Hope Worth Having

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Are the Fires of Hell Literal? Part 1. He will be reading out of Revelation 20: 7-10.

Satan is destined for defeat and that’s why we as believers, no matter how much opposition we have, we are people of joy and we are people of confidence and we are people of faith because we know the end of the story. Hello and welcome to Hope Worth Having radio program. This is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

Today, we’re beginning a new series entitled, Are the Fires of Hell Literal? Revelation chapter 20 verse 7 through 10 is our text. We’ve been teaching on heaven and you have to teach on hell because like heaven, hell is real and what does that mean when the Bible describes these fires and how does that apply? So let’s grab our Bible and get into this passage. Get your Bibles out.

I want you to turn to Revelation chapter 20 this morning. Revelation chapter 20 and we’re gonna be covering verse 7 through 10 and of course some other assorted verses. Today, we are in the midst of a series.

We’re picking back up on that series. If you remember that we were teaching before on five questions about heaven and five questions about hell and today we’re on that fourth question about hell and so we’ve already had four sermons on hell. You have one more to endure and I admire you because most churches could not even endure one sermon on hell, much less four headed to number five.

So thank you church. Our goal when we preach on hell is we are not gleeful. We are not happy about hell but we want to send out a message of warning and we also want to make sure as believers that we understand what the Bible teaches us about hell.

So we come to Revelation chapter 20 and verse 7 through 10. The And will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth Gog and Magog to gather them together to battle whose number is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the Saints and the beloved city and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.

The devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beasts and the false prophet are and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Perhaps the most striking image of hell is that it is a place of everlasting fire. The Bible refers to this terminology the lake of fire.

It is specifically mentioned in Revelation chapter 19 and of course in our text today and if you go on down further again in verse 14 it is referred to the lake of fire as the second death. Now to understand what we’re reading this morning let me just give you a little bit of context. At the end of a thousand years now you say a thousand years what are you talking about? I’ve shared with you Church that there are what we might refer to as dispensations and that there is now the dispensation of grace.

Some people call it the dispensation of the church in which we have this great responsibility to take the good news of Christ to every person on every part of the planet. This is our responsibility to get the good news but the Bible tells us that there is going to be a rapture. That is the believers are going to be one day caught up.

Jesus was asked in Matthew chapter 24 what would be the signs of his second coming. Jesus described those signs. You can read about them.

We’ve taught on them but I want to tell you that we can already start to see the tea leaves of those signs and if we can already see some of these signs emerging in our communities and cultures and our land how much closer are we to the rapture of the church. We have to be cognizant of the fact that Jesus is coming again but you do not have to be discouraged because the Bible says we’re going to be raptured out of here which leads us into the tribulation period which is going to be for seven years. Now I know that people debate and people question and people sometimes struggle with what I just taught you but I always remind them though you and I may have some differences on timing and particulars about the rapture and the tribulation period I’m telling you my friends you cannot deny that it’s in the Bible.

You just can’t but I am of the persuasion that we’re gonna be raptured out of here as believers. There’s gonna be a seven-year tribulation and then we are going to experience the second coming of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ will establish his kingdom on this earth for a thousand years the Bible says that he will rule and he will reign for a thousand years with his saints. That would be you and that would be me that would be all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for a thousand years.

