Welcome to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. On today's lesson, you're going to hear more about the eternal home that awaits every believer in Christ. It's encouraging stuff. And of course, what makes the message you're about to hear particularly significant is the fact that our beloved Bible teacher, John MacArthur, is currently enjoying the glories of heaven firsthand.
He went there earlier this week, and he knows now better than ever what awaits those of us who are in Christ. But even for us now on this side of heaven, there is much that we can learn about our future home.
So follow along with John as he shows you from Scripture what we will be like when we're there. The Bible teaches that we will experience the eternal perfection of body and soul. We will experience the eternal perfection of body and soul. When God made man, he made him soul and body. He made him an inner man and an outer man.
And when he perfects him, he's going to perfect him as an inner man and an outer man also. We are designed by God to be a body and a soul. And our ultimate perfection demands that we be a body and a soul. And the creation of a new heaven and an actual new earth also demands that we have bodies that can walk on a real earth. The new earth then calls for its inhabitants to have real bodies.
Now, death, mark it, death means the separation. The bodies go to the grave, the spirit goes to be with the Lord.
Well, how long does that last?
Well, only until the resurrection. Jesus said in John chapter 5 that everybody's going to rise from the dead. Everybody. In John 5, do you not marvel, verse 28 at this? The hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth.
Those who did good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment. Know this, will you? In the present time, People in the church who have died are in heaven in spirit. In the present time, the unbelievers who have died are in hell in spirit. But there is coming a great resurrection.
And at the time of the resurrection, the bodies of the redeemed will be joined to their spirits, and they will be in the eternal perfection of body and soul. At the time of the great resurrection, the bodies of the ungodly will be raised from the graves as well, and they will be joined to their disembodied spirits so that they, body, and soul, will endure the torments of hell forever. God created men and women to be body and soul or body and spirit. Same thing.
So that's what God is moving toward. Even after our souls are perfected, that's not the end. That's not the end. There will be a resurrection. of body to join that spirit.
That's God's plan. You can read about the resurrection of the ungodly in Revelation chapter 20, starting in verse 11. The sea gives up the dead, death and the grave give up the dead, and they're all judged according to their deeds, and then, of course. They're thrown into the lake of fire. There will be a resurrection unto damnation, a resurrection unto judgment.
But what about our resurrection? What about the redemption of our bodies? We're waiting for. what 2 Corinthians 5.2 calls our house which is from heaven. A house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.
Look at First Thessalonians chapter four, very familiar. Text. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 13. We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep. And that has reference to the bodies of saints.
Their spirits are gone to be with the Lord, their bodies are in the grave. Don't grieve. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. When Jesus comes back, he's going to bring with him the spirits of the saints that are dead. When the rapture comes and Jesus comes out of heaven, the spirits of the saints are coming with him.
For this we say to you, verse 15, by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive. We're still here in body and spirit, not yet glorified. Those of us who remain till the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. In other words, they're going to get their bodies before we go up. Why?
Because they've been waiting a long time.
Some of them. Centuries. Floating around as disembodied spirits in a not yet fully perfected humanness. Because they don't have their bodies yet.
So when Jesus comes to rapture the church, the first group that are going to be taken care of are those who have been disembodied. They will get their new bodies and then we will go up after them. It says it in verse 16, the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, and 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 thus we shall always be with the Lord. That's another feature of heaven. You're always with the Lord forever and ever and ever and ever.
But the dead are going to go first because they've been waiting a long time for their bodies. Their bodies are going to come out of the graves, join with their disembodied spirits, be instantly perfected for all that heaven has for them. Then we're going to follow them up and get translated on the way. We'll be perfected when we leave this world in the rapture if we're here when Jesus comes.
Now that's the promise of God. That we have To look forward to a new glorified body to go with a glorified spirit. This earthly tent. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5. One.
will be torn down. and we'll get a building from God.
Now, that poses the question I want to focus on as we bring this to a conclusion. What will these bodies be like? What are they going to be like? The soul in its perfected state, mark this, has to have a body in a perfected state to fully express itself. The human soul is limited in its expression without a body because we are that perfect combination.
But what will the body be like? Let's go to 1 Corinthians 15, verse 36 and find out. What is it like? You fool, he says. That's being kind.
You shouldn't even argue like that. That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies. The Greek is senseless one. A severe rebuke, by the way, which assumes that the objector prided himself on his intelligence. You don't even know what you're talking about.
