Our Incredible, Immortal Inheritance

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us, the references to a scale. Paul had troubles. He was not some pie in the sky optimist.

He was stoned, mistreated, misrepresented, abandoned, criticized, maligned, abused, shipwrecked, you name it, he had it. He said, I have calculated that if I put all of that on one side of the scale, it is as light as a feather compared to the glory that is going to be mine in Christ. In Romans 8 verses 16 through 17, the Apostle Paul writes this. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

Isn't that an amazing thought? You are the recipient of an inheritance that God has prepared. So the question then becomes, what have you inherited? Would you like to know? Well, keep listening. This is Wisdom for the Heart.

Today, Stephen Davey begins a series from Romans 8 called From Groaning to Glory. We start out today with this lesson entitled Our Incredible Immortal Inheritance. Let me tell you a story I came across of Bertie Adams. She was 71 years old when she died. She died in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1976.

The coroner's report declared the cause of death as malnutrition. From all appearances, she was a penniless, forgotten woman, unwanted by a family who no longer cared. She lived a destitute kind of life. One police officer who inspected her apartment declared it to be a veritable pig pen, trash, stench, old clothing, not much furniture.

Bertie would beg from the back doors of her neighbor's homes for food. She got all of her clothes from the Mission and from the Salvation Army. But as officials sifted through her pile of rubble and belongings to find some kind of identification that would connect her to a family, they discovered two keys. And these two keys led officials to two safety deposit boxes at two different local banks.

And what they discovered was almost unbelievable. At one bank, they found in her container more than 700 AT&T stock certificates, financial securities, and bonds, not to mention cash amounting to nearly $200,000. At the second bank, they opened her container and discovered no certificates or bonds, just stacks and stacks of cash, $600,000 to be exact. CBS Radio reported that the estate would be inherited after they had completed their discovery process. Her estate would be inherited by a distant niece and nephew, neither of whom dreamed they would be the heirs of so much. Can you imagine being that nephew and getting the phone call? Your Aunt Birdie died.

Yeah, okay. The one my family never wanted her at. Well, she's left you her wealth.

Her what? Her wealth. You and your sister are going to inherit her estate of more than $1 million.

Miser's may be strange people, but they make wonderful ancestors. Imagine being an heir or an heiress to a fortune. Well, that's what Paul has to inform us of in this chapter. And let's pick it up with verse 16 as he reveals to us that we are heirs to a family fortune. He writes in verse 16, the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, but there's more. If children heirs also heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. The first thing he tells us we have inherited are the things of God. In verse 17, he says we are heirs of God.

What does he mean there? The Greek expression could be understood two ways. This could be a subjective genitive or an objective genitive.

And I don't want to bore you with a Greek lesson, but it does matter. If Paul is using a subjective genitive, he is saying we are heirs of God, meaning we have inherited everything that God owns, which is a lot. If it's an objective genitive, God being the object of this genitive, it simply means we have inherited God.

We don't even need to decide which one Paul has in mind because both are true and both are substantiated in scripture. Subjectively, God's family fortune, we're told, is ours. Just as Boaz transferred the benefits of his family fortune to Ruth so that she, because of her marriage to him, enjoyed all that he had.

She no longer had to glean in the fields because now the fields were hers. So also God has transferred the wealth of his family to the bride of Christ, which we are. Now, you know as well as I do that the value of an inheritance is determined by the worth of the one who bequeaths it, right? Depending upon the wealth of the one who bequeaths the estate to you, your excitement level will go up or maybe down. If you were my heir and I died tomorrow, you'd get a mortgage and a stack of bills and a pickup truck whose radiator just started leaking on Friday.

That's what you'd get. Enjoy it. My bequeath to you and 3,000 books, it's all yours. Consider this, God owes nothing. He possesses everything and he has chosen to give it all to you and to me.

That's the subjective side of it. The objective side is that God is not only the source of this inheritance, he is the chief and special prize of the inheritance. We inherit God.

We get God out of all of this. John on the island of Patmos heard a loud voice from the heavenly throne saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is among men and he shall dwell among them and they shall be his people and God himself shall be among them. Revelation 21 and three, David wrote, whom have I in heaven but you and earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my inheritance, my portion forever. Psalm 73, 25 and 26. We not only inherit everything that belongs to God, we inherit God.

David would write it in your presence. Oh, God is fullness of joy at your right hand or pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16, 11. Paul writes, we are the heirs of God, but he also goes further in saying in verse 17, we are also fellow heirs. We are co-heirs with Jesus Christ.