One might wonder why? Why would Jesus do it this way? Well there are many prophecies in the Old Testament that are yet to be fulfilled and I want you to remember that in those thousand years Jesus Christ will do just as the prophets said that the Messiah will sit in the seat of Jerusalem the beloved city and he will rule and he will rule with righteousness and he will come as a king that second time the first time he came as a lamb to give his life for for each of us he came to give his life and to pay the penalty of sin on the cross and then he would be resurrected but friends I want to remind you that Jesus is coming and when he comes that second time he will rule with justice and peace as believers sometimes we get so frustrated with the lack of justice in this world we are so upset about what is wrong in this world but I want to remind you that one day Jesus will make every wrong right and we can rejoice in that wonderful truth then the Bible tells us that during that thousand years Satan will be bound he’ll be bound for a thousand years where we picked up in our text in Revelation 20 and verse 7 through 10 we are seeing that after that thousand years Satan will be released and then he’ll be defeated again and he’ll be cast into the lake of fire the Bible says for all of eternity Satan is destined for defeat it is revealed in our text today it is recorded in our text today that Satan will not get the last laugh and that’s why we as believers no matter how much opposition we have how much pushback we have in this world we are people of joy and we are people of confidence and we are people of faith because we know the last end of the story we know how it’s all gonna end in that Jesus Christ has not only won the victory at the cross but he will continue that victorious March in his second coming and then he will eventually cast the devil into the lake of fire and all those who do not believe or reject Jesus Christ will be cast into the lake of fire the Bible teaches us in verses 10 through 15 that Christ will judge all the unbelievers Jesus referred to that in Matthew chapter 25 where the sheep and the goat are separated it is called the great white throne of judgment you and I as believers will not be at the great white throne of judgment because we have already put our trust in Christ and Jesus already took our punishment on the cross he absorbed the wrath of God on our behalf and therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus when we are judged it is about rewards it is about our faithfulness it is about our obedience to God and we are rewarded for all that we have accomplished and been a part of in the kingdom of Christ so we rejoice in that but when you read verse 10 through 15 understand this is about the great white throne judgment and God judging those who have rejected him and rebelled against him sadly the Bible says he’ll be casting them all into the lake of fire after that he will usher in a new heaven and a new earth which you can read about in Revelation 21 and 22 those who have rejected Christ right now those who have refused to believe in Christ even now are in a what we might refer to as a temporary hell we have taught you about the five different names for hell the New Testament often refers to this temporary hell as Hades sometimes even Gehenna and it is a place the Old Testament was called Sheol and it was the abiding of the dead the place of the dead and that is a place that they go as believers who have trusted in Christ for their salvation the Bible says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord can God’s people say amen and so we are in the immediate presence of Jesus Christ and we are enjoying all the blessings and rewards that God has for us but those whose names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life they are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life what awaits for them is not only a hell that is separated from God but a place that the Bible refers to as the lake of fire the lake of fire the eternal destination of the devil and all of his demons and those who reject Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior now the question before us this morning as we have been learning about hell in the Bible is are the fires of hell literal there are many even within evangelical Christianity who would say to you that when the Bible refers to hell it’s all figurative that it is not literal or it is not even real well I want to share with you first of all the argument for a literal fire note again that Jesus said in Matthew 25 verse 41 then shall he say also unto them on the left hand depart from me you cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels you understand that the devil rose up against Almighty God you understand we’ve already taught you that the scriptures teach us that the devil was filled with pride in heaven and he was cast out and a third of the angels with him these are his demonic forces that are crisscrossing this world causing so much chaos in this world the devil’s desire Jesus taught us was to kill and to destroy never forget that it is the devil’s desire to destroy your family to destroy your life and to destroy your testimony and to make a mess of this world I think he’s doing a pretty good job I hate to say that I hate to say that the world is in chaos the world is in confusion but it is only setting the table for the Antichrist to come in with all the solutions and all the answers and claim to be the one who can bring peace but it’s a pseudo it’s a false it’s a fake peace we know that that’s why I tell you that Jesus taught us this he taught us what it would be like and what the circumstances and what the environment would be like before his return which would be at the end of the tribulation but Jesus describes this day of judgment in Matthew 25 and he describes those who are cast into this lake of fire as an everlasting fire you remember that we taught you that the Bible describes hell also as Gehenna and Gehenna was an actual burning place outside of Jerusalem it was in the valley of Gehenna and it was adjacent just south of Jerusalem and it was a place where we might call it a burn pile now every once while I might drive around our county and different people will be burning trash and the smoke gets everywhere and I start hacking and coughing and they mess me up for at least two weeks amen trying to figure all that out the church used to have a burn pile and finally the fire department said please stop please stop burning all that trash you say where would all that trash come from well if you have a Christian school of 500 students there is a lot of trash don’t be upset students but I’m just saying there’s a lot of wear and tear there’s a lot of food there’s a lot of eating there’s a lot of paper plates there’s a lot of stuff that has to be thrown away and it has to be gotten rid of and sometimes we would burn some of that trash I want you in your mind to understand that there was a place south of Jerusalem called Gehenna as Jesus spoke about hell he would reference this burn pile this place where it was constantly burning they even it was such a massive place of burning they not only put their trash there the pagans would put their dead bodies in this burn pile and it was just constantly burning and burning and Jesus is referencing to us that he is he is teaching about hell that it is a place of fire it is a place where there is constant burning now one might ask two questions relating to that which I think are really good questions and I appreciate that there is thinking going on amen it’s good to see people come into the church and not take their thinking cap off and to have some good questions but we know first of all Jesus described hell as a place of outer darkness and yet he describes it as a place where there is an eternal fire we know that fire gives off light and so how is this possible that fire could be literal and yet it be a place of outer darkness well friends there is some kind of a unique fire that God is going to create that does not give off light the second question you might have about this being a burning fire is we know that fire consumes it consumes and yet Jesus described this place of eternal fire in hell as a place that does not consume you remember Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom which was one of the names that was often referred to the rich man was there in this burning place Lazarus was Abraham’s bosom and there the rich man looked up and he wanted just a drop of water on the tip of his tongue because the fire the flames that he was in and so Jesus is helping us to understand that this unique fire is not going to be exactly like the fire that you and I see and that we use for cooking or we might use to burn trash or we might use it in some other fashion but it is a unique fire that is everlasting and definitely it is punishment and definitely people can sense it they can see it they can feel it and it has an impact upon them because the Bible is so clear about that that it’s definitely a place though that does not consume now again someone might say well our bodies you know I taught last week about how one day as believers that when we die we our soul and spirit is separated from our body and we go into the presence of heaven and then one day there’ll be a resurrection your body is not immediately in heaven when you get there but your soul and spirit is with Jesus Christ your body comes remember at the rapture the Bible says the dead in Christ shall rise and your soul and spirit is reunited with this new body this glorified body the Bible describes all this in 1st Corinthians and it is a glorified body that is resurrected so your soul and spirit is reunited and now you’re in heaven with body soul and spirit now this was put out there and of course sometimes I read I know I shouldn’t but I read the social media sometimes what people saying and people just saying no there is no resurrection of the dead you know in my mind I don’t respond but in my mind I got to think does anybody read the Bible anymore because the Bible not only teaches us that believers bodies will be resurrected but the Bible teaches us that unbelievers bodies will be resurrected so what is unique in this final stop for unbelievers in this lake of fire is that not only where their soul and spirit be there but the Bible teaches us in John chapter 5 that the unbelievers body will be resurrected and that they will be cast into the lake of fire soul spirit and body into this lake of fire Jesus said in Matthew 13 verse 41 and 42 the Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth now if you believe that the fire is symbolic or that it is something that is metaphorical in describing the punishment of those who reject Jesus Christ I propose this question to you do people use symbols because the reality is less or more than the symbol I want you to think of like this if I were to say that my wife is the diamond of my life I’m not limiting her to a diamonds value I’m just saying that she’s even more than a diamond to me I’m trying to illustrate so we use symbols we use metaphors in our life and if Jesus if for any reason if he were to somehow say I’m gonna use the fire as a metaphor do you think that he meant that that was just the limitation of that metaphor of the punishment I think it’s even worse I think Jesus was wanting us to know and understand that hell is even worse than what can be described in the human language the teaching of hell is meant to appal us it is meant to fill us with godly fear it is designed to shake us it is designed to persuade us that though heaven will be better than what we could ever dream hell will be worse than what we could ever imagine and so I am a strong believer that the fire in hell is literal now let’s understand the literal interpretation because I believe it is the most straightforward understanding of the scriptures there are many times people like to come to the Bible and rather than believing what it says they want to explain it away they want to explain away the horror of hell they want to explain away the punishment of hell because in their mind they cannot conceive and I’m here to tell you I believe that it’s even worse than what Jesus said that the human language limited him to how horrible hell is now the Bible describes hell as a place of fire I’ve already read you several verses but here’s another one Luke 16 then he cried and said father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame as we mentioned to you already it is this flame of fire that is tormenting this rich man it is not consuming him but it is tormenting him hell is described as a place of fire and darkness we see this again in the book of Jude and we see it again in Matthew chapter 8 so my question is simply this why not take the Bible at face value why not let the Bible simply speak for itself what is the testimony of the Bible I know that there are people with many letters after their names and before their names and maybe underneath and maybe on top of their names and they’ll come out and tell you I mean I just read an article by a scholar who claimed that hell a was not real and the fires were just metaphorical but I’m here to tell you that this is what the Bible says now you have to make a decision Revelation 21st 15 says whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake fire I read that verse and I believe it and I believe that God meant what he said and that he says what he means now I know that Jesus used illustrations and I know that he used symbolism to get his point across you remember that Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 5 that if your hand offends you cut it off he said that if your eye offends you pluck it out I do not think that Jesus was saying that you and I need to literally cut our hands off or even pluck out our eyes but what he is saying is that whatever is causing you to sin whatever is leading you down the path that you are sinning against God get it out of your life perhaps even a person get them out of your life and that for some of you it might be that you might need to take that cell phone and you need to cast it as far as the east is from the West amen I didn’t get a lot of amen whatever it is the devil knows our weaknesses he knows what temptations are most effective upon us and there are times that you and I need to be alert to that if there are things that are hindering us from following Christ obediently and honoring him in our life we need to get those out and I think that Jesus was speaking in that way I think he was explaining in that way Jesus said I am a door he didn’t mean he was a literal door he was saying I am the entryway to heaven I am the way to heaven Jesus said that he was the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the father but through him and so we understand when he describes that symbolism and he uses it often but when it comes to hell and understanding the context of his teaching I do not see any effort on Jesus’s part to use the fires as something as being symbolic or metaphorical the other reason that I believe in a literal fire is not only that I believe what the Bible says and I believe it is the most straightforward in what God is teaching us is that a figurative interpretation of the fire undermines biblical authority again I’m just pounding you with one verse after another and you have to make this decision is the Bible right or the Bible wrong is the Bible true or the Bible false revelation 21 8 but for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and sexually immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death I don’t think there’s any figurative interpretation of this I think this is literal and I think for me to deny this is to deny the Bible hell was not created for you and me but for the devil and his angels unfortunately many refuse to believe and follow Jesus Christ and so the Bible tells us that if we do not believe in Christ that we will be cast into the everlasting lake of fire and we understand this to be literal we understand this to be as God describes it in the book of Revelation we understand also that there’s a lot of symbolism in the Bible and so we’re not ignorant to that but we know that Jesus described hell as a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth I pray today that you will not go to hell but that you would turn your life and fully surrender to Jesus Christ receive him as your Lord and Savior and that you would faithfully follow him we don’t preach on hell to scare people but we do preach on hell to warn people that there is a place that we should shun a place that we should not go to and we should strive to receive Christ as our Savior and go to heaven now I want to encourage you to make sure that you check out our YouTube channel if you go to youtube.com then type in hope worth having you’ll see an assortment of opportunities where we have been teaching the Bible doing some Q&A some interviews and I want you to take advantage of that by checking out our YouTube channel I know you’ll be blessed in doing that this is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