Let me give you an analogy of a seed. He says, that which you sow doesn't come to life unless it dies. And that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body just as he wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. He says Just look at this analogy.
You have a little seed in your hand, you put it in the ground. Does that seed in any way resemble what it's going to produce? Of course not. I mean, there is tremendous difference. The life principle is in the seed, but there's no way to know, if you didn't know because you had had past experience, that that kind of seed would turn out to be that kind of plant.
The seed dies. That's the first thing a seed does.
Now, you explain this to me. Perfectly, and then I'll Also, be dependent on your explanation of resurrection. How in the world can something die in order to give life? How can it do that? How can a seed go into the ground, decompose, and give life?
I don't know. I don't understand that. And how in the world can a monstrous tree come out of that little thing? There is a vast difference. But Paul is saying your body is going to die, it's going to go into the grave and it's going to come out of there, and it's just like a seed that dies in an analogy sense and produces some plant that you could never have seen in the seed.
Never. Jesus even said that in looking at his own resurrection, John 12, 24, unless a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die, it brings forth fruit. And he was saying, I'm going to die and do the same thing. I'm going to produce fruit, I'm going to come forth in a glorious resurrection body that's going to produce fruit. The mystery of the resurrection body, dear friends, is no different than the mystery of the seed.
No different. And if you're going to say, well, I don't believe in resurrection because I don't understand the process, then you better not believe in harvest either because you don't understand that process. But it happens. And so will resurrection. That's Paul's argument.
The bodies will have some connection to the one that was buried, but they'll be different. I don't know fully how. They'll be the same organism in some way. I'll be me and you'll be you, only we'll all be perfect. We'll be the same and yet we'll be different.
Incredible. From the decomposition of the body in the grave. We don't have an obstacle to the resurrection. Just like a seed that dies and brings forth life, so the resurrection will come from the death. of the body.
Look at verse 39. And then he takes another illustration. From the seed, he just turns a corner and starts talking about The body. All flesh is not the same flesh. There's one flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another flesh of birds, another of fish.
Now, how do you explain that? I mean, all over this earth, there are all different kinds of flesh. All different kinds. The differences in the flesh of animals are determined by amino acids. You know amino acids?
I read there are 600 octodecillion combinations of amino acids. That's a lot. And then that's what produces flesh. That's what produces a certain kind of flash. You produce your own flesh.
I produce my flesh. It doesn't matter what I eat, I produce flesh. If I eat chicken all the time, I don't get feathers. Why? Why?
Because the amino acids in my body will only reproduce in combination with my own flesh.
So no matter what I eat, I eat nothing but a hamburger and I won't move. I won't grow a tail. I won't get hid like a cow. Why? Because the amino acid structure that God has put into flesh keeps flesh distinct.
God was not restricted to one kind of flesh in creation, so why should He be restricted to one kind of flesh in resurrection? We may not even understand what kind of R uh of new humanity that is. Any more than if all we knew were birds and their kind of flesh, we could understand a horse. Then he says in verse 40: there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. The glory of the heavenly is one, the glory of the earthly is another.
That is, there are a terrestrial and celestial. There are earthly organisms and there are bodies that occupy space, sun, moon, stars. It's incredible. God has made everything from the tiny little crawling bug to a spinning sun and everything in between. And from the human perspective, we look at these, and why in the world would we say, well, I don't understand how we could ever make a resurrection body.
Well, look, he can make any kind of body he wants. There is one glory of the sun, verse 41, another glory of the moon. There's another glory of the stars, and stars differ from other stars in glory.
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It's just like that. There are all kinds of bodies God has made: animal bodies, plant bodies, celestial bodies. Suns and stars and moons and comets and on and on and on. All the heavenly bodies vary, all the seeds.
Do you realize there are no two trees on the face of the earth alike? No two seeds alike, no two animals alike, no two people exactly alike, no two celestial bodies alike, and somebody says, Well, how in the world could God ever create a resurrection body? Big deal. He's got enough creative power on display that we shouldn't question that. Verse 42: So also is the resurrection of the dead.
The illustrations of nature, the illustrations of astronomy illustrate to us that God can make any kind of body he wants. As one body differs from another, so the resurrection body can differ from the body we know now. There is the possibility that God is going to create a unique body, a body like we don't understand.
Somehow it'll connect up with us. It'll have our human personality in it, but it'll be preserved forever with all its distinctions, with all its uniqueness in absolute and eternal perfection. And so the graveyards of men become the seed plots of resurrection, and the cemeteries of the people of God. Become through the heavenly dew the resurrection fields of the promised perfection. Then in verse 42, it is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body.
