The Reality of Heaven

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. We are in a message series called One Minute After You Die. I like that title. It's kind of catchy.

Some of you probably saw it out there and you're like, I've got to hear this. And the idea of this message is what you believe about eternity determines how you live today. So if you think you're just a substance of random chance, then you're going to live for yourself today, right? But if you believe that there's eternity, that we're living for something more, or you're going to live differently. Next week is going to be interesting.

I'm going to use a different type of format next week. And if you notice, there is an index card in your bifold, in your worship guide. And if you'll pull that out real quick for me. And here's what I want to do. And if somebody's not here today and you connect with them during the week, let them know this is taking place.

Next week, I'm going to answer questions about heaven, hell and eternity that you may have personally. So if you have any questions at all, what are we going to look like in heaven? Are we going to know our loved ones? What's hell going to be like? Maybe you have some questions about those things.

And there's just not enough time in a 30 minute sermon on Sunday morning to give you all the details. So I'm going to take some of those big questions and we're going to deal with those next week. So you can write those down. It's anonymous. You don't have to put your name down unless you want to.

And you can drop those in our offering bucket at the end of the service. Or you can put them in our box back there or hand them over to our welcome team. Whatever you want to do as anonymous as you want to. Because I want to answer those questions that you may have about heaven, hell and eternity. A really important subject.

There are a lot of questions out there. And I know that you have those questions. So write those down because this will not work next week unless you challenge us with some of those questions. And I'd love to help you and guide you along to what we can expect in the afterlife. One minute after you die.

This week though, I want to deal with, and this is challenging. Because I can work really, really hard to explain heaven to you. To pull out all the theological concepts of heaven. But I can't really succeed at it. Because it's impossible.

It's impossible for me to describe heaven, being that I haven't really experienced heaven. And it was impossible for Paul. Paul, who is the only account in Scripture that we know of that actually was raised to the third heaven. He experienced the third heaven, and he couldn't explain it. When we use the term third heaven, it's Jewish language for where God exists.

Heaven. We have the first heaven, which is the atmosphere. The second heaven. The stars. The moon.

The cosmos. And then we have the third heaven. The third heaven where God is. And Paul says, I was raised to the third heaven. And you know, I don't even know if it was in the body or if it was in the mind.

But he said this to the Corinthian believers. He said, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. He could not even explain it. He just says, it's so big. It's so awesome.

It's so incredible. I can't even explain it. There's no way I can put them in human terms. So, how am I going to do that today? That's a hard task for me.

So, I'm going to do my best today. And I'm going to ask God to be a part of this message. So, if you always stand with me real quick as I read the scripture, and then we'll pray over this time together. And let me just say this. For those of you who feel the weight and feel the burden of this world, let this be a source of encouragement for you.

That your weight would be lifted. That your burden would be lifted. That you would, if you're feeling discouraged today, that you would be encouraged by what God has for us. That what God has in store for us today. So, if you're following along, John 14, beginning with verse 1.

Jesus says this. Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that?

I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going. And then Thomas, doubting Thomas, he asked the question. Lord, we don't know where you are going.

So, how can we know the way? Jesus answered. I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John, in his revelation, says this.

He said, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people. And he will dwell with them.

And they will be his people. And God himself will be with them and be their God. Verse 4 says this. And he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be death or mourning or crying or pain.

For the old order of things has passed away. And he who is seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. Everything new. And verse 7 says this, skipping to verse 7. And those who are victorious will inherit all this.

And I will be their God. And they will be. How dare you, baby. I can live. Bye.

My children. Let's pray together. Father, how powerful these words are. This promise that you've made to us, Lord. Help us, God, to not live for just now, but live for eternity.

Let these words, me being the mouthpiece, but you being the God who is sharing and showing us the beauty and glory of everything that you have for us. Let it be a source of encouragement, God, for your people today. That perhaps it would alleviate some fear and that it would bring a greater sense of spiritual urgency to our lives, Lord. So, God, we give you this time. We give you this word.