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Pastor Mike will be speaking on What Will We Do in Heaven? Part 2. He will be reading out of Revelation 21: 1-3.

That’s why Jesus says your sorrow will turn into joy. And I am assured of this, that the depth of your sorrow and the loss of your loved one will one day manifest itself in the height of joy that will be unspeakable in your heart. Welcome to Hope Worth Having.

My name is Mike Sanders and I’m the host of Hope Worth Having. I also serve as the senior pastor of the Open Door Church and I am delighted that you would join us and tune in today. We are continuing our series on what will we do in heaven.

And so we’re in Revelation chapter 21, verse 1 through 3. I want to get right into the message today. And so join me as we begin. Joyful rest.

What will we do in heaven? We will enjoy joyful rest. But let me help you understand this joyful rest because it’s really not the rest that you’re thinking about. Revelation 14, 13 says this, that I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, right, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.

Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their works follow them. When we study the book of Hebrews, a significant theme is the rest that we find in Jesus Christ. Many of you are familiar with the Old Testament and how God taught the people that they were to take a Sabbath and that they were to once a week rest.

And that was on a Saturday. They would rest. There would be no work.

There would be no activity. They were just simply to dwell upon God and they were to rest. And for many, many years in our communities, in our American culture, you couldn’t do anything on a Sunday.

You would be labeled as the worst Christian in America. I had achieved that label one Sunday. And this was during COVID.

And I want you to know, as horrible of a person as I am, that I was on a Sunday outside mowing my lawn. But you got to understand my schedule was heavy and there wasn’t one day during the week. And so it was either going to get up to my nose or we get her mowed.

Amen. And my wonderful neighbor, who I’ve been inviting to church and inviting to come, and he’s come a few times and I hope he’s not here this morning, but I do want him to be here. But I’m telling a story on him.

But he came flying over to my yard. Pastor Mike, what are you doing? And I said, what? He said, my grandpa said you can never mow your lawn on Sunday. That it’s against the Bible.

And I said, well, I appreciate your grandpa, but the Bible does say when the ox is in the ditch, you got to do what you can to get the ox out. And the ox was in the ditch. Now there’s nothing wrong with mowing your lawn on Sunday.

If you want to mow it today, go ahead. And when you’re done, come on over to mine and mow mine as well. You might as well be blessed beyond measure.

But anyways, what I’m saying is that people embrace this idea of Sabbath and rest, that even it became a part of our culture and our traditions within the church and with the way that we did things. Now we know that the Bible teaches us that Christ is the fulfillment of all the symbols and the shadows, if you will, and the imagery that was in the Old Testament and that Jesus Christ is now our rest. That we find our rest in Christ.

He is the one that brings spiritual rest. He is the one that brings true rest in our life. And we rest in Christ for our salvation.

We no longer are trying to work ourselves to heaven, but we are resting in the work of Christ on the cross through the resurrection and our faith in Jesus Christ that now brings us to become the people of God. And there’s a lot we can talk about that. But I’m simply just helping make the case that this idea of rest is taught in the Bible.

But when we read this text in Revelation 14, verse 13, we should not see the word rest as one of inactivity. But rather here he is talking about that we have the relief from the burden of all the challenges and the afflictions and the sufferings of life. And that’s exactly what the passage means is the believer will rest from their labors.

