 7, verse 11. If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father, who is in heaven, give what is good to those who ask him. Verse 21.
Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Jesus keeps repeating this. Chapter 10, verse 32. Everyone who confesses me before men, I will also confess him before my father who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my father who is in heaven.
Chapter 12, verse 50. For whoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister. And mother. And over in chapter 16, and even in verse 17, there, blessed are you, Simon, bar Jonah, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father. Who is in heaven?
Chapter 18, verse 10, see that you do not despise one of these little ones, a believer. For I say to you that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of my Father who is in heaven. Verse 14, thus it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish. Verse 19, again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they may ask, it'll be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. Verse 35, so shall my heavenly Father also do to you.
Now you get the feeling that Jesus wants us to understand that God's in heaven, don't you? Over and over and over he repeats it. In the sixth chapter of John. In identifying God? And heaven, Jesus says in verse 33: for the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven.
Obviously, the one who came from heaven was the Lord Jesus Christ, again, indicating that that was the place where God dwelt. Verse 38: I have come down from heaven. Verse 41. I am the bread that came down from heaven. Verse 42, I have come down from heaven.
Verse 50. This is the bread that comes down out of heaven. Verse 51. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. Verse 58: this is the bread which came down out of heaven.
Now, what I want you to understand is that heaven is a place, and God lives there, and Christ came from there. It is not a figment of imagination. It is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. It is a place.
Heaven is a place. Let me take it a step further. The Apostle Paul says something very interesting in Ephesians chapter 1. Look at it for a moment. Verse three.
Blessed be the God and Father. of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now follow this verb tense past. Who has in the past blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies? in Christ.
Now look at chapter 2 verse 6 and 7. It says that God in his mercy loved us, and when we were dead in transgression, verse 5 made us alive together with Christ. That's our salvation by grace. You've been saved. And past tense, already raised up with him and seated with.
and seated us with him in the heavenlies In Christ Jesus.
Now, listen to this. We aren't in heaven yet. That's a place. We're not there. Though we're not in heaven, we are in the what?
The heavenly. You say, What does that mean? Tell you what it means. Heaven is where God is. Heaven is where God rules.
Heaven is where God dominates. We're not in the place called heaven. but we are presently under the dominion of the king of heaven.
So we're not in heaven, but we're in the heavenlies in that sense. And what the writer is trying to say is we have come under the rule of God. When the Bible says Jesus preached the kingdom of heaven is at hand, he meant the kingdom of God is at hand. And when he called people into the kingdom, he called them to salvation. When Jesus said, You must be saved, he meant salvation.
When he said, You must inherit eternal life, same thing, he meant salvation. And when he said, enter the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, he meant salvation.
So when you become saved and inherit eternal life and become a believer in Christ, you enter into the kingdom of God. You're under his rule, not in heaven, but in the heavenlies, as it were. You're under his rule.
So presently, we don't live in heaven, but we live in the heavenlies, and that's why we are to have. our preoccupation with heavenly things. We have a heavenly life. Our new life in Christ is life in the heavenlies. That is, it is under the dominion and the rule of God.
Now what is heaven like? It's a new order. It's a new community of holiness. It's a new fellowship of harmony with God and Christ. It's a place of joy and peace and holiness and love and fulfillment.
And don't we experience that in part here? Hasn't the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee or the pledge of that, produced in us the fruit of love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control? All of those will be characteristic of heaven. We are experiencing them in a smaller way here because we, not in heaven, are in the heavenlies. The hymn writer said it's a foretaste of glory divine.
The future heaven, where we will be, we are tasting right now. We have the pledge of the Holy Spirit. We have the life of God within us. We have the rule of God over us. We know joy and peace and love and goodness.
Blessing. We have come into a new kind of humanity, a new kind of community, a new kind of fellowship, a new kind of family. We have come out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. We are no longer under the dominion of Satan, but under the dominion of God in Christ. We have a new life principle.
If any man be in Christ, he is a new what? Creature, 2 Corinthians 5:17, old things have passed away, and behold, new things have come. We are new creations. We are members of a new family. We are no longer in the family that we once were in.
We are children of God. We are children of a new place. Galatians 4:26 says, Jerusalem is our mother. What Jerusalem? The Jerusalem of God, where God rules.
We have a new citizenship. Philippians 3.20, our citizenship is not in this world, it is in heaven. We have a new affection. We are to set our affections on things above and not on things on the earth. We have a new storehouse, our treasures are to be placed there.
So heaven is a place But it is also a sphere. In this world where God rules. and gives us a foretaste of glory divine.
Now listen to this. The best of your spiritual experience. is a taste of what will be commonplace in heaven. Your highest highs spiritually, your profoundest depths spiritually. Your greatest blessings spiritually.
Would be the commonest things. of heaven. We are tasting in a small way the age to come, the glories of the life to come.
So we live now in the heavenly. And we need to occupy ourselves with that heavenly kind of mindset. We're part of a new order, a new community, a new fellowship. We possess a new life principle, a new family, a new citizenship, a new affection. And we're just passing through this life.
In this world. Until we can get to the place where all of the heavenly reality becomes just that for us. It is now a sphere. where we live under the rule of God and in the blessing of His Spirit. It someday will be that and a place where we will actually set our glorified feet and walk.
A real place. The prayer of Jesus, what a Magnificent, magnificent prayer it is. John 17. Listen to verse 24. I love this.
Father, Jesus says. I desire that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am in order that they may behold my glory. That is Jesus praying to the Father to bring his own to heaven. Where he will live forever and ever.
So we're in the heavenlies now, and someday we'll be in heaven. What a tremendous hope. In John 14, do you remember it? Beautiful promise. Stop letting your heart be troubled.