What does that mean? That doesn't mean as Ken Copeland and others erroneously teach, we are now little Christs. We are now little gods.

That's blasphemy. We are now equal in deity to Christ, equally divine. No, he simply means that we will receive by virtue of our joint inheritance with the son of God, all the blessings that the father has given to the son he now shares with us. And this was important to know because to the Romans listening to the reading of this letter or maybe reading it themselves, they wouldn't have assumed that by virtue of being children, they would receive an inheritance. The Roman father in that day could choose not to give anything to his children.

In fact, as we learned, he could adopt someone out of another family, place that one in his family and give him everything. The Jew also wouldn't assume the same. The Jew would know that the firstborn would receive a double portion and the other siblings would split the remaining among themselves, perhaps in our own culture, the inheritance would be known as something that children would receive from the father and the mother and their estate. And they would sort of divide it depending on the number of children. But that isn't the idea here.

None of those three ideas fit. Paul is talking about something different. You don't inherit one millionth or however many believers there will be one billionth of heaven. You inherit it all. You do not inherit one tenth or a fraction of the kingdom. You inherit the kingdom. You do not inherit a little bit, a sliver of immortality.

You get it all. Only God in his power in that dimension can so give in that way. But that's what Paul is saying. I want to give you some more things outside of this text and then we'll go back to the text that we inherit as heirs of God. I mentioned it earlier, but let me say secondly, that the believer inherits heaven. You say, well, I already know that.

Well, sure you do. You're going to heaven if you've placed your faith in Christ. But what does that mean to be in heaven? What are you going to do in heaven? If I had you take out a sheet of paper and asked you to write everything you can think of that you're going to do in heaven, what would you write?

You'd run out after one paragraph. Well, let's see. We're going to worship God. Yeah. But what does that mean? Well, I don't know, but we're going to worship God and we're going to sing a lot.

I know that. OK, we're going to sing a lot. We're going to play harps and fly around a little bit.

Well, OK. No, I don't think so. We're going to talk to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and meet all the characters of the Bible. That's great. We're going to spend time with all our relatives and family members and friends who know Christ. And we're going to just talk to him. Well, how long are you going to talk to Abraham?

How long are you going to talk to your relatives? Christmas is enough for many of you, right? You just going to sit around and sing? And does it mean that just because you go to heaven, you know now how to sing?

I prefer some of us not be in the choir. Right. Does that mean that just because you're there? No.

Can't mean that. Who would listen? Who would mean in the audience? Certainly God is. But we're told we would enjoy it.

In fact, John writes as if he were in the audience listening. The truth is, we hardly know anything about heaven. The only things we do know outside the physical description that John records and he gives it and we can grasp that we can talk about miles and we can talk about pearls and Jasper and emerald and we can understand pavement of gold to some degree. But what do we do? Well, we only know, among other things, what we don't know we will do. We know we will not, as it were, experience death. We will have no pain. We'll have no tears. We'll have no sorrow. We'll have no suffering.

We'll have no night. Certainly those are true. But what else? It's all we can really know. In fact, Paul, who had been given a personal vision of heaven, wrote to the Corinthian believers and he said, I have not seen nor ear heard. Neither have entered the heart of man.

What God has prepared for those who love him. In other words, you can't imagine it. You can't comprehend it.

And even though I have been there and I have seen it, my vocabulary can't express it. This is your inheritance. I will tell you that there are some myths about heaven and we don't have time to get into discussion about this, but at least let me deal with a few. One myth is that there will be no more time. The Bible doesn't teach that. A popular hymn speaks of the moment when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be what? No more. Will it rhyme with the next line?

I'm sure. Certainly the heavenly city receives its light from the glory of God. Revelation 21, 23. There will not be darkness or night.

We know that there shall be no night there. Revelation 21, 25. But this doesn't mean that heaven will be a place where time is unknown or where things will not be done one after another, that we won't plan for an event, that we won't prepare for some exciting moment of worship. In fact, the events of heaven recorded in the book of Revelation actually require a sequencing of events, one happening after another. We read that the kings of the earth shall bring into heaven the glory and honor of the nations.

Imagine that. We sort of think everybody's going to be the same. There's going to be nations and rulers given their delegated right by God brought into heaven.

What event, what pageantry like we've never seen. Furthermore, we're told that the tree of life has 12 kinds of fruit, quote, yielding its fruit every month. There are months without a moon needed. In fact, it's implied in the fact that it'll bear fruit every month.