That the believer who has been fighting the good fight of faith, the believer that has been marching forward in Christ, even against opposition, even dealing with the temptations of the flesh and the struggles of society and the problems of life and even the physical challenges that one might have to experience in life as their health deteriorates as they get older. The Bible is teaching us that they can rest from all of that struggle and they can rest from all of those challenges. It does not mean when you go to heaven that you’re going to sit on a cloud, play a harp and just sleep all day.

And I know that sounds very enticing to some of you. You would just love to sleep all day. But that’s not what heaven is.

Heaven is a place where the Bible describes to us back in our text if we’ll look in verse 4 of Revelation 21 that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there shall be no more death nor sorrow nor crying and there shall be no more pain for the former things have passed away. If we were to invert this verse we would say that life is full of pain and life is full of sorrow and life is full of death and life is full of crying and tears and the Bible is reminding us that the struggle of life the challenges of life and the obstacles of life is one day coming to an end for the believer in Jesus Christ. And we will no longer have to fight the good fight of faith and we will no longer have to push ourselves to keep on keeping on for Jesus Christ and we will no longer have to bear the weight and the burdens of trying to comfort those who are hurting and who have lost loved ones.

And we will no longer have to cry ourselves to sleep and we will no longer have to feel the emptiness of grief in our hearts as we miss our loved ones dearly. One day church you will rest from all of that sorrow and you will be in the presence of God enjoying the beautiful presence and majesty of God and you will rest from your labor for God. How beautiful is that? I want us to understand this.

Would you take your Bible and go to 2 Thessalonians? Now if you just back up from Revelation you’re gonna bump into 2 Thessalonians not too far but 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 in verse 6 and again I think we’re given a little insight into what God is saying is coming for the believer and even what some of your loved ones have already experienced and are experiencing. In verse 6 of chapter 1 the Bible says, Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you. Now let me just stop there.

Just a side note. We’re out there living for God and sometimes there’s pushback and sometimes there’s opposition and sometimes people aren’t as cooperative and sometimes people make it difficult and sometimes people are antagonistic because of our faith in Jesus Christ. We were talking about this in Sunday school with the young adults and how we suffer in this world but that God has called us not to fight evil with evil but our response is goodness.

Our response is kindness. Our response is that those who trouble us we trust in God because we believe that God will make right all that is wrong in this world. Now we like to get ahead of God, don’t we? I mean perhaps maybe the hardest word for Christians is wait.

We don’t like to wait and how I know this is that I observe how some of you are driving out there and how irritated you get but I’m among you. I find myself frustrated. We don’t like to wait but when it comes to those who trouble us and persecute us or even push back on us or make it difficult for us as we’re trying to live for Christ the Bible says God is gonna repay and so we must whether it’s here or later we must trust God that He will repay in His perfect timing.

He will deal with all the injustice in this world. We strive to live our life with justice and integrity and character and honor and glory to God but we trust Him. Look at verse 7 and to give you who are troubled what does that word say? Rest.

See I love that because it’s a battle living for God. If you think following Jesus Christ means your life is easy you are sadly mistaken and why is it that some start out like shooting stars for Christ and all of a sudden they disappear on us it is because they responded in emotion to God and they were under the impression that somehow their life would be easier and when they found themselves in the midst of trouble and the midst of a trial and in the midst of antagonism they retreated. But the true believer perseveres and the true believer keeps going on and the true believer never gets weary in well-doing because they keep pushing forward for the Lord Jesus Christ and you are given a promise that God will give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels.

Again, not the rest of I get to grab my pillow and lay down it’s the rest that I don’t have to fight the fight. I don’t have to get up tomorrow and keep pushing for the cause of Jesus Christ. Every day is a new set of problems every day is a new challenge but there is coming for the believer this rest that we’ll experience in heaven it’s the Christian rest it’s not the absence of activity but it is the completion of our spiritual journey it is the end of the struggle with the flesh it is the end of the struggle with the world it is the end of the struggle with the devil.

It’s easy to get faint-hearted as you serve God. I mean, you don’t even have to wrestle with the devil you don’t even have to wrestle with your flesh you don’t even have to wrestle with the world Sometimes we end up as believers wrestling with each other, amen. We’re like brothers and sisters in Christ.

Whoa, what a thought. We’re like brothers and sisters who are playing with their toys, and that’s my toy, and grandma gave that to me, not to you. And that’s my pew, and that’s my ministry, and that’s my classroom, and we dare not share with anybody else, amen.

It’s mine, and we wrestle, and we struggle, and you wonder what happened to the pastor’s hair. He’d been pulling his hair out ever since he became a pastor, because Christians will fuss and fight, and do everything they can, sometimes ignorantly, foolishly, maybe through immaturity. But there’s coming a day there’s not gonna be a burden of fighting the fight.

It’s all gonna be gone. This morning you may be wrestling with temptations in your hearts, and you’ve been trying to overcome this temptation, and it has been dragging you down, and you have a good set of days and weeks, and then all of a sudden, bam, the struggle is so real. There’s coming a day we’re never gonna be tempted again, church.

We are gonna be in the presence of God. Can God’s people say amen? Well, let’s move on. Number three, we will engage in physical activities with physical bodies.

Now, here’s where I want you to understand, again, what I was telling you in my intro, is that when we leave this earth now, before the rapture of the church, our bodies are not with us. Our bodies are not with us. They are not with our loved ones, and so I know we imagine that they might be up there doing certain things relating to their bodies, but they’re not, because our bodies are not with us immediately.

Death is the idea of separation. The body is separated from the soul and spirit, and so soul and spirit is promoted into the presence of God. The body is laid in the casket, or it is there in its ashes, and the Bible says dust to dust and ashes to ashes, and there that body is, but the soul and spirit is in the presence of God, but when the resurrection happens and the dead in Christ, 1 Thessalonians 4, you can study it on your own, when that happens, then we are gonna experience brand new bodies, and one day God is gonna give us a new heaven and a new earth, and he will make all things new, including our bodies.

How many of you need a new body? Amen. And one day, others of you will join us in needing a new body. We know that through the modern day doctors and scientists that they can give you a new hip.