Believe in God? Believe also in me. In my father's house are many rooms. Many dwelling places, not mansions, folks, rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again, receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also.
See, Jesus wanted us to be forever where he is, that we might see his glory and the glory of his Father. And he's up there right now preparing a place for us. And so we're looking for that place. We're looking for that place. The Bible calls it a city whose builder and maker is what?
God. You know how much a city meant to people in ancient times? You see, in ancient times, a city was a place of safety. A city was a place of refuge. Inside the walls, there was brotherhood and harmony.
Inside the walls, there was security. Protection. Safety. And you can imagine the nomadic people of ancient times wandering across the desert. Vulnerable to the robbers and the thieves.
Who would come and steal and take their lives? Vulnerable are the elements. And you can imagine after months, perhaps weeks, of that kind of life, how refreshing it was to enter the protection of a city. Fortified and walled. And there to find harmony and fellowship.
Joy companionship You have to see a city from the viewpoint of. The biblical time frame. Cities today represent decadence. They represent crime. They represent all that is wicked and evil, and it seems to me that people in the city are longing for a country.
But in those days people in the country were longing for a city. A place of refuge, a place of protection. A place of safety. We need that mindset. We need to see ourselves as pilgrims and strangers.
Wandering through this world looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. a real place. where we will really go. and really live. With Christ Just as much as his disciples were with him after his resurrection, so will we be with him.
Just as Thomas could touch his fingers and touch his side, so will we touch him.
So will we sit with him?
So will we sing with him. A real place. And we are only now experiencing a foretaste of that place. In the joy of walking with Christ. whom having not seen we love.
In the joy of knowing the Spirit lives within us as the pledge that someday we'll come to that place. And by the way. The moment you leave this life as a Christian. You go to that place. There's no limbus patrum, as the medieval theologians called it.
There's no limbo place. There's no purgatory place. There's no pit that you wait in. You go immediately into the Lord's presence. Absent from the body, said Paul.
Present with the Lord. Philippians 1: Far better to depart and be with Christ. Is that your heart's desire? We should in this hour Live in the heavenlies to the degree that we long For the fullness of all that spiritual blessing could possibly be. Do you rejoice over the work of God in your life?
Do you rejoice because he has given you all the good blessings you have? If you do, you're going to want more, and if you're going to want more, you're going to want heaven.
So, when I think to myself that Jesus actually prayed. that all who knew him would spend eternity with him to see his glory. How thankful to God I am for that. And I want to have the heart of Paul. I want to literally long to be clothed upon with my heavenly form.
I want to get out of this world and on with eternal bliss. And I hope that by the time this series is over, you're going to want the same thing. And that it's going to have a profound effect on how you live your life. In this one. Let's bow together for prayer.
Mm-hmm. Father, how thankful we are for this great promise. Promise of heaven. We're so unworthy.
So undeserving. You've given us Life. Breath. You've given us Christ. You've given us salvation.
And you've given us the hope of eternal heaven. Almost takes our breath away. To think that we can leave this painful Existence. And spend forever in your presence is overwhelming. We just bless your name for such a promise.
And Father, it's not...
Something we just wish for. It's something we. Count on because you've given us the pledge of the Holy Spirit. You've given us the guarantee. You've planted in us.
The one Who has begun that good work that will be perfected? Father, I just pray that each one of us will learn to live. with heaven in mind. Loosen us up from this life. Loosen us up from this world.
Help us truly to set our affections on things above, where everything we really love. is waiting for us. In Christ's name. Eighth. Thanks for being here for Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur.
I'm Phil Johnson. In case you didn't hear the news at the beginning of this broadcast or see it elsewhere, John MacArthur is now in heaven after dealing with a series of health challenges that began in 2023. And it seemed fitting that we set aside what we had planned for today to bring you John's classic series, Heaven. We're going to continue that study over the next two weeks.
Now, just as the details of John's death are new to you, they're also new to us. We probably have the same thoughts and feelings that you do. And while we grieve, we don't grieve as those who are without hope. John was the pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California since 1969. He became president of the Masters University in 1985 and president of the Masters Seminary when it launched in 1986.
And from the beginning of his pulpit ministry, John has been the one and only Bible teacher with Grace to You. For decades, people have asked us a reasonable question, what will Grace to You do when the day comes that John goes to glory? And John's answer and our answer has always been that we're going to keep doing what we've always done. While this is a profound loss, our commitment, our long-term plan, has not changed. As the Lord sustains this work, grace to you will always and only distribute the Bible teaching of John MacArthur.
That is our succession plan, period. We currently have no details about services for John, as the news is still very fresh to us, but we will put that information on our website as soon as we have it, gty.org. In the meantime, please pray for John's family and for the congregation of Grace Community Church, for the Masters University and Seminary, and for us here at Grace TU. And as a token of our appreciation for you, as well as we hope, a bit of encouragement. We would like to send you a copy of a booklet John wrote called The Truth About Heaven.
Just ask for it when you contact us. You can request your booklet by email. The address is letters at gty.org. Again, that's letters at gty.org. Or just go to our website.
You'll find the details for requesting your free booklet there. Our web address, gty.org. That's gty.org. And once more, the title of the booklet, The Truth About Heaven. To request your free copy, email us at letters at gty.org or you can find the details you need at our website gty.org.
Again, we intend to keep bringing you these daily half hours of Bible teaching with John MacArthur for as long as God enables us to do so. Scripture is timeless, and John's commitment always was to get himself out of the way of the biblical message. And to simply take Teach what the Word of God says and what it means. We believe that John's Bible teaching will bless people for generations to come. and we hope you'll be part of the audience.
And now, on behalf of all of us at Grace TU, I'm Phil Johnson, inviting you back as always. For another 30 minutes of unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time. On the next Grace to You.