Twelve fruits would indicate the experience and the existence of a year. You see, the idea of spending eternity sitting around talking contradicts as if it's just going to be this blase experience. It also contradicts the idea of eternal service to God. We will serve him.

What do we know about serving? Well, we are told that music will play a prominent role. We will sing. Some of us will listen, but that will be prominent in this eternal paradise. And we can only imagine that both musical and artistic activities will be accomplished and performed with unbelievable excellence before God and the host of heaven. Leadership will exist in heaven and responsibility. John's description of nations and rulers walking in the light of the lamb indicates that. Wayne Grudem, a wonderful theologian, and I keep his systematic theology, which is about that thick. And if I go tomorrow, you can fight over it.

I keep it nearby and every once in a while I'll pull it off. And I pulled it off this week to read what he wrote about heaven. And he wrote these intriguing words. People may serve God by working at the whole range of investigation and development of the creation by technological, creative, and inventive means, thus exhibiting the full extent of the excellent creation and the image of God. Just imagine a thousand years of the kingdom on earth preceding the new heaven and new earth. Imagine the loss of our human nature that's given to sin.

No more greed, no more corruption, no more lying. Imagine business in that kind of world we can only imagine, right? But imagine the inventions.

Imagine the technology where millions of people are ruled over by the Lord's bride. We know so little. We will continue to learn because we will not equal God in knowledge, only he will remain omniscient, which means that we will continue to explore as it were and see the connection between our creative God and his creation. So how do you say it?

You say it like this. Eye hasn't seen nor has ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, but God has prepared for those who love him. This is your inheritance. Third, you will inherit a throne and rule with Christ. We don't know what that means either, barely. But Paul did remind Timothy that we will reign with Christ. Well, we're not given a full explanation. We're given a few clues that tell us that our authority will extend to exacting judgment along with Jesus Christ at the end of the world. It's an amazing thought that the believer will actually inherit the right and the ability to judge at the end of the world.

And that's what the Bible teaches. Paul wrote to the Corinthians. They were taking one another to court. They were suing one another.

They were unable to resolve issues among the body. And he said to them these interesting words. Have you forgotten that the saints will judge the world? Do you not know that the saints will judge the angels? First Corinthians six, two and three.

Imagine that. Peter tells us that rebellious angels or demons have been committed to pit some of them until the judgment. In second Peter two, four and Jude adds the thought that rebellious demons or angels having become demons as we know them have been kept by God, quote, until the judgment of that great day.

Jude six. We're not told how, but we are told that we will be involved with Christ seated on thrones as judges, which is implied in Revelation 20. In addition to what we've already read, judging the unbelieving world, pronouncing judgment upon the demonic world, perhaps one demon at a time.

Can you imagine that moment? We will judge the world. We will judge the angelic world. We know the demonic fallen angelic world.

And perhaps the implication is the angelic world that followed continually after God. We will evaluate their ministry to God. Can you imagine that day when we judge the unbelieving world, we judge the Hitler of the Stalin. We judge those who mock God. We may judge your boss or your neighbor who hates God and hates you, but can you imagine the terror of that day? Can you imagine the awful responsibility of your inheritance, meaning you're on the throne with Christ and you will meet out the judgment and the holiness and the exact due to that one?

Should that not determine the way we live now? For in a way, in a sense, we now express his judgment and his holiness by our lives. But oh, that day, when we extend and support and defend the righteous judgment of God upon all humanity, we are heirs to that.

This is your due. We will also inherit not only heaven and a throne to rule, but we will inherit a transformed earth, a new heaven and a new earth, paradise regained, Revelation 21. And the beauty of God's creation is going to be ours to explore and to travel throughout and discover and to learn and to connect in amazing ways now that we have the fullest faculties of unblemished natures and minds to see how it all works and to learn from our creator how we fit it all together.

It's going to be amazing. Jesus Christ gave his followers the promise in his very first recorded sermon that his followers would inherit the earth. You inherit the planet. Imagine that. We get earth too.

C.S. Lewis wrote it this way, aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in, aim at earth and you get neither. I don't know how much real estate you own. You know, I got my little lot. You got your lot. We got a little half acre, acre.

Some of you got to maybe 10 or whatever. And we sweat to get so much more of it right now when one day you're going to have the title deed to the entire planet. People ask you how much land do you own?

Just go and tell them. I don't know the whole planet. Which state?

What continent? I just haven't received the title deed. That's coming. I'm going to inherit the planet. We have inherited, furthermore, temporary trouble. Go back to verse 17, where Paul says we indeed suffer with him so that we also may be glorified with him.