We give you this message. Speak to us today. In your name. Amen. You can be seated.

So, it was kind of hard to know where to start with heaven. Where do we start with heaven? The many scriptures of heaven. All that the Bible shares about heaven and how to put all that together. So, I want to give you a quick little timeline, if you would, of what really happens to believers after they die.

Some of that we covered in the weeks past. But, when we go one minute after we die, when we leave this world, our souls leave our bodies. Our souls leave our bodies. We are dismembered from our bodies. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, as Paul tells us.

Jesus calls it paradise. He told the man on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise. He also called it Abraham's bosom. When he gave a story of Lazarus and the rich man, as we learned about last week. We see heaven here as a place that we go from this life into the presence of God.

And, it is far better to be with Christ than be in these present mortal bodies. Far, far, far better to be bodiless and with the Lord. However, scripture in 2 Corinthians shares with us, our souls will long to be in heavenly bodies. So, we have these heavenly bodies that our souls will be waiting for. And, at the second coming of Christ, what we believe, a tenant of our faith, an unshakable truth, a pillar in which our church stands on and the churches lock hands universally on, is the second coming of Christ.

That Christ will return one day. Scripture tells us that. And, in 1 Thessalonians, when Christ returns, he says that the dead in Christ will rise first. What does that mean? That those who have died in Christ and believe in Christ and have died in this life will be raised.

Their bodies, those mortal bodies that are in the grave now, their soul is with God, those bodies will be raised from the dead. I don't know how that looks. I don't know if it's going to be like a zombie apocalypse or what it's going to look like during that time. But, those bodies will be raised immortal, incorruptible, and our souls will meet our bodies. Because, we long to be with our bodies, God is giving us our bodies as immortal bodies, incorruptible bodies.

And, those who are living will rise as well in the Lord's return. Those will be called up in the sky, and we will be transformed. So, if God were to return right now in this place, those of us who believe will be called up in the sky, we will be transformed, imperishable, incorruptible. Those who died in Christ and those who are living in Christ will be raised up incorruptible, and our souls and our bodies will be transformed into this glorious, indescribable thing called a spirit man body that God has for us. He will bring with him also a new heaven and a new earth.

When he comes, he will return. He will raise us from the dead. He will return our bodies back to what they originally intended to be. Eden lost is now Eden restored. But, he will bring the heavens and the earth together.

It will be a new heaven and a new earth. So, some people, some theologians think, well, he's going to do away with this heaven. He's going to do away with this earth because the scripture says that this earth will pass away. This earth has passed away. He saw that the earth and the heavens had passed away.

But, I believe it like this. When he says it's passed away, he means that the old thing is done away with. Because God, throughout scripture, communicates redemption. Redemption. And I believe, and this is just my personal study, and what I see in scripture is that he's going to take everything that's good in this earth and restore it and take away all the bad.

And he's going to resurrect, as he resurrects us and our bodies, he's going to resurrect this earth. And then heaven and earth will meet. A new heaven, a new Jerusalem will come down. Again, I don't know exactly what that looks like. I like to see buildings coming out of the sky, but we don't know if it looks like that.

We don't, we just don't have any idea. We can't fathom it. But that heaven will come down and meet earth and to be, we will be present in the body and present with the Lord. That's a big deal. That's a big deal.

Because everything we believe about heaven determines how we live today. Let me give you three misconceptions about heaven. The first one is, heaven is boring. Heaven is boring. Heaven is not fine.

But can I say that the devil is a liar? He's a counterfeit. He certainly wants you to believe that. He's doing everything he can. He lost heaven.

So he wants you to lose heaven as well. And he's doing whatever he can to convince you that heaven is not that great. He's got two things he's trying to do. Hell's not real, as we talked about last week. Hell's not real.

