Welcome to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Friend, as you have probably heard, John MacArthur is now enjoying his eternal reward in heaven after fighting the good fight of the faith. He passed away a little over a week ago. For more than five decades, John faithfully taught the scripture, boldly confronted doctrinal error, pastored the same church in Southern California, but now he is experiencing the rest that all believers in Christ will know one day.
And so we thought it appropriate to air one of John's most well-known studies about that rest. It's a series we call Heaven.
So now here is John to look at what we will do in heaven. What is it that we will do in heaven? Will it be just eternal nothing? Will we just sort of hang around heaven? strolling and strumming our way through forever.
Or will it be that we will have something to do, something to plan for, some responsibility, some goal and objective that's going to demand all of our powers? to put in motion to effect.
Well, those are the questions we want to answer. What we've been saying in summing up the essence of heaven is that it is perfect holy bliss with unmixed and unending joy. In perfected body and soul, dwelling with the Lamb and with God in intimate fellowship and vision. Forever. That's heaven.
But what will we do?
Well, I I don't want to disappoint you, but I can't be. Specific about what you will do, and I can't even be specific about what I will do because the Lord hasn't chosen to reveal that to us. But in general, we can be somewhat specific about what we'll all do categorically. Let me give you some suggestions. Number one, We will adore God and Christ.
We will spend forever adoring God and Christ. Let's call that worship. Worship. Heaven will be the place of eternal, loving, adoring worship and praise. Forever and ever and ever, all throughout eternity, without any break or any interruption, we will ever, continually, and always be praising God.
There'll never be an interruption to that. There won't be a place where you go to do that because the temple will be heaven and God will be all in all. And so there won't be a place you go to do that. You will do that all the time without break.
So when we go to heaven, we will worship. We will praise God. We will have perfect knowledge, that is as perfect as the knowledge of redeemed beings can be, and we will have perfected knowledge, and therefore we will know about God things we don't now know about him, and we will know about his deeds things that we don't now know. And in that fullness of knowledge of his attributes, and fullness of knowledge of his deeds, and fullness of his presence, we will find out of us elicited unending, undying, unmixed praise. Revelation chapter 4 verse 10.
The 24 elders, here the scene is in heaven. We see that from verse 1, a door is standing open in heaven, and John is told to come up and see the things taking place.
So the vision is of heaven, and it says the 24 elders will fall down before him who sits on the throne and will worship him who lives forever and ever and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Worthy art thou our Lord and our God to receive glory and honor and power. For thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they existed and were created. And there you have a scene in heaven where there is worship. In chapter 5, again, the scene is still in heaven. Yeah.
And we come to verse 8. He had taken the book. The lamb. Mentioned in verse six. And the four living creatures in response, and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
And they sang a new song. In chapter four, they're worshiping God. In chapter five, they're worshiping the Lamb. They say, In this new song, Worthy art thou to take the book and break its seals, for thou wast slain and didst purchase for God with thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And thou hast made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth.
And I looked and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, and the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was myriads of myriads. That just almost conveys the idea of limitless numbers and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea and all things in them I heard saying, To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever. And the four living creatures kept saying, Amen, which means so let it be. and the elders fell down and worshiped.
Chapter 7, verse 9: After these things I looked, behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes, and people and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands. And they cry out with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.
That's heaven. That's what's going on there. Chapter 11, verse 15. And the seventh angel sounded, there rose loud voices in heaven. And what are they doing?
They're saying, The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. And the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God the Almighty, who art and who wast, because thou hast taken thy great power and hast begun to reign. There again we see the vision of praise in heaven. In chapter 15, verse 2, And I saw, as it were, a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had come off victorious from the beast, from his image, from the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God. And they sang the song of Moses, the bondservant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, O Lord God the Almighty, righteous and true are thy ways, thou king of the nations.
Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou alone art holy. For all the nations will come and worship before thee, for thy righteous acts have been revealed. And that, too, is a sign, verse 1 says, in heaven. And over in chapter 19.
We find the chapter begins with a great multitude in heaven. Speaking in a loud voice, and what is it they say? Hallelujah. Chapter 19, verse 1, Salvation and glory and power belong to our God because his judgments are true and righteous. For he has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality.
He has avenged the blood of his bondservants on her. And a second time they said, Hallelujah, her smoke rises up forever and ever. By the way, they're praising here for judgment. We will praise God eternally, not only for his grace, but for his judgment. The 24 elders, the four living creatures, fell down, worshiped God who sits on the throne, saying, Amen, hallelujah.