And here come the contrasts. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. That's the difference. Then he says. It is sown.
In dishonor? Because of sin, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body.
It is raised a spiritual body.
Now, what does he mean by that? A spiritual body. He doesn't mean it's a spirit, it is a body, but it is a body. It is a body that can contain And express itself in spiritual ways. To put it simply, it is a body which expresses the spirit.
the needs of a perfect spirit.
Now look at that. What's your body going to be like? It's going to be imperishable. That is, it never decays. You will never lose any part of that body.
It will be permanently and eternally perfect, never changing. Never. You will never look at your hand and say, What is that? I've never seen that before. You will never feel somewhere, and where is that lump coming from?
There will be no. cancer x-rays in heaven. No one will develop anything there. Absolute imperishable perfection. Not only that, it'll be glorious, glorious.
It'll be a reflector of the glory of God. It'll be raised in power. It will have power beyond anything you can imagine. Power to accomplish anything and everything. That it desires.
It will be a spiritual body in the sense that it gives expression to a renewed spirit, a perfect spirit. It's incredible to think about it. It's adapted for the existence of the redeemed in an order of heaven that we know nothing about at this point. It's just Unbelievable. And then in verse 45, he takes us one step further and says: So also it is written: the first man, Adam, became a living soul.
And the last Adam, that's Christ, became a life-giving spirit. He contrasts the heads of two families. He appeals to Scripture here for his argument. And he says, the last atom is a life-giving spirit. Jesus Christ is the last Adam, and He will give a life, He will give life.
Where Adam gave death. Adam, the natural man, sinned and brought death on the human race. The last atom brings life. The spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth.
That's Adam, earthy. The second man is from heaven. And as is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy. And as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Stop at that point, folks.
You just got a tremendous insight. As we are on this earth like Adam, we will be in heaven like whom? Like Christ. And verse 49 says it, just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of what? Heavenly.
It's incredible. We're going to be like Jesus Christ. We're going to be exactly like Jesus Christ.
Well, what was he like?
Well, he was incorruptible. And eternal? He is glorified, and we shall be. He is spiritual, that is, he gives expression to a perfected spirit through his glorified humanity, and so shall we. We shall possess, according to Philippians 3:21, a great statement, the body of his glory.
I just can't imagine. But see, we have been saved to be conformed to the image of God's Son. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, Romans 8 says. We're going to be like him, 1 John 3:2, because we shall what? See him as he is.
We're going to be like him. What was he like? It's incredible to think about it. He flew to heaven, stood on the mount in Acts chapter 1, and a cloud took him right to heaven. He could fly.
He moved about. He appeared suddenly after his resurrection in that glorified humanity. He walked through walls. With the disciples, it tells us that he sat down. Luke 24 says, and ate.
On one occasion, he broke bread. Another occasion he ate fish. He asked for something to eat. They gave it and he ate it. And Revelation 22 says that there will be fruit-bearing trees in heaven for the wholeness and the health of all the peoples.
Like Christ ate after his resurrection, we'll eat. And he didn't need to eat, he ate for the sheer joy and pleasure of it.
So we'll spend eternity eating of the fruit of the heavenly trees, not because we need it, but because we enjoy it. I don't know how that's going to work. I don't know how the how you can eat eternal fruit. and not have it change you in any way. I don't understand all of that.
But it's sure going to be exciting. We're going to be like Christ. He could move about anywhere he wanted to go. He had the power to appear and disappear. He had the power to infuse men with his strength.
He had the power, even in his resurrection, of course, to do miraculous things which he did through his apostles. He walked, he talked, they could touch him, they could feel him. He spoke. He ate. We'll do all of that.
only in a glorified humanity that's inexplicable to us.
Now.
Well, there's so much more to say. But when you think about Jesus. After the resurrection. That's the best picture of what will be like. A body fit.
For the full life of God to indwell and express itself forever. A body that can eat but doesn't need to, a body that can fly through space and go through walls, a body with no time limitation, no age, a body exalted to all that God has in mind in the creation potential, a body that is ultimately satisfied, knows no pain, no tears, no sorrow, no sickness, no death. A body of splendor, a body that shines like the moon and the stars, according to Daniel 12, the promise to the Old Testament saints in their resurrection. A body that's as bright as the brightness of the noonday sun. A body that shines like the sun in its strength.