And if it is real, it's not really that big of a deal, right? And to convince you that heaven is boring. And so many people believe that. I remember before I really understood what heaven was when I was a child. And you would talk about heaven.

I imagine heaven. Being this place where you go where there's lots of clouds and it's really white, you know, and then you stand in line for a long, long time and it feels like the DMV, right? You're just waiting for your number to be called. Somebody said on Facebook the other day that the DMV is like hell. So, so to me, it was like entering heaven is like hell, you know, and you're waiting for the table where St.

Peter be sitting by the pearly gates. And the pearly gates, what's all that about? I mean, some of you probably like pearls and y'all think that's beautiful. But for me, it was like pearly gates just sounds like old gates to me, you know, like it didn't really mean a lot to me. So I waited in line and, and then I'll get checked in and then I'll get a robe.

And I'm like, yeah, I get a robe. I really want a robe. I don't even like to wear a robe while I preach, you know, why would I want one in heaven? I get a white robe and then, and then, um, and then I get assigned a harp. And then you go up and, and, and, and you play your harp.

And then, and then when you read scripture, you, you, you see the phrases like worshiping and praise God. And I just interpreted that as meaning we're just going to be singing courses and hymns and old hymns for eternity in and out, in and out. And we'll do verse one, verse two and, and, and, and verse four, because for some reason in the old church is growing up that I grew up in, you skip verse three, right? Right, Lydia. I mean, you just said one, two, and four, one, two, and four.

And we're going to sing that over and over and over and over and over again for eternity. Heaven is boring. Heaven is boring. It just sounded really boring to me. And any interpretation of heaven we see outside of the biblical interpretation of heaven is like that.

We see it in the movies. Bill and Ted's bogus journey. Did you ever watch that back in the day? I'm dating myself. Yeah, that was, that was the, that was the movie, man.

They went to heaven and they hung out with philosophers and they wore really white stuff. And, and, uh, dude, we don't want to like go to heaven right now. We want to come back later, but we've got stuff to do. You know, and that's how we perceive heaven. That's how so many people perceive heaven.

And because we think heaven is boring, we believe that God is boring. In fact, many of us believe that God is a cosmic killjoy. He's trying to steal our joy. He's trying to steal our fun. And he's got all these things that he wants us to do, but that's because we believe that heaven is boring.

If we believe that heaven is boring, God is boring, but heaven is the opposite of boring. It's the absence of evil and the presence of good. So everything you enjoy comes from God. Do you believe that? And everything in heaven that comes from God is good.

And there's no more corruption. There's no more pain. There's none of that stuff. So everything that God makes that is enjoyable is made from God. And it is good.

Think about it for a second. Your taste buds. God made taste buds. He made eating enjoyable. I love eating.

Some of you may not enjoy eating, but I enjoy eating. Now, God could have made our tongues any way he wanted to. He could have just made it taste like dirt. Just nutrients, you know? But he didn't do that.

He made taste buds. He had us taste our food. It's enjoyable. It comes from God. Our ability to see beauty.

He created our eyes in such a way where we can see the beauty of creation. We can see the beauty around us. We can see the colors. And we have that ability. He's given us the capacity to experience joy and laughter and, most importantly, love.

He's showed us that we can love. And he's given us the ability to love. So what you love and enjoy on this earth, you will love and enjoy in heaven, but without sin, with the absence of evil and the absence of pain. That's a good thing. Let me tell you a few things about heaven.

I've got some things. If you're following your notes, there's a few things that I've written down what heaven, what we believe and what we can understand from Scripture, what it would be like. And I don't have time to share all the Scriptures with you, so I put the Scriptures in your notes so you can go back and study them on your own. But it says this. The first note I've made is, we will know one another, love, and be loved.

We will know one another. We will recognize one another. We will be together with one another. We will be with Moses. We will be with Paul.

We will be with Jesus. We will be able to ask questions, right? Paul, what was that thorn in the flesh? What was the deal with that? We can actually have conversations with him.