And a voice came from the throne saying, Give praise to our God, all you his bondservants, you who fear him, the small and the great. And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, and as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. That is what we do in heaven. We are preoccupied. with praise.
An overwhelming emphasis as we look at those scenes in heaven. is placed on praise. By the way, we don't see any indication there'll be any prayer in heaven because there won't be anything to pray for. That is prayer in the sense of petition. But there'll be plenty of praise, so you might as well practice now.
You're going to spend forever doing it. The one who worshiped God. Here is going to worship God there. The one who worships God here in imperfection is going to worship God there in absolute perfection. It will be our delight.
It will be the highest, noblest expression of our perfected being. We will recognize the splendor of God. We will see clearly the majesty of God. we will comprehend the glory of God. We will grasp the perfection of God.
And when all of that is on display eternally before us, we will be constrained into uninterrupted, unrestrained, adoring, loving worship. It will be our delight. Augustine, writing in the City of God, wrote this, How great will be that felicity or that joy when there will be no evil, when no good will be withheld, when there will be leisure for the praises of God who will be all in all. What other occupation could there be in a state where there will be no inactivity of idleness and yet no toil constrained by want? I can think of none.
We will literally spend eternity doing what we most want to do, which will be to praise God.
So we will worship. We will adore God forever and ever with all of our creative energies. We will adore him, I believe, through spoken word. We will adore him through song. We will adore him collectively.
We will adore him individually. We will express ourselves through some collective vehicles, and we will express ourselves through very intimate and personal vehicles. We will praise God with all of the abilities and capabilities bound up in our perfection. Every way that we in perfect body and soul could adore and praise God, we will do that. We will do that in thought, in word, in song.
Secondly, Not only will we spend eternity adoring the Lord, but we will reign with him. First, we will adore him. Secondly, we will reign with him. The first has to do with worship. The second has to do with authority.
Authority. I believe clearly that the scripture teaches that we will reign with Christ. And what that means is we will have responsibility. We will have oversight. We will have duties with regard to the ongoing operation of the eternal state.
We will then, in that time and that place when we go to be with Him and dwell forever in eternity, be given a sphere of responsibility, a sphere of authority within the ongoing of that kingdom for which we will be eternally responsible. And the wonderful thing about it is we'll never fail to fulfill our responsibility.
Now let's kind of examine that for a minute. Look at 1 Peter chapter 1.
Now we'll poke our nose into this thought. I can't be too explicit about this because I'm not sure that the Lord has given us enough revelation to draw some hard and fast dogma. But let me give you a suggestion here. 1 Peter 1:3, 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. Verse 4, in order to obtain, is the idea, an inheritance.
Okay, we've been saved to obtain an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, will not fade away, and is being reserved in heaven for us right now.
So we have an inheritance in heaven right now. It's there. It's waiting for us. It's reserved for us. It'll never fade away.
It is imperishable. It's our inheritance. What is that? Do you ever think about that? I've been thinking about that a lot.
What is that? Well I think it could be. That our inheritance has to do with the sphere of our authority.
Okay? The range of our co-reigning with Christ. It seems to me that that's basically what an inheritance is. An inheritance is something you receive from someone else.
Some would look at it from the standpoint of a firstborn son, he inherits. what his father left. He would enter into the inheritance of his father. It seems best in the Jewish context to see the inheritance as that sphere of responsibility, that sphere of rule, that over which I have responsibility and for which I have authority. My inheritance is whatever my father delegated to me.
That's my sphere of responsibility. That's what I'm responsible for. That's what I'm to be a steward of. And so the inheritance could well be the sphere of our authority. Surely it would include that.
Yes, there's a sense in which our inheritance includes eternal life, and our inheritance includes heaven, and it includes holiness, and it includes joy and peace, and the presence of God, and all of that. I think more specifically, our inheritance could focus on that sphere of authority, of dominion, of ruling, of responsibility, that stewardship over which we are. The leader, the ruler. The authority. That's wonderful.
I believe in eternity.
Now get it this way: we will have ongoing and eternal responsibility for some portion of God's eternal kingdom. That's That's the essence. perhaps of our inheritance. 1 Corinthians 6, do you remember we looked at it earlier, and it tells us another dimension of that authority. It says in verse 3: Do you not know that we shall judge angels?