They can give you a new knee and a shoulder, and perhaps one day they’ll give you a new brain through AI. Who knows? But eventually, what I want us to understand that all of these things that are created do not compare to the original model, amen? And they’re not as good. Yes, they are supplements so that we don’t hurt as much, and maybe we can walk a little bit better without so much pain, and they help us, and we’re not against it, and if you need a new hip, go get one.

All right? But one day, you’re getting a brand new body, top to bottom, amen? The Bible says in Philippians 3, verse 21, who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. So God is gonna make all things new, including our bodies, and we wonder what will that body look like? Now we’re in the range of speculation, and I wanna help you out a little bit because I hear some of you wandering around and speaking dogmatically, like you know what our body’s gonna look like in heaven, like you got it all figured out. But let me tell you something.

There’s many speculation. So again, some of you have children in heaven. There is one speculation that the Bible says when we see him, we will be like him.

The scripture says that. What does that mean? Does it mean that we will have a body like Jesus when he, in his glorified state, resurrected at the age of 33 and a half, and that our children that are in heaven will have bodies of 33 and a half? Some believe that, but there’s nothing that affirms this. I don’t know of any scholar, any theologian that thinks this dogmatically and conclusively.

Others believe that our children would remain in the state that they are and that we will be reunited because we will be known as we are what? Known. And so if you never knew your child as a 33-year-old person, an adult, then you would not know them in heaven, and yet the Bible says we will be known as we are known. All I can say to you this morning is I do not have the exact answer as to the age of your body.

The age won’t matter in heaven, but the point being is I do know that we will be like him, and I do know that we will be known as we are known, and what all does that mean in heaven? Well, let’s wait until we get there, amen? And the rest that have already figured out life and you know everything, then we’ll just, we’ll love you in grace, amen? But God gives us a new body, and our loved ones are blessed with new bodies, and all of us who love Jesus Christ are given new bodies, and the question is why would God furnish us with a body and set us on a new earth and give us physical properties if we’re not going to put that body to good use? So God is going to use us. There will be many activities that we will have in our new bodies, and to understand some of the things that we might do in our new bodies, you would certainly study the life of Christ as in his glorified body, as what was his life like after he was resurrected, because Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that we will have glorified bodies, and certainly we know that there’ll be eating and drinking in the kingdom of God, and I think that’s important. You say, pastor, why would you bring that up? Well, because it dominates a lot of our life, right? We enjoy eating.

Now, the question is what are we gonna eat? Well, it just depends which pastor you ask. If you ask Dr. Dina Padron, you’re having spaghetti. If you ask Pastor Mike, we’re having chicken, and others might say we’re having prime rib, and others might say no, there’s nothing in the Bible that talks about eating meat.

The Bible does talk about the tree of life that will bear fruit every month and it’ll be healing to the nations. Now, what does that mean? Are we gonna get sick in heaven? Wouldn’t you like to be able to just go to a tree and eat a nice piece of fruit and then your flu would go away? Wouldn’t you like that? Well, friends, you’re not gonna get sick in heaven, so what does it mean when it says the healing of the nations? It’s the Greek word of the idea of therapeutic, and I think that it’s gonna have a therapeutic effect upon us, and it’s gonna be meaningful, and it’s gonna be beautiful, and it’s gonna be something that is very important to us that as we eat this fruit from the tree of life and it just bears it every month, and we just enjoy it, and it’s just gonna be like, this is awesome. This is great.

But the Bible doesn’t talk about any particular meat that I’m aware of. Some people say we’re gonna be vegetarians. If we are gonna be a vegetarian in heaven, I’m gonna need God to do a great work in my mind.

Okay, I’m just gonna be honest with you, and I’m just being real with God, and I know maybe some struggle with that, but it’s true because we enjoy. God gave us the ability for something to be enjoyable, and we always know that when we have fellowship with one another, many times there are refreshments, there’s food, and this kind of becomes the center of what we’re doing in our relationship. Jesus said in Luke 22, 30, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

We are definitely gonna be eating and drinking. We’re gonna be learning. We already talked a lot about that.

We’re gonna be rejoicing. We’ve talked about that. We’re gonna be serving.

We’re gonna talk more a little bit about that. There’s a lot of things that we are gonna be doing in heaven. And that takes me to my fourth point that I wanna share with you this morning is that we will enjoy social interaction with one another or fellowship with one another.

One of the things we’ll be doing in heaven is fellowshipping with each other. Now, we will remember our past relationships, and we will continue to recognize one another in the eternal state, and we will not only worship God personally, but we will worship God corporately together with our family, with our friends who love Jesus Christ. It’s gonna be so beautiful.

I cannot express to you enough of how much that is going to mean to you and that you’re gonna be with your family. We understand there’s no marriage in heaven, but that does not change the fact that we won’t know each other in heaven and that we won’t fellowship with one another in heaven and that we won’t interact with one another in heaven. And this time, when I say, what’s for dinner, hon, she’s not gonna be mad at me because nobody gets offended in heaven.

Isn’t that great? I mean, like, you could really tell what you’re thinking. You know, sometimes we have to filter what we think and don’t say it because if you really say what you’re thinking, you’re gonna be in big trouble, buddy, right? You might really get upset. Somebody might really get upset.

And so we have to be careful. But in heaven, the fellowship is gonna be sweet. It is gonna be enjoyable.

It is gonna be a blessing. And we’re gonna interact. Jesus Christ was comforting his disciples and he was consoling them about the fact that he would be leaving soon.

But Jesus said most assuredly in John 16, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. And what he meant is that one day there’s gonna be a reunion of Jesus and his disciples. There’s gonna be a reunion in our relationships.

Remember what I told you? What’s most important in life is relationships, your relationship with God and your relationship with others. And that’ll mean more to you than what your career title is. And maybe what you did and accomplished here on this earth, it’ll mean more to you to be with your family and to be with your friends that love Jesus Christ and to never have to sorrow again that they have been separated from you by death.

That’s why Jesus says your sorrow will turn into joy. And I am assured of this, that the depth of your sorrow and the loss of your loved one will one day manifest itself in the heights of joy that will be unspeakable in your heart. Jesus consoles us with the hope of an eternal reunion with our loved ones at the appearing of our Savior.