We could sit down with Jesus. You know that thing that you wrote in the sand that you never described in the Bible? What was that? And some of you women who had problems with child labor are going to go up to Eve, and you're going to go like, Eve, what were you thinking? Why did you eat the forbidden fruit?

You can ask those questions. We're going to be together, and we're going to be loved, and we're going to love and be loved, and we're going to be united with our loved ones who have died in Christ. We'll be reunited with those who have gone before us in Christ. So if you've lost a child in this life, or you've lost a close friend in this life, or a family member, a close person, if you've lost any of them, we can be encouraged that we will see them again in Christ, in heaven. We will be reunited with them.

Secondly, heaven will be a place of unimaginable beauty. It will be a place so gorgeous your eyes can't even catch it in these human eyes, these limited eyes that we have. If Paul says, no eye has seen or ear has heard, it would suggest to me that it's unspeakable beauty. It's beauty that can't be described. I think about when I was in college, Appalachian State University, up in the middle of the mountains, Boone, North Carolina, surrounded by mountains.

I was about five minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway. I got to hike and camp a whole lot while I was in school there. And sometimes I would take walks out. The Appalachian Trail ran through there. I know some of you are like, it's Appalachian.

In North Carolina, we say Appalachian, and we'll defend it to our dying grave. Of course, you know, other southern states will say differently. But anyway, I know some of you have corrected me in your head. It's Appalachian. It's not Appalachian.

And those are fighting words at Appalachian State University, okay? I'm just telling you. They'll correct you right away, even if they come from a place that pronounced it Appalachian. Just a little innocent humor there. Yeah, people aren't laughing much today.

They must think I'm calling them out. I got some laughs. But I remember going up on the furthest rock I could possibly get on. When I was going through trails and I was hiking in places that were roped off by them, I probably would have gotten in trouble going up on the furthest rock I could possibly get on. And I remember just sitting and staring at the beauty of the mountains, the purples and the grays and the reds, and just the beauty of nature.

And I remember just being at all, not even being able to express in words the beauty I was seeing, just pausing and looking over the mountain ranges as far as the eye can see, the beauty of that. It almost brings you to tears just looking at it. And this is what heaven will be like. We'll be seeing things. We'll see new colors.

We'll see colors we've never seen before. Did you know that the naked eye cannot perceive certain colors? There's colors actually here today in this building that we can't see because our eyes aren't capable of catching those colors. Did you know that? Well, in heaven, I believe, and from what I understand in scripture, we will be able to see everything.

We will be able to see beautiful colors. We'll be able to see sounds. We will be able to taste things. We will have sensations that we've never experienced before in heaven. We've never tapped into mountains, beaches, and canyons.

We will be able to see the beauty of. We will see, excuse me, we will see the lion laying with the lamb. We will see uncaged animals that we stay away from just walking around and we can go up and pet. It's like a petting zoo, you know. Heaven is like a petting zoo.

Heaven's going to be a place of unimaginable, unimaginable beauty. Thirdly, in heaven, you will see Jesus face to face. Now some of you might not understand what that really means to see Jesus face to face. But in scripture, in order to see God, you have to see him through Jesus. You could not see God, in fact.

You would die. Moses pleaded with God and says, God, just show me your face. Please show me your face. I want to see you. I want to see you.

And I love Moses' ambition there. He just wanted so badly to see God face to face. And God's answer was, you cannot see me. You would die. And God compromised with Moses because that's how relational God is.

He just wants the best for his children. He says, here's what I'll do. I'll put my hand over you and fly by you a gazillion miles an hour. And just the train of his robe that Moses called, changed his face. The glory that was on his face.

The Bible says it was glory on his face. If you've seen the Ten Commandments movie, the old Charlton Heston one, you know, they tried to mimic that very thought. You know, he comes out with white hair and he's like, oh, you know. And it's just, it's crazy. But that actually happened in scripture.