What an incredible thing to think about. What an incredible thing. What does all this say to you? Let me tell you what it says to me. It says that our longing for heaven should be intense.
it should be intense. Let me put it really practically for you. If you find your joy and your comfort in this life, If you find your delights in this life so that heaven does not appeal to you, That is irrational. That is irrational. Let me tell you why.
First of all, you're idolizing a passing, sin-filled, decaying world. Secondly, you're contradicting the goal of God. The goal of God is to make you like Christ, and that's where you're going to have to go to get made that way.
So, if you are longing to hold on to this world and you're hankering to stay here and you don't want to go, and this is where you seek your comfort, and this is where you stack your treasure, you are irrational as well as sinful. And so am I if I think like that, because we're idolizing a decaying, godless, Christ-rejecting passing world. We are contradicting the goal of God.
Furthermore, we are seeking what we will never find, and then, therefore, we are aggravating our misery. Because we will never be satisfied. How much better to long for heaven. We should groan for heaven-like freedom. is groaned for by a prisoner.
Like health is grown for like by a sick man. like food is longed for by one who is hungry, water for one who is thirsty. We should long for heaven like the farmer does for harvest, like the worker does for payday, like the runner does for winning. And if we don't, something is wrong. If we're not saying with John, even so, come, Lord Jesus, something's wrong.
When we think about what God has for us. If you're not a Christian, don't pity Christians. Don't pity us. I know some people think that we have kind of a boring life, and all of our fun has been spoiled because we've turned our back on the stuff of the world. But I want you to know, folks, don't pity us, pity yourself.
We have enjoyed the best of life and the joy of the Lord, and we're going to spend eternity with. The glories of His promise. While those who stand back and pity the party that Christians are missing Are you going to spend eternity without God in the torment of hell? All that is glorious, all that is noble, all that is blessed, and all that is thrilling awaits us in heaven. I hope you're going to be there.
And I hope if You're headed for heaven. You have a longing in your heart. for that reunion with Christ. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for our time and your word and how excited we are about what you have planned for us.
And though eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and it hasn't entered into the heart of man the things you've prepared for us, we could never comprehend it. Just this tiny glimpse is enough to fill our hearts with joy. I pray for every soul here. to be prepared. For the inevitable day of death.
That in that day they may enter the heaven of heavens. and not experience the wrath of God. That they may know joy forever and ever, and not the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And Father, for those of us who are headed for heaven, Fill us with anticipation. Help us to hold lightly to the world.
and to long to be with you. Help us to be weary over sin. to see the worthlessness of this world, to invest all we have in longing for heaven. Help us, as Paul said to the Colossians, to set our affections on things above and not on things on the earth. Help us to long for that day when we will exchange these vile bodies, as Paul said to the Philippians, for the glorious body that is like the body of Jesus Christ.
That perfection of body and soul. which awaits us who are citizens of heaven. Help us to long for that transformation. We thank you for this wonderful hope that is planted in our hearts. because you have told us enough about heaven.
to give us such a longing. We thank you for your grace, for what you give us in this life, and what you've prepared for us in the life to come. Amen. A place that should occupy your thoughts continually, your future dwelling place. If you're a Christian, of course, that place is heaven.
That's the focus of our current series here on Grace to You. And as we've been mentioning the past few broadcasts, John MacArthur recently went to heaven, and it seemed appropriate to present this classic series on the amazing eternal realities that John is experiencing this very minute. As you listen today, perhaps you were surprised by how much Scripture says about your eternal home. To help unpack what the Bible says about heaven, we'd like to send you a free copy of a booklet John wrote titled The Truth About Heaven. Ask for it when you contact us today.
You can email your request to letters at gty.org. That address one more time, letters at gty.org. You can also request your free copy of the truth about heaven from our website, gty.org, or when you call 800-55Grace. And if you would like to listen again to the message you heard today, you can download it free of charge along with the rest of the sermons in John's series titled Heaven. For the MP3s as well as the transcripts, go to gty.org.
Well, friend, thank you for praying for John's family and for the family of ministries that John led, including Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, the Masters University and Seminary, and Grace to You. Also, we've set up a special phone line for you to pass along your condolences. To record your message for John's family and the Grace TU staff, call 661-295-6288. That number one more time, 661-295-6288. And now, on behalf of all of us here at Grace to You, I'm your host, Phil Johnson, inviting you to join us for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on the next Grace to You.