The final thing I wanna share with you in thinking about what will we do is that we will exercise responsibility and service to God. God will give us responsibility in this new earth, in this new heaven. Jesus said in Revelation 7, 15, therefore they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple.

And he who sits on the throne will dwell among them. And there’s much to be said and much we could dissect, but here’s what I want you to know. We’ve already taught you a little bit about this, that Jesus said, to whom much is given, much is required.

And so we have this responsibility that we’re to be faithful and obedient to God on this earth and that that will translate into the new heaven and the new earth for us. And the things that you are gifted in and the abilities that you have and the skillsets that God has endowed you with will again transfer to your responsibilities in heaven. And so when you think about the things that you enjoy and the things that you’re passionate about and the things that you enjoy doing, friends, you will be able to do those things in the new heaven and the new earth.

And the one contractor raised his hand in a Q&A service one time with me and he said, Pastor Mike, I’m a builder. Do we get to build in heaven? And I said, certainly, in Isaiah 65, it teaches us in that millennial kingdom and in that new heaven and new earth that we will be building. Here’s what I want you to understand.

Imagine living life for God at its height and doing the things that you enjoy and are gifted in and have abilities for and that you will live that out every day, but there’ll be no sin, there’ll be no sorrow, there’ll be no sadness, there’ll be no suffering. Do not think of yourself or your loved ones just floating around looking for something to do, but know that as the scriptures teach us, there will be much for you to do in heaven and you will serve God day and night and you will be active for the Lord Jesus Christ, but there’s not gonna be pushback, there’s not gonna be a fight, there’s not gonna be temptation, you’re not gonna get weary, you’re gonna say, man, those little kids need to pick it up because they’re slowing down, they can’t even keep up with me, I’m 500 years old. You will have the energy of the Lord and you will live with the Lord forever, you will worship him, you will serve him, you will fellowship with your loved one and let me tell you what your life is going to be like in heaven.

Loving God and loving and nothing will stop you or interrupt you, loving God and loving people. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. We’re talking about what we’ll do in heaven, but the most important thing is, will you be in heaven? And the only way that you can get to heaven is through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father but by me.

So if you have not put your faith in Christ, if you believe God is calling you, then all you have to do is repent and believe in Jesus, that is to turn away from your sin and your selfishness and to turn towards Christ and what he did on the cross for you. The Bible says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. I hope that’ll be true in your life.

Have you checked out our podcasts? Yes, we put out a regular podcast and you can go to hopeworthhaving.com and you can look at those podcasts, you can listen to different topics and different passages of the Bible and take advantage of that opportunity. I hope you’ll be encouraged through that and it’s something that’ll continue to strengthen your faith. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.

The post What Will We Do in Heaven? Part 2 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on What Will We Do in Heaven? Part 1. He will be reading out of Revelation 21: 1-3.

And we rest in Christ for our salvation. We no longer are trying to work ourselves to heaven, but we are resting in the work of Christ on the cross through the resurrection and our faith in Jesus Christ that now brings us to become the people of God. Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders and this is Hope Worth Having.

We are looking forward to sharing the hope that is found in Jesus Christ with you today. And I want to encourage you to get your Bible and let’s go to the book of Revelation. We want to begin our series on what will we do in heaven? You know, believers have different ideas of what it might be like in heaven.

Well, we want to turn to the scriptures and get a clear picture of what that means. So join me as we study together. If you have your Bible, I want you to join me in the book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation is the last book of the Bible, certainly the last book of the New Testament. We’re going to be in chapter 21 verses one through three. We’ll be looking as well at a sorted number of verses.

If you’re visiting today, our church has been going through a series in which I have been teaching on five questions about heaven and five questions about hell. Now, this is a good day to visit because I’m teaching on heaven today. I feel bad for our visiting guests when they show up and the pastor lays into the topic of hell and what the Bible says about it.

But we are coming to the end of that series to talk about what will we do in heaven? What will we do in heaven? Life is about relationships. And you got to remember that our relationships are more important than careers. They are more important than money.

They’re more important than the tangible material things of this earth. And when you come to the end of your life, there’s really only two things that are going to be meaningful to you. And that is your relationship with God and your relationship with others.

Jesus summed it up like this. He was asked, what is the greatest command in the Bible? And Jesus said, it is to love God and to love your neighbor. In essence, to love God and to love people.

We are to love God with all of our heart, with all of our strength. We’re to love God with passion and consistency. But we’re also called to love one another.

And when we think about everything that is dear to us, even here on this earth, we hope and trust that your relationship with God and your relationship with others is very precious to you in your heart. And one day, those relationships that you have on this earth, I’m certain that you desire that they will be with you in heaven. And that is what is going to be a part of making heaven so wonderful.

We long for our glorious future in heaven. And it is the hope of heaven that has sustained the people of God throughout the centuries. As believers, we focus on heaven, not as a reprieve from real life, but to gain strength for real life.

We concentrate on heaven because we must remember that this world we live in is not heaven. And it is filled with so much trouble and so much trials. And we see the curse of sin sweeping across this world all around us.

But one day, God will lift that curse. And we will reside with him throughout eternity. And we will be in a place that is called heaven.

We have been learning a lot about heaven. John the Revelator takes it even farther in chapter 21. And he says, Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God. Now we must understand something about heaven, that I think sometimes even as we teach the Bible and as we are learning and studying the Bible, that we might get confused about heaven.

That I want you to understand that upon the departure of a believer from this world, that the Bible says to be absent from the body is to be present with God. And so often we envision great thoughts of our loved ones, or perhaps even what we might be doing up in heaven. There is the immediate presence of being there in heaven with God that Jesus described in John chapter 14.

And Jesus said it is a place that is prepared for us, a place that he has personally put together for us. The King James says it’s a mansion. The better translation might be a dwelling place.

Not that the King James translation is inferior, but that simply the word means a dwelling place. But I am certain that it’ll be the greatest dwelling place that supersedes any mansion or great place on this earth. Amen? I saw the other day that somebody’s house in Palm Beach, Florida sold for $150 million.

Yes, it was huge. It was massive. But I thought about how our dwelling place in heaven will be superior to anything on this earth.