Scripture shares with us that there was glory on his face just getting a small glimpse of who God is. In the Old Testament with the priests, you had, they would literally tie strings or ropes around their ankles and bells so that if they walked into the glory of God, the Holy of Holies, they entered into the Holy of Holies. By the way, it took weeks to prepare to enter into the Holy of Holies. They had to go through every holy ritual there is. But if they died before the presence of God, no one else could go in there because they would die too.

So they would use the rope to drag the priest out. If he died in the presence of God, that's how holy God is. And we will see him face to face. When you see Jesus, you will realize you never truly lived before that moment. You've never been more alive than when you see Jesus.

You think you're alive now, you're going to be like, whoa, I was never alive on that earth. I'm truly alive now. I'm true. Things are truly, truly what they are when you're before for Jesus. No man could see God and live, but through Jesus, we are able to see God and we will be able to be in his presence and experience him face to face.

Also, you will have new and perfect bodies. Can we say amen? Hallelujah. Amen. Amen.

We will be given perfect bodies. As I talked about a little in our timeline, we will be given perfect bodies. We will incorruptible, imperishable bodies, immortal bodies. So when your grandfather or your grandmother got sick and they weren't able to understand what was going on, they couldn't remember your name, maybe your father or mother that happened to you, dementia or whatever, in heaven, they will be given back their minds. They will be completely clear.

They will completely know who you are. They will be the themselves, but a new themselves. Maybe some of you have some baby weight and you're ready, you know, that's going to be gone. Some of you are bald. Amen.

How many of you are balding here? I'm balding. Hey, hey, that's going to come back, right? Receding hairlines. It just comes back.

Limbs. They just come back, right? It's going to be a perfect body, incorruptible, imperishable. Those of you who have eye issues, no more glasses. Those of you who have hearing issues, my brother over here, David, you're going to be able to hear everything.

Amen. In heaven, we're going to hear, we're going to see. Colorblind, you're going to be able to see all the colors. It will be the optimal us, what God originally created us to be. It will be fully us, but without any of the sin, any of the corruption, any of all the things that we have to deal with today inside of us.

It will be taken away. We will have new bodies and perfect bodies. Also, heaven is the absence of everything bad, and it's the absence of everything good. It's the absence of everything bad, painful, evil, and it is the presence of everything good, holy, and glorious. In heaven, I believe this based on my understanding of scripture.

In heaven, we will work for Jesus, but we will work in a way that is different than the way we work today because it will no longer be painful. It will no longer be something we don't desire. We will be able to tap into our passions. We will be working for the kingdom of God throughout eternity. Say, if you are a gardener, you're going to garden like crazy, and you're going to grow these big plants, and it's going to be beautiful.

If you're an artist, you're going to be creating, painting, all those things that you love to do in this life, but we're going to take the bad out of it. He's going to give you the good. It's going to be new. It's going to be powerful, and it's going to be used in that future rule. of Jesus Christ as we rule with Him.

If you're a builder, you'll be building magnificent things. Hey, if you're a lawyer, maybe you'll be defending the law for Jesus, right? Amen? You'll be doing it in a way that is not corruptible, but it's incorruptible, imperishable. Who knows what God has planned for us, but I believe that in heaven, in Christ's rule, and in Christ's reign, we are going to be digging into our passions and our heart and working for the Lord throughout eternity, seeing great things happen.

Man, see, I don't even have the words to say or even the understanding to help you understand what that looks like. But I can say this, whatever you can imagine in this life that is good is going to be so much better. It's going to be so much better because this is what will not be there. Death, pain, sorrow, sickness, fear, stress, anxiety, sleepless nights, betrayal, abuse, heartache, divorce, disease, violence, injustice, racism, no more Mondays, no more bad breath. All the little things, all the big things, all things will be made new.

Everything will be new in heaven. Can we rejoice over that? Kevin is coming. We have something to be excited for. We have something to look forward to.