The word if the beginning of that phrase can be rendered since suffering is a fact. Paul says we will inherit temporary tribulation. Jesus said in John 16, 33, in this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, take courage.

I have overcome the world. You see, knowing that we're headed to this kind of inheritance makes a difference in how we handle the trouble of the world. How we handle Earth is dependent upon how much we think of heaven.

You will have trouble. That's the kind of perspective that Paul seems to move to in the very next verse. Look at verse 18. For I consider that is, I calculate, I logically conclude that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

That word compared is a Greek word that refers to weights and measurements, the references to a scale. Paul says in his mind, I have a scale and I place all of my troubles on one side. And Paul had troubles. He was not some pie in the sky optimist. He had real trouble.

He was stoned, mistreated, misrepresented, abandoned, criticized, maligned, abused, shipwrecked, you name it, he had it. And he said, I have calculated that if I put all of that on one side of the scale, it is as light as a feather compared to the glory that is going to be mine in Christ. I am convinced, Paul writes, that no matter how painful and difficult life gets, it cannot compare to the glory that's coming.

Ray Stedman put it this way. He said, the hurts are going to be followed by the Hallelujahs. Amen. Yeah, well, go ahead, ma'am.

You know, you might start something. Isn't that great? The hurts of Earth are going to be followed by the Hallelujahs of heaven.

Why? Because you are an heir of God. So no matter how much you hurt, there is a Hallelujah coming. There is glory around the corner.

And that has a way of spilling back into the present, Paul says. I got to tell you this. I heard this story. I thought it was so funny and poignant. A young man was visiting Amish country in Pennsylvania, and he happened to see an old Amish couple coming out of a store, walking over to get into their horse-drawn cart and he ran over to them and he said, I'm sorry to interrupt you and bother you, but I've always wanted to meet an Amish couple. The woman kind of elbowed her husband in the ribs and said, what did he say? He said he wanted to meet us.

She was hard of hearing. And the young man went on. Do you have a farm nearby? Oh, yes. He said, we have many acres that we have been farming all of our lives. And she ribbed him again. What did he say? He wanted to know if we live nearby.

The man went on. The young man said, do you have children living with you? And the old farmer said, oh, yes, we have seven sons and three daughters. Many of them live around us.

Some live with us. And she interrupted him. What did he say? He wanted to know if we have family nearby. The young man said, well, you know, I got to confess to you, I actually dated an Amish girl once.

It wasn't long, but I dated her once, but she was so bossy and wanted to tell me what to do and never would let me make up my own mind. Again, the wife interrupted her husband. What's he saying now? He thinks he knows you. That story does not fit my sermon, but I wanted to stuff it in somehow.

It was worth it. What do you really know? What do we know? We are hard of hearing and our hearts are hard and cluttered and our minds stuffed with things. What do you know about your benefactor?

What do you know about your inheritance? We can't even begin to grasp one corner of the tapestry of our eternal experience. We are like little children at the edge of the sea with our little bucket and our little shovel. And we're going to hope to capture just a little bit of it. We won't.

For the most part, we have to wait. But in the meantime, we should develop Paul's perspective of dealing with earth because he knows he's headed for heaven. John Piper commented on this text.

He wrote it this way. Picture this life as a journey on your way to receive a spectacular inheritance. This will protect you from idolatry. This will make your burdens lighter.

This will quiet your murmuring. Here's the way John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace, a man who lived of course a century plus ago, commented on this. He illustrated it by saying, Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate which he had just inherited.

It was a vast and wealthy estate which had a huge home complete with gardens and a staff of men and women to keep it all up. But a mile away from the city, his old carriage broke down. Must have been a Chevy. It broke down, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way. That whole mile.

What a fool we should be to think that should we see him on that mile long walk, he would be wringing his hands and blubbering out all the remaining mile. Oh, my carriage is broken. Oh, my old carriage is broken.

My carriage is broken. No matter the injury, the trial, the abandonment, the loss, the betrayal, the abuse, the ridicule, the illness, the suffering, the pain, glory is just around the corner. We are moving from the hurts of Earth to the Hallelujahs of our incredible immortal inheritance. Thanks for joining us today.

This is Wisdom for the Heart. With this sermon, Stephen began a four-part series called From Groaning to Glory. Today's message is called Our Incredible Immortal Inheritance.

We'll be bringing you the rest of this series in the days ahead. In addition to equipping you with these daily Bible messages, we also have a magazine that we publish monthly. The articles each month focus on a particular theme and explore various topics related to the Christian life. Stephen's son Seth writes a daily devotional guide.

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