And sometimes as we envision our loved ones in this grand place called heaven, who are rewarded for their faithfulness and obedience to God and their desire to live for the Lord, that we might think that immediately they have a body. But the truth is not to break your heart, but the spirit and soul dwells with God in heaven upon our departure. But the body is not reunited with the soul and spirit until the resurrection of the dead in Christ.

And we understand that that will take place after the tribulation period and in the midst of the coming of Christ as he is working miraculously in our lives. And so I want you to know that when we read chapter 21 and all of a sudden John says, I’m taking you further. And he says, I want you to know I saw a new heaven, a heaven, not where your loved ones are right now, but a new heaven and a new earth, not the earth that you’re in right now, a new heaven and a new earth.

The Bible says, and the first earth it’s passed away. The first heaven has passed away. And now there is a new heaven and a new earth.

And that is what I want us to understand this morning in relating to what will we do in heaven. And it’s essential that we understand the unfolding and the process of bringing that all together. So we don’t have misconceptions about what heaven is or isn’t and what are our loved ones doing in heaven and what will we do when we get to heaven.

So let me submit unto you five things, five activities in heaven that we certainly can affirm through the scriptures. Number one, we will revel in God’s presence and worship him supremely. We will revel in God’s presence and worship him supremely.

The Bible teaches us that God’s presence is truly the most exciting aspect of life in heaven. Look at verse three of chapter 21. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them and they shall be his people.

God himself will be with them and be their God. And so we see that over and over, even in this small verse, that the Bible is reiterating to us the presence of God, that God is dwelling with us, that God is with us, that he is among us. And so I know immediately that you’re saying again, as we talked about a little bit last week, that how is it that God is not with us? Because he is omnipresent.

And so here the Bible is saying that God will be with us. And the assumption could be that maybe he was never with us. But that’s not what John the Revelator is teaching us.

He is trying to emphasize to us that there will be a greater manifestation of the presence of God in the new heaven. The psalmist said in Psalm 1611, that will show me the path of life. And in thy presence is fullness of joy and at thy right hand there are pleasures evermore.

I cannot express to you enough that being in the constant manifested presence of God and how it is so fulfilling and meaningful and how it is the most joyous experience that a believer could have in their life. There are times and moments in our life that as we are walking in the Spirit or we are working for the Savior and we are faithfully living for God, that the very manifested presence of God comes upon us and we experience that great joy. But it is for a moment.

But there is coming a day that sin will not hinder that constant manifested presence of God in our life. It will be continuous in our life and it will bring the utmost fullness, as the scripture says, of joy in our life. And note, he says, that there are pleasures forevermore.

When you think of your loved one in heaven, I want you to know that they certainly are not disappointed. And no one ever goes to heaven and says, man, I’m let down and it just doesn’t seem like it was ever what I thought it was. But it’s even beyond what we could ever imagine.

And so we understand that God is with us today, but we also understand that in heaven we are experiencing this presence of God and it is leading us to worship him supremely. We will have a greater capacity for experiencing God’s presence in heaven, unlike anything that we experience here on this earth. The last I checked, we are made of flesh and bones.

Did you guys check? Are you flesh and bones? You are human. Welcome to humanity. When our children would grow up, sometimes they might complain about something or they would say, that’s not fair.

And I would say, welcome to humanity. Welcome to life. Because you live in a flawed world.

You live among flawed people. And I know that some of you are wondering, how is it that some of these people got into my family? But there they are. Flawed people.

Humans who have weaknesses. Humans who have problems. Humans who are limited.

And friends, when it comes to our worship of God, we have gathered this morning to worship the Lord in this worship service. And we have been worshiping him in song. And we worship him as we read the scriptures.

And we worship him as we pray. And we worship him even as the word of God is being taught. And we are worshiping him and using our talents and our gifts and our abilities.

We are just worshiping the Lord. But friends, whatever the experience here, it’ll be superseded in the constant presence of God. Listen to what the psalmist said in Psalm 27, 4. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

Now for some people, worship is boring. And they don’t like to worship God personally. And they don’t like to worship God corporately.

And they want nothing. My friends, you’re going to be a mess in heaven. Because in heaven, one of the supreme things that we are going to do is to worship God.

And we are going to enjoy it to its fullest. And it’s just going to be amazing to us. For all of our senses will be alive and well.

And we will be able to worship God. And the degree to which we will be able to delight and enjoy God will be beyond anything that we are experiencing today. It is sin.

It is our flesh that limits our enjoyment of God. It is this body that we live in that is flawed, that hinders the degree in which we can delight in God. The psalmist said he was longing for the day that he could dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life, and to behold the beauty.

What he is saying is, I want to just enjoy God. And I just want to delight in God. And I just want to worship God.

Because he is so beautiful. He is so majestic. And he is so magnificent.

I just want to dwell, and focus, and thank, and worship about God Almighty. But we’re limited now. But one day, that will be taken away.

I think the apostle, when trying to illustrate the sign gifts, gave us some insight in understanding that in 1 Corinthians 13, 12, when he said, For now we see through a glass darkly, or partly. We don’t see it fully. We don’t have the full perspective.

But then, face to face. What’s it going to be like for you to be face to face with Jesus Christ? What’s it going to mean to us to be in this constant presence, when our clouded minds, and our darkened minds, and our limitations are all removed, and we’re just in this great, beautiful, constant presence of God, worshiping Him, and enjoying Him? What is that going to mean to us? Well, my friends, it’ll be the most fulfilling and meaningful thing in your life. I know that some feel that if they could just get to the top of the ladder, if they could just get that job promotion, if they could just get that house, or if they could just make a little bit more money, that they would be more satisfied.

But I’m telling you that there are many people who got to the top of the ladder, and they made the most of money that could be made, and they’re still dissatisfied. Why? Because the vacuum in your heart can only be filled in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And the most significant thing that you and I need is to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and to live our days that we might worship God, enjoy God, and glorify God in all that we do and say.

And friends, that is the purpose of mankind, and I want you to know it will not change when you get to heaven, for the redeemed will enjoy life in the presence of God in heaven. The second thing I want you to see is that we will experience joyful rest. What will we do in heaven? We will enjoy joyful rest.