Heaven is the opposite of boredom. It's the absence of evil in the presence of God, and everything will be better. Secondly, this world, the misconception we have, this world is your home. We think this world is our home. In fact, Paul said this to the Philippian believers, the church in Philippi, talking about those who do not believe in Christ or who have not accepted Christ.

He says, their mind is set on earthly things. Their mind is set on earthly things in the here and now. Now is what matters. What I have, what I own, where I live, how I dress, my bank account, what people think of me, all those things are what they live for. Their mind is set on earthly things, but then he reminds them what their mind should be set on.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to give you an example here. I borrowed this from a pastor, but I've kind of added a little more to it just to kind of make it, make it more fun. All right. And I want you to imagine this rope.

Eternity past, eternity future. Let me go this way. Eternity future is this way. Let's do a reverse. Eternity past, eternity future.

And this is the history of mankind. This little red place right here, the history of mankind. I mean, this goes all the way back to the beginning. Adam and Eve is here. And we see, you know, Abraham, Noah, Noah, Abraham, Moses kind of happens right here somewhere.

And then we go into the New Testament where we have, you know, Jesus and Paul and all these things are happening right in here. And then we go into kind of contemporary history. We have the Renaissance kind of happening here. And then we have the printing press that kind of happens there. And then the Reformation and then the Industrial Revolution.

Then we have World War I. And then we have the Great Depression and World War II and on and on and on and on and on and on. So that's what's happening. A timeline of just from the beginning to now. And here's where we are.

Very small. Very, very, very small. And what we do and how we live is for that. What people think of me. How much money do I have in my account?

How much stuff can I accumulate? I got to get this. I got to get that. I got to live for this. And we work really, really hard.

Like, I mean, you can't even see this from the stage. We work really, really hard all of this right here so that we can have. I can't even. Retirement's not even there because, you know, it's so small that that's kind of what we live for. Right.

I just want to I just want to retire. I want to settle down. I want to live out the rest of my life. And we have all of this. And so many times we live for this instead of living for this.

We live for we just oh, I'm just so frustrated, you know, living here. I get so angry with people. I get angry with this and I do this and I get nervous and I get anxious and I'm in a hurry all the time. And we're just living our lives out for this. I got to do this.

I got to do that. I want this. I want that. And it's going to please me and it doesn't please you. And then you go back to something else and it doesn't please you.

And we're forgetting that there's so much more. Life does not end here. The question is, what are we living for? This or this? The Bible says our life is a mist.

It's a mist that comes and fades. It's not much, not much time in the grand scheme of things. But Paul uses this term in the Greek. It's called tisgar plane. Tisgar plane.

What does that mean? See, Paul was experiencing a little frustration from time to time, especially when there were these false evangelists and these false apostles that were preaching the message and they were preaching the wrong Christ. And people were asking him, you know, what are you going to do about this? Are you going to? You know, confront those people.

What's going to happen in this situation? Paul, they're preaching this and his response was tis-car plain. What does it really matter? Is what that means. What does it really matter in the grand scheme of things in eternity?

What does it really matter? The things I do in this life have got to reflect something. He says, as long as those people are preaching Christ crucified, what does it matter? You're preaching for eternity. They may be doing it with the wrong motives, but I'm just so glad that they're doing it in a way that glorifies Christ.

2 Corinthians, he says this, For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. The things we can't see will last forever. Those things we see now, they're just coming and going. So the question is, what are we doing with our time? What are we doing with our money?

What are we doing with our talents now that's going to reflect all of this? Are we living for now? I'm going to make this life work. I'm going to do what I can now and eat, drink, be merry, and then die. And that's it?

Or am I going to live for so much more? The third thing is, this is probably a huge misconception about heaven. Most people are going to heaven anyway. Most people are going to heaven anyway. A Pew study done, a Pew research study said that 72% of Americans believe in heaven, defined as a place where people who have led or had good lives are eternally rewarded.

