A Place Called Heaven | Part 1

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Welcome to Love Worth Finding. You know, here on earth we are limited in our knowledge about heaven. But what the Bible reveals about that place leaves us in breathless wonder. Beloved pastor and Bible teacher Adrian Rogers said, There are seven things we know for sure about heaven based on the scriptures that we read. If you have your Bible turn to John chapter 14 as Adrian Rogers describes a place called heaven.

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 will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, ye may be also. Now, if there were ever an eloquent and a gifted preacher, it would be Dr. Robert G. Lee. I visited Dr. Lee, former pastor of this church, many times at his bedside. Just before he died, he lapsed into a coma and had a vision of heaven.

He came back, and this is what he said. He said, I preached on heaven many times, but I never did it justice. Now, we're limited in our knowledge of heaven. Dr. Lee was limited. I am limited.

You are limited. The Bible tells us more about what will not be there than it does about what will be there. But may I say this, that the Bible gives us all that we need to know about heaven.

And what we know leaves us in breathless wonder. Now, God has purposely kept back some things about heaven from us. When the apostle Paul took his sojourn into heaven, he said, I don't know whether I was in my body or out of my body. But I went up, I was caught up into paradise, into the third heaven. And he said, I saw there things, unutterable things, things not lawful to declare. That is, God said, this is a sacred secret, Paul.

You cannot tell it. God has saved something very wonderful for us, the place called heaven. We're going to be thinking a little bit about heaven. I want to give you some facts about heaven. Fact number one, heaven is a real place. Heaven is not a condition, a state of mind, some will of the wisps.

Heaven is some place on God's map. Now, let me give you scripture concerning what the apostle Paul said about his journey to heaven. II Corinthians 12, verses two through four, Paul said, I knew a man in Christ about 14 years ago, whether in the body I cannot tell or whether out of the body I cannot tell. Now, Paul is talking about himself. He calls himself a man in Christ. Now, listen to this.

Listen carefully. He said, whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don't know. That's very, very important because that tells us you can go to heaven out of your body or you can go to heaven in your body. Heaven is such a real place that it takes care of a real body, or yet you can go there in your spirit.

So Paul said, I don't know whether I was in my body or out of my body. God knoweth such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell God knoweth how he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

Now, that's very interesting. We say heaven is a real place. And in the Bible, we talk of heaven as being up. The apostle Paul said, I was caught up into heaven.

And so those who are naysayers, those who laugh at us, who believe the Bible literally, they say, well, you ignoramus. Don't you know that the earth is round? And so, and Paul is in Palestine. He's pointing to heaven this way is up. And somebody perhaps in Australia is pointing this way is up. And they're pointing in different directions. Don't you understand that those people in the Bible times thought the earth was flat? But we know it's round. How can heaven be up if it's in different directions?

Well, I tell you, I think that God understands it all. Let me tell you this, folks. There's one place on the face of the globe that is always up.

Did you know what it is? It's north. Now, it's not by accident that no matter where you are on planet earth, people say down south, up north.

Why? Because north is a fixed position. If you were to take a camera and open that camera and the lens of that camera and put that lens on the north star, and leave the lens open, you would see all of the other stars rotating around that north star, and it would never move.

That is a fixed position. I believe the Bible teaches that heaven is north. Let me give you some scriptures. Isaiah 14, verses 13 and 14. This is talking about the fall of Satan from heaven. Satan said, I'm going. I'm going above the stars. I'm going to the place of God. I'm going to exalt my throne there in the sides of the north. In the Bible, when God was telling people how to make a blood sacrifice in the book of Leviticus, Leviticus, chapter 1, verse 11, talking about killing an animal, and he says this, and he shall kill it on the side of the altar.

Now, listen to this. Northward, toward the Lord. Northward, toward the Lord. Leviticus 1, verse 11.

Listen to this. Psalm 75, verses 6 and 7. God is talking about where promotion comes from, and he says, for promotion cometh neither from the east nor from the west nor from the south, but God is the judge.

What is the inference? Promotion comes from God. Where is God?

In the north. You see, Paul said, I was caught up into the third heaven. What does he mean by the third heaven? Well, there's three heavens.

The Bible speaks of the fowls of the heavens. That's the atmospheric heaven. And then the Bible speaks of the stars of heaven. That's the stellar heaven. And then God speaks of heaven, which is the abode of God. Somewhere, a real place that Paul could have gone to in a body. And by the way, Jesus is there in a body. There's a man in the glory. Somebody said of these three heavens, the first we see by day, the second we see by night, the third we see by faith.

I love that. The heaven is a real place. Now, don't get the idea it's some sort of a gaseous, nebulous state of mind or something.

No. Heaven is a real place. One day you'll go there in a resurrected body, and you'll have to have something to put that resurrected foot on. Heaven is a real place. It is somewhere on God's map. Listen to this scripture. II Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 8. Paul says, Wherefore we are always confident. Boy, I love that.

So bold. Knowing that while we are at home in the body. Your body is a house.

You live in it. We are at home in the body. We are absent from the Lord.

That is his literal presence. For we walk by faith and not by sight. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body.