But let me help you understand this joyful rest, because it’s really not the rest that you’re thinking about. Revelation 14, 13 says this, that I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, right, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their works follow them.

When we study the book of Hebrews, a significant theme is the rest that we find in Jesus Christ. Many of you are familiar with the Old Testament and how God taught the people that they were to take a Sabbath and that they were to once a week rest, and that was on a Saturday. They would rest.

There would be no work. There would be no activity. They were just simply to dwell upon God, and they were to rest.

And for many, many years in our communities, in our American culture, you couldn’t do anything on a Sunday. You would be labeled as the worst Christian in America. I had achieved that label one Sunday, and this was during COVID, and I want you to know as horrible of a person as I am, that I was on a Sunday outside mowing my lawn.

But you got to understand, my schedule was heavy, and there wasn’t one day during the week, and so it was either going to get up to my nose or we get her mowed, amen? And my wonderful neighbor, who I’ve been inviting to church and inviting to come, and he’s come a few times, and I hope he’s not here this morning, but I do want him to be here, but I’m telling a story on him, but he came flying over to my yard, Pastor Mike, what are you doing? And I said, what? He said, my grandpa said you can never mow your lawn on Sunday, that it’s against the Bible. And I said, well, I appreciate your grandpa, but the Bible does say when the ox is in the ditch, you got to do what you can to get the ox out, and the ox was in the ditch. Now, there’s nothing wrong with mowing your lawn on Sunday.

If you want to mow it today, go ahead, and when you’re done, come on over to mine and mow mine as well. You might as well be blessed beyond measure. But anyways, what I’m saying is that people embrace this idea of Sabbath and rest that even it became a part of our culture and our traditions within the church and with the way that we did things.

Now, we know that the Bible teaches us that Christ is the fulfillment of all the symbols and the shadows, if you will, and the imagery that was in the Old Testament, and that Jesus Christ is now our rest, that we find our rest in Christ. He is the one that brings spiritual rest. He is the one that brings true rest in our life, and we rest in Christ for our salvation.

We no longer are trying to work ourselves to heaven, but we are resting in the work of Christ on the cross through the resurrection and our faith in Jesus Christ that now brings us to become the people of God. And there’s a lot we can talk about that, but I’m simply just helping make the case that this idea of rest is taught in the Bible. But when we read this text in Revelation 14 verse 13, we should not see the word rest as one of inactivity, but rather here he is talking about that we have the relief from the burden of all the challenges and the afflictions and the sufferings of life.

And that’s exactly what the passage means, is the believer will rest from their labors, that the believer who has been fighting the good fight of faith, the believer that has been marching forward in Christ even against opposition, even dealing with the temptations of the flesh and the struggles of society and the problems of life and even the physical challenges that one might have to experience in life as their health deteriorates as they get older. The Bible is teaching us that they can rest from all of that struggle, and they can rest from all of those challenges. It does not mean when you go to heaven that you’re going to sit on a cloud, play a harp, and just sleep all day.

And I know that sounds very enticing to some of you. You would just love to sleep all day, but that’s not what heaven is. Heaven is a place where the Bible describes to us back in our text, if we’ll look in verse 4 of Revelation 21, that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, and there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.

If we were to invert this verse, we would say that life is full of pain, and life is full of sorrow, and life is full of death, and life is full of crying and tears. And the Bible is reminding us that the struggle of life, the challenges of life, and the obstacles of life is one day coming to an end for the believer in Jesus Christ. And we will no longer have to fight the good fight of faith, and we will no longer have to push ourselves to keep on keeping on for Jesus Christ, and we will no longer have to bear the weight and the burdens of trying to comfort those who are hurting and who have lost loved ones.

And we will no longer have to cry ourselves to sleep, and we will no longer have to feel the emptiness of grief in our hearts as we miss our loved ones dearly. One day, church, you will rest from all of that sorrow, and you will be in the presence of God, enjoying the beautiful presence and majesty of God, and you will rest from your labor for God. How beautiful is that? I want us to understand this.

Would you take your Bible and go to 2 Thessalonians? Now, if you just back up from Revelation, you’re going to bump into 2 Thessalonians, not too far, but 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 in verse 6. And again, I think we’re given a little insight into what God is saying is coming for the believer, and even what some of your loved ones have already experienced and are experiencing. In verse 6 of chapter 1, the Bible says, Now, let me just stop there. Just a side note.

We’re out there living for God, and sometimes there’s pushback, and sometimes there’s opposition, and sometimes people aren’t as cooperative, and sometimes people make it difficult, and sometimes people are antagonistic because of our faith in Jesus Christ. We were talking about this in Sunday school with the young adults and how we suffer in this world, but that God has called us not to fight evil with evil, but our response is goodness. Our response is kindness.

Our response is that those who trouble us, we trust in God because we believe that God will make right all that is wrong in this world. Now, we like to get ahead of God, don’t we? I mean, perhaps maybe the hardest word for Christians is wait. We don’t like to wait, and how I know this is that I observe how some of you are driving out there and how irritated you get, but I’m among you.

I find myself frustrated. We don’t like to wait, but when it comes to those who trouble us and persecute us or even push back on us or make it difficult for us as we’re trying to live for Christ, the Bible says God is going to repay, and so we must, whether it’s here or later, we must trust God that he will repay in his perfect timing. He will deal with all the injustice in this world.

We strive to live our life with justice and integrity and character and honor and glory to God, but we trust him. Look at verse 7, and to give you who are troubled, what does that word say? Rest. See, I love that because it’s a battle living for God.

If you think following Jesus Christ means your life is easy, you are sadly mistaken, and why is it that some start out like shooting stars for Christ and all of a sudden they disappear on us? It is because they responded in emotion to God and they were under the impression that somehow their life would be easier, and when they found themselves in the midst of trouble and the midst of a trial and in the midst of antagonism, they retreated. But the true believer perseveres, and the true believer keeps going on, and the true believer never gets weary in well-doing because they keep pushing forward for the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are given a promise that God will give you who are troubled. Rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven.

Heaven is a real place. It is a place that Jesus has prepared for us, those that love him and follow him and believe in him, and a lot of people have these images that they’re just going to float around on a cloud in heaven, but that’s not the truth. We