Worship Programs

Theme:

"Hope of Earth, Joy of Heaven"

First Sunday in Advent -  

Sermon Outline

H e a v e n  o n  E a r t h!

HEAVEN - OUR HOPE!                                 

Hebrews 11:13-16; 1 Peter 1:3-5

When God looked out and saw hell on earth, He must have decided it was time to send Heaven to earth.  At Christmas time we are reminded that the Son of God left His home in Heaven to show us how to make Heaven our home.

Jesus came to earth to teach us how to live and to give us hope - the hope of Heaven. 

As Christians, we look forward to going to Heaven one day.  We welcome  the blessings we enjoy in this life and live in anticipation of life everlasting.  It’s what Lt. Colonel Lyell Rader, OF, described as “heaven on the way to Heaven!”  In our humanity, we are acclimated to this mortal life, but there is something within us that’s like a compass pointing Heavenward.

King of kings in Heaven we’ll crown him

When our journey is complete.

Precious name, O how sweet!

Hope of earth and joy of Heaven.

- Lydia Baxter

1.  HOME FOR NOW!

In this life, where we live is a primary concern.  Our homes provide refuge from the rest of the world.  “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home,” we sing.  For some, home is a status symbol; it defines their level of success in life.  From Newport, R. I. to Hollywood, California, tourists gawk at the palatial homes of the rich and the famous. 

Wrote Bruce Larson in his book, Where will you be when you get where you’re going? “There is, perhaps, no more obvious an extension of your own soul than your home.  Whether it is an apartment, a house, a trailer or even a houseboat, where you live is an extension of the inner you.  When I come into your home, I immediately have a deeper understanding of who you are.  The colors of the walls, the artwork or lack of it, the starkness or clutter, all are a reflection of the dweller.”        

However, when it comes to real estate, none of us actually owns anything.  “This is my Father’s world.”  We are, at best, temporary tenants.  Whether we live in a free-standing house, an apartment, townhouse, condo, hut or leisure village, we are at best short-term occupants.  This world is not our home; we’re just passing through.  Our homes are way-stations on the highway to Heaven. 

We say that we are “in the world but not of it.”  Said Paul, “Many live as the enemies of the cross of Christ.  Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.  Their mind is on earthly things.  But our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:18-20).  There are those who choose to serve God in a convent or monastery.  But in our service-ministry as Salvationists we are “in the world” perhaps more than any other branch of the Christian church.  We are in the world, but our citizenship is in Heaven.   

We thrill to the gospel account of Jesus’ triumphal procession sweeping around the shoulder of the Mount of Olives.  The magnificent city of Jerusalem comes into view.  But then the exulting crowd is hushed, for the Son of God is weeping!  The traditional explanation is that He is beholding the beautiful Jerusalem not with pride but with anguish over those whose hearts had become as hard as the stone of the city walls, those walls built by Solomon, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, rebuilt by Nehemiah.

Is it too great a stretch of the imagination to suggest that through the lens of His tears Jesus beheld the Holy City of the New Jerusalem?  We may just wonder if in His humanity He was experiencing a moment of homesickness. 

Jesus said, in John 10:10 (LB), “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.”  This promises a glorious present life in Christ and a glorious destiny in Christ - heaven en route to Heaven!  In Him we have hope for now and for the future.  We can claim the promise of the Lord in the Old Testament as well, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11). 

2.  HOME TO COME!

The greatest gift we can ever receive - at Christmas or any other time - is referenced in our text, 1 Peter 1:3,4, “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you.”

Heaven, we are told, is a prepared place for a prepared people.  It took the Son of God seven days to create the creation for the created.  Were those 24-hour days as we know them or otherwise?  To our finite minds, it really doesn’t matter.  Of greater interest, however, is the knowledge that since the Son of God completed His work of redemption and returned to Heaven, He has had all that time to prepare a place for us.

It’s not for us to know or even attempt to outline His agenda.  As a member of the Godhead He is, of course, the Creator, Preserver and Governor of all things.  Doubtless that includes running the universe on a daily basis, but we may surmise that to be fairly routine.  He probably has lots of angels assigned to sweat the details, under His constant scrutiny, of course, because it includes keeping count of the hairs of our collective heads as well as plummeting sparrows.

Nevertheless, having completed His redemptive work here on earth, His primary functions have been to intercede on our behalf before the Father’s throne and to prepare a place for us who are prepared for Heaven.  Although creation took seven days, the preparation of our heavenly home has been under way for some 2,000 earth years.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

When God designed us He built in longings for immortality, a yearning for eternity.  As Wordsworth put it in his Intimations of immortality,

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God who is our home.

Is it this, the fact that we came from God, that accounts for the mysterious homesickness felt in our human hearts?  We were made by God for God, and as St. Augustine suggested, there is a restlessness in us that does not go away until we find our home in God.  If as Christ-followers we don’t feel at home in this world, it’s probably because we never were meant to be.  Our citizenship is in Heaven. 

The last words of the great composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, were, “I shall hear in heaven.”  Major Barbara Sampson reminds us in Words of Life, ”Unless we hear God’s words on earth, we will never hear them in Heaven.”

The heroes of the faith who are chronicled in Hebrews 11 considered themselves to be “aliens and strangers on earth” (v. 13).  As we grow older, we become homesick for Heaven, living on earth but longing for Heaven.  We live on earth but have Heaven in our hearts.  We look forward to occupancy in “a better country - a heavenly one” (v. 16).

Desert travelers can be misled by mirages.  Suffering with thirst, they reach out for water, and it seems to disappear.  Is the longing for Heaven which God has placed within our hearts sufficient to prove that there is such a place?  How can we know that it isn’t just a mirage?  Jesus gives assurance in John 14:2, "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you."  Thus we have the hope of Heaven and assurance that a place has been reserved for those who believe in Him. 

3.  HOME AT LAST!

A married couple had arrived in Heaven.  Said she, “Isn’t this marvelous?  How wonderful to be here!”  Said he, “Yes, and just think, if we hadn’t eaten all that oat bran we could have been here a few weeks sooner!” 

Because of what Christ did for us on the cross, we have forgiveness for our sins and the promise of the Holy Spirit’s help and comfort as we make our way through this life.  In our better moments we become aware that the best is yet to be.

When Paul said, "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2  Corinthians 4:18), he was dealing with the realities of this life.  Though “crushed and perplexed,” he knew there was a better world to come.  He faced the reality of Heaven so that he might better face the realities of earth.

We have God’s word on it: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:3,4).  Here we sojourn.  There we belong!

At the funeral of a godly coal miner, a great Welsh preacher said, “Our brother had about him the air of an exile.”  He had an inheritance “kept in heaven for (him).”  The more godly a person is the more aware of Heaven he or she seems to be.  We may have a taste of Heaven here on earth, but it’s only an appetizer.  The full banquet is yet to come!

An elderly missionary, who had given the best years of his life to ministry in Africa, was returning to the United States with his wife.  They happened to be traveling on the same ship as President Teddy Roosevelt who was coming home from a hunting trip.  A great crowd had gathered at the dock to greet Teddy Roosevelt.  They cheered and waved banners as a brass band played martial melodies. 

There was no one there to greet the veteran missionary and his wife.  He said to her, “The president has only been away for a few weeks, and look at the grand reception he gets.  We have been serving in a foreign country for half a lifetime, and there is no one here to welcome us.”  Taking his hand in hers, the missionary’s wife spoke tenderly, “Yes, Honey, but we’re not Home yet.”

We have the hope of Heaven, “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you.”