How much more matters of this life? We're going to have some authority over angels, we're going to have some responsibility over them. Each of us is going to be given that. kind of responsibility.
So, when you look at heaven, we will spend forever and ever and ever praising the Lord. We will also have some area of responsibility over which we have authority and for which we are to fulfill a duty. We will rule with perfection. We will not shirk the responsibility. We will fulfill it perfectly.
To kind of fill out our understanding of this, there are a couple of passages we ought to look at further. Matthew chapter 25. And I'm trying to touch a little lightly on these things, but we want you to grasp it. Matthew 25 is the. Very familiar parable starting in verse 14 about the man who went on a journey and left talents, five talents to one servant, two to another, and one to the last.
And just notice in verse 21, the master comes back and finds the first guy has used his talent and multiplied it, the second guy used it and multiplied it, and the third guy wasted it. But in verse 21, his master said to him, Well done, good and faithful Slave, you were faithful with a few things. Notice this: I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master.
Now I believe in great measure what you have there is a picture of heaven. Heaven for the faithful person. who made the most of his gospel privilege. Who responded to the opportunity to come to Christ. Who embraced the truth.
The promise to him is that he will be. Put in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your Master. Heaven is unending joy, unmixed joy. But heaven is also being put in charge of many things.
A position of ruling, notice this please, is in proportion to. The spiritual dimension of this life.
Now follow that thought. The more faithful you are in this life. The more responsibility you were given and fulfilled in this life, The more in the life to come.
Somehow, our position of ruling in heaven is in proportion to faithfulness in this life.
Now that means that you say, well, what if God only gave you five and you doubled it, and God only gave you two and you doubled it? How is that different?
Well, God is fair and God is equitable and God is just. But God is also sovereign. And God has chosen in this life to give people greater gospel privilege, greater ministry than others by His sovereign choice. And in eternity, God will do the same, and that's His sovereign purpose. There will be no sense of loss, there will be no sense of relative comparison.
For all of us will be perfect and perfect people would never ever be jealous. Prideful. Boastful? envious, or any of those things.
So, we have unequal privilege here. We have unequal opportunity here. Listen, some people heard the gospel when they were six and seven years old and have loved Christ, walked with Christ for years and years and years.
Some people came to Christ a week before they died, and you can ask the same question: Was God fair in letting that person live a whole life in sin and the flesh and corruption before saving them in the end? That's not the question. The question is that God is sovereign and He has a right to do what He will do, and we shouldn't ask such things. The potter does what the potter chooses. The clay doesn't ask the questions.
So God giving In terms of privilege, somewhat, at least to our view, unequal privilege here. And fulfilling that privilege, we find ourselves in unequal areas of responsibility here. We shouldn't be shocked to find the same will happen in eternity. I'm not going to rule over any tribe of Israel. I'm not going to have that big a sphere of influence, but the 12 apostles are.
It isn't a question of better or worse. It's a question of God's design for each and every one of us. We all have different capacities, and God will fulfill those capacities according to His predetermined creative and redemptive plan for us. What you will be is exactly what God wanted you to be in utter perfection and Christ-likeness. What you will do will be exactly what God created you and recreated you to do in exact perfection.
You will be the fulfillment of everything God intended for you, and that's all you could want to be anyway. And I believe this is a picture of heaven because the comparative, if you go down to the end of the parable, the one talent man. When the Lord confronts this guy, Verse 30. He says, Cast out the worthless slave into outer darkness. What's that a picture of?
Hell. The contrast here is where one is in hell and where the other two are in heaven. Heaven is the place of the joy of the Lord, and I will put you over many things. I believe we have a place of authority, a place of ruling, a place of reigning in heaven.
So that's what heaven is going to be like. It's going to be a place where we have unending, unceasing, unmitigated, and pure praise rising out of hearts filled with love that is pure and unmixed. And coupled with that, we will reign. We will have a responsibility to rule a certain sphere. Notice in Revelation 3:21, well, verse 20, you know the familiar word here to the Laodicean.
Church, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, opens the door, come in to him, dine with him, and he with me. Then, verse 21, referring here to a believer, he who overcomes. A believer is an overcomer. 1 John tells us that.
Who is he that overcomes? It's the one who believes. That which overcomes is our faith, John says.
So the believing person is the overcomer. To him, it says, I will grant to sit down with me on my what? Through As I also overcame and sat down with my father. On his Throne.
So there is definitely an emphasis, a very, very strong emphasis on this matter of ruling, of having authority.