72% Americans believe that heaven is just a place for good people. If you're good in this life, you'll go to heaven. But can I say this, and I say this boldly? Good people don't go to heaven. Forgiven people go to heaven.

You have to be forgiven, and you cannot be forgiven unless you know you're in need of a Savior. Let me just repeat this scripture that flows through the blood of the church. And if everybody would just stand with me, and let's read this scripture together. For everyone has sinned. We all fall short of God's glorious standards.

What does that mean? We all have sinned. It's exactly what it means. We'll say, well, you know, there's good... I've lied.

I've cheated. I've stolen. How many of you have lied? Everybody in the place. Look at that person at you that didn't raise their hand and say, you liar.

Have you cheated on occasion? Have you cheated? Have you ever cheated on the test? Have you ever cheated on the board game? You know, we're cheaters.

People are laughing because they know. Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever slipped a pack of bubble gum from the store into your pocket? No, that was in it. I was just a kid.

It doesn't matter. We're all sinners. We've all fallen short of God's standard. He said, but yet God, can you say that with me? Yet God, yet God in his grace freely makes us right in his sight.

He did this through Jesus Christ when he freed us from the penalty of our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for our sin. People are made right with God when they believe. They believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, the shedding of his blood. Thomas said, how do we know, Jesus, where you're going?

We can't see it. We can't reach it. He says, you know where it is, and the only way through is me. The heart today wants to do two things, is to perhaps relieve some fear, because we don't have to be afraid of death. We have a relationship with Christ.

If we don't walk with Christ, we are fearful. We have no hope, but with Christ, all of that can be eliminated. We can have a fearless life. We no longer have to be afraid of death. And the second thing that I hope to do today is for those who believe, those who are believers in Christ, that there is a sense of spiritual urgency, that we have heaven awaiting us, and those who don't know him are, can I say it, are damned.

And how are we living today? Do we see eternity ahead of, do we really love people? The greatest, the worst thing we can do is not share the love of Jesus with them. So there's a sense of spiritual urgency that we need as we look to heaven, as we, as we understand the greatness and the glory of God and all that is before us, why are we not sharing what we call the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ? He says, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but those who believe, who call on the name, the one and only name above all names will be saved.

In this place, how many of you feel that you need this spiritual urgency? If you just raise your hands, just lift your hands. I want more spiritual urgency. I want more of a heart for you, God. Let's just pray.

God, in the name of Jesus, give us an urgency, an urgency to reach more people, Lord, to live a life worthy of the cause that is before us, Lord Jesus, that we live in light of eternity, that we don't live just for the now, Lord, but we live for the future hope that is within us because it is a good thing that is in us. Lord, stir up our hearts. Make our hearts bleed a bit, Lord, for those who don't know you, Lord, for a lost world, God, that we would have a hunger, a hunger to see your face as Moses did as he was standing on the side of the mountain and said, Lord, show me your face. I want your heart. I want your heart.

I want to know you more. I want to move a little closer to you. I want to see a little more of you. God, that's our hope as a believing church today, Lord. And perhaps for some of you here today, maybe there is a fear, a fear of death.

You don't have to have that fear anymore, because he who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If that's you today, if that's you today, will you just lift your hearts and pray this with me? And I mean, do it with a loud voice. Do it with an open heart. God said, Jesus said, if you if you don't do this boldly before man, you you certainly won't do it before the Father.

So I want you to do it before the Father and just proclaim. I want all the church to do it together. Just pray this with me. Lord, we believe that you are the Son of God, that you are the only one God, true God. And you came down.

You sent your only Son to die on the cross for our sin. Come into my life. Come into my heart. Change me from the inside out. No, Lord, change me from the inside out.

Transform me from the inside out. Regenerate me, Lord. Make me a new believer. Make me fresh. Make me new.

Because you make all things new. Today I live with you in mind, my heart, and everything within me. In your name. Amen. Can y'all give God a praise?

We love you, Jesus. Hallelujah.