And to be present with the Lord. That's the reason I said you can go to heaven in a body or out of a body. You can be absent from your body and go to heaven. Or you can go to heaven in a resurrected body. The saints go immediately to heaven upon death. Some people think that the soul sleeps in the grave to await the resurrection.

No. The body awaits the resurrection. The spirit goes immediately to be with Jesus. What did Jesus tell that dying thief on the cross? Jesus said, Today, today you'll be with me in paradise. As Jesus bowed his head and died, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. When Stephen, that saint, was stoned and martyred for his faith, he looked up. He said, I see heaven. I see Jesus on the right hand of the Father.

And then he prayed, Father, I'll receive my spirit. Not so long ago I was at the deathbed of my darling mother. I wish you could have known my mother. My mother was an incredible individual, as was my dad. But my mother had a great sense of humor. And my mother was full of witticisms and you could never get ahead of her. No matter what you'd say, she always had a comeback. But I can remember there, as my mother was taking her last breath, she just turned her eyes and looked upward.

I can't prove it, but I just have a feeling that she was looking into another world. There comes a time. There comes a time when we move out of this body and we move into a position with our Lord in heaven. And so I have a desire to depart and be with Christ. That's what the apostle Paul said. Now here's the third thing I want to say about heaven. Heaven is a real place. The saints go to heaven immediately when they die.

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The third thing about this is a question often asked, will we know our loved ones? We will know our loved ones. We'll know our loved ones.

We'll know them face to face. 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 12. For now we see them in a glass darkly. What does that mean, in a glass darkly? Well, in Bible times, they didn't have mirrors like we have with quicksilver on them. They would take brass and they would polish it. Now the translators called it a glass, but it wasn't really even a glass.

It was a burnished brass reflector. They would look in it and you could see, but you could not see as clearly as we see. That's what he meant when we see it. In a glass darkly. But then, face to face, now I know in part, then I shall know even as also I am known. You see, folks, we really don't know one another now. The question is not, well, we know one another in heaven.

The real question is, do we know one another now? You know, when Samuel was going to anoint a king for Israel, God told Samuel, look not on his countenance, but on the height of his stature, talking about Eliab. For I have refused him. The Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance. God looks on the heart.

You know, some of these high and mighty people that have all of these beautiful bodies and chiseled features and everything, don't think they're more important. Listen, God looks on the heart. God looks on the heart. God doesn't see as a man sees. Well, we know one another in heaven. Of course we will know one another in heaven.

We know one another about the picture of our little baby, Philip. And my heart went to that passage of scripture where King David had a baby that died and went to heaven. He had prayed and asked God, Lord, please, spare the life of the baby. But God did not.

Then the Bible says in 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 20, then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his apparel and came into the house of the Lord and worshiped. And he said, while the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, You can tell whether God will be gracious to me that the child may live. But now he is dead. Listen to this.

Wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him. He shall not return to me.

I will go to him. Now, we go to our loved ones in heaven. The apostle Paul is talking about the second coming of Jesus Christ. He was telling the church at Thessalonica is you can look forward to the second coming of Jesus and our being gathered not only to meet the Lord, but to meet one another. Put this verse down. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 16. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. That's talking now about the body that's in the grave. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up.

Now listen to this. Caught up together. Paul's emphasis. Caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Again, he told them in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 15. It speaks of Jesus who died for us that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Now, if you think of the saints in the Bible when they died, how does the Bible talk about the saints dying?

It talks about them going to be with their people. When Moses died, here's what God said to Moses. Get thee up into the mountain and die in the mountain and be gathered unto thy people. Now, Moses' mother, that mother that made him that little ark, he said, Moses, go see your mama.

Get up into the mountain. Be gathered to your people. Abraham knew that he was going to have a family reunion. Look at verse 25, verse 8. Then Abraham gave up the ghost.

That is, he yielded up the spirit and died in a good old age and old man and full of years and was gathered to his people. Listen to what the Bible says about Isaac. Genesis 35, verse 29. And Isaac gave up the ghost and died and was gathered unto his people being old and full of days and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. Listen to what the Bible says about Jacob and his family reunion in heaven.

Genesis 49, verse 33. And when Jacob made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people. Now, his body is still somewhere moldering in the grave, but he gathered with his people.

He is with his people. That's what Jesus talked about, a family reunion in heaven. Here's what Jesus said. And I say unto you that many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. We're going to fellowship there with these people.

We'll know them. On the mount of transfiguration, when Jesus was transfigured, we just had a preview of heaven. When he's up there on the mount of transfiguration, Elijah was there and Moses was there. The disciples had never met Elijah. They'd never met Moses. They were from a different era. But they recognized Moses. They recognized Elijah. We will know one another in heaven.

Put it down big, plain, and straight. Number four, there will be joyful activity in heaven. There's some myths about heaven. One of the myths is that we're going to wear a woolly robe with a halo sitting on a fluffy cloud pluck of harp. You know, heaven's going to be so boring.

And, you know, all day long, we'll have to listen to anthems. And heaven is rest, but it's not laziness. It's not just lolling around for all eternity. Adam had work to do before sin ever came into the garden, but it wasn't labor. It wasn't by the sweat of his brow.

It was to dress the garden and keep it. Put this verse down. Luke chapter 19. Our Lord is talking about what we're going to do in heaven. Luke chapter 19, beginning in verse 12.

Luke chapter 19, beginning in verse 12. Now, I want to go no deeper into this, except to tell you that our Lord has gone to heaven. He has given to us certain abilities and certain things that we are made to be made stewards of.

He says, Get busy. And when I come again, I'm going to reward you. And I'm going to reward you according as your labor shall be, and you're going to serve me. We're going to help our God rule the vast universe. Paul said, If we suffer with him, we'll also reign with him. Here's a great verse I love from the book of Revelation, chapter 7, verse 15. The apostle John had a glimpse into glory. And he saw the servants of God, and here's the way he described them. They serve him day and night in his temple. They serve him day and night. The greatest joy that I have is serving the Lord. What a privilege to serve the Lord.

Sometimes I wish I could serve him better. I always enjoy music. I love music, and I have a little bit more taste and ability in music that sometimes I let on. Well, some of you don't know, I can kind of sit at the piano and play by ear. I won't do that in service. But I love music. Somehow I have difficulty getting it out.

I can carry it to it, and I just can't unload it. But I'm telling you, when we get to heaven, guess who's going to be leading the choirs? Not Whitmire Rogers. You know how I know that? Because the last will be first. It's not going to be boring. It's going to be thrilling. It's going to be blessed. There's going to be joyful activity in heaven.

Number five, heaven is going to be a place of absolute perfection. As I said in the introduction of this message, we know more about what will not be in heaven than we do what will be in heaven. Be no more tears, no more sighing, no more crying, no more dying, no more pain, for the former things are passed away. That's the reason the apostle Paul said in chapter 1, beginning in verse 21, for to me to live is Christ, and to die, listen, is gain. To die is gain. Then he said, I have a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.

Gain. No more sin, no sorrow, no suffering, no death, no disease, no doubt. What is heaven? Heaven is all that the loving heart of God would desire. Can you imagine someone who loved you so much he gave his son to die for you?

That's love, isn't it? Hearing his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his son. Heaven is all that the loving heart of God would desire. Heaven is all that the incredible mind of God can conceive. And heaven is all that the almighty hand of God can create.

Put it together. God's love, God's mind, and God's power. And, friend, that's heaven. No wonder Paul said, I have not seen nor heard nor had it entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love him.

I have a desire to depart and be with Christ, he says, which is far better. And I'm not a Greek scholar. I was exposed to Greek.

It didn't take. But I'm going to tell you this. The Greek language says it is far, very much far, much more better. He's adding superlatives upon superlatives when he's talking about going to heaven. Heaven is a place of absolute perfection. You think of God's creative genius in this world. This world has been marred by sin and yet you go look sometime at a mountain range or sometimes look into the face of a buttercup or see the God that sculpted the rose or the God that painted the rainbow, a God that gives us these glorious sunsets, the God who crafted the delicate wing of the butterfly. Even in a world that's marred by sin, you can see a glimpse of that glory. But heaven will be the consummate work of God's creative genius.

All that's bad. Isn't that great to hear today? We're going to pick up with part two of this message tomorrow. In the meantime, maybe you have a prayer request that you'd like to share. At Loveworth, finding one of our greatest honors is to come alongside you and pray with and for you. If you can go to our website home page at lwf.org slash radio and scroll down to the prayer wall, you'll find the option to submit a prayer request or pray for others.

This resource is available on our website. This resource is one of our favorite ways to keep the ministry and the community praying continually for one another. We can't wait to hear from you today. Now, if you'd like to order a copy of today's message, call us at 1-877-LOVEGOD and mention the title A Place Called Heaven. You'll receive the entire lesson, which we haven't had time for today. You can also order online at lwf.org slash radio or write us at Love Worth Finding Box 3867.

600 Memphis, Tennessee 38183. Well, thanks for studying in God's word with us today. As Adrian Rogers said, you have to be heaven born to be heaven bound. And if that's you, if you know that the only way to the place called heaven is through salvation and Jesus, and you've received that forgiveness, give him thanks today. And join us tomorrow for the conclusion of A Place Called Heaven right here on Love Worth Finding. You have to hear what a listener wrote to us recently. I want to share this.

She writes, I am 92 years old and unable to go to my church. I'm thankful for the ability to see and hear Dr. Rogers anytime. Even though he's gone to be with the Lord, he is still a witness to those who are at home. Thanks for sharing his messages. Well, we are so honored to share the messages of Adrian Rogers and help you with resources that mature you in your faith. We share the good news with you. We share the good news of the gospel with a lost world. And this month, if you'll come alongside us with a gift of any amount, we want to send you our 2020 Christmas cards featuring an original painting by artist Lacey Hancock. This holiday season share the only Love Worth Finding through a beautiful painting and a thoughtful word of encouragement to your friends and family. Request a pack of 10 when you call with a gift at 1-877-LOVEGOD. Thank you.