Now let me just sum it up, beloved. Heaven is not going to be a place where you sit on the edge of a cloud and play a harp. Heaven is not going to be a place where you just hang around, you stroll the golden streets. It's not going to be one massive celestial garden where you're just forever picking flowers. It's not going to be that.
It's not going to be anything like you think it's going to be, at least like most people think it's going to be. Heaven is going to be a place, now listen to this thought, where you will be busier than you have ever been. You will have authority. You will have responsibility. You will have duty.
And the wonderful part about it is you will do it to perfection. Get this one, and never grow weary. Isn't that wonderful? You'll never sleep. You never need to sleep.
You don't need to sleep because your body isn't running down. Your body will never be tired. You will never go home to your place in the Father's house and say, what a hard day. I'm taking tomorrow off. There will be no days off.
Forever, you will rule in your sphere of authority. Forever, you will fulfill that inheritance which God has given you. You will never be weary. You will rest forever, but you will rest while you are doing that which God has called you to do.
Now, let me tell you something. That to me is really appealing. People sometimes say to me, Well, you need rest. If you mean that I need to do nothing, that does not help me. Doing nothing is very difficult.
Very difficult.
Now, if you were to say you need to do something different, that's good. Whenever I take a vacation or a rest, I don't want to do nothing, I want to do something different. But there's something built into me, something the way I think people are made, that there is a drive in us to excel, to accomplish, to do. To have a sense of a goal and an objective and a purpose and a sphere of responsibility. And don't we say that one of the greatest human pleasures is the sense of satisfaction over a job?
What?
Well done, of course. And I believe what you're going to have in heaven forever is just doing jobs to perfection. And you'll be able to smile in the very presence of God and know that every single thing you do in the sphere of your sovereignty, your delegated authority, is done to absolute perfection. And in a sense, that will be a little part of what you offer God in praise. Isn't that a great thing to think about?
You're not going to be just hanging around for eons. You're not going to be just at leisure with no responsibility. You're going to have a sphere of responsibility that'll occupy your perfect mind to its limits, that'll tax your mental capacities to their limits, your ability to strategize and to think. will all be exercised. Imperfection.
All the best that you can possibly be, you will be, and you will function to accomplish tasks that you never dreamed possible. But you will do those things with great ease. You will do them at rest, in a sense. That's sort of paradoxical, but that's what the scripture indicates.
So, when you get to heaven, you're going to have some responsibility. The measure of that responsibility, I believe, if you look carefully at these scriptures, is somehow related to the measure of giftedness God's given you here because you are, in a sense, in part what you will be then. And God has gifted us differently.
Some of you have been gifted in a certain way here, and somehow in eternity, your sphere of influence and responsibility will correlate to the way you've been gifted here. That's just the way it's going to be. Also, I might add: the level of your faithfulness here will correlate to the extent of your authority there.
So what you do here, in a sense, is rewarded there by the nature of the inheritance you receive. you really are, then by the way you live. laying up treasure there. You, in a sense, right now, by the way you live as a Christian, are. Establishing what you're going to do in eternity.
And I don't know about you, but I want to do all I can throughout eternity to glorify God. And I want to make sure that I don't waste my privilege here and not get the fullness of capacity given there. That's That's what we'll do in heaven. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. And as you've probably already heard, John MacArthur recently went home to be with Christ.
And so, Airing his classic study on heaven seemed appropriate. And friend, for some additional study on heaven, we want to send you a free copy of a booklet John wrote on the Believer's Eternal Home. It's called The Truth About Heaven, and all you have to do is ask for it. Get your free booklet when you contact us today. You can request the truth about heaven by email.
Write to us at letters at gty.org. Our email address, again, letters at gty.org or you can request your free booklet at our website, gty.org. And while you're online, be sure to browse the Sermon Archive 3600 Sermons by John in MP3 and transcript format. All of them are available for free, including all eight messages from this current study called Heaven. Just go to gty.org.
Well, we continue to be encouraged by the letters we've received from friends like you. If you would like to let us know what John MacArthur's ministry has meant to you, you can email us at letters at gty.org or if you prefer regular mail, write to Grace2U, PO Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. And if you'd like to verbally tell us your story or simply pass along your condolences, we have a special number available for that. To reach our Remembrance mailbox, call 661-295-6288. That number one more time, 661-295-6288.
Now for all of us here at Grace to You, I'm Phil Johnson, inviting you to join us next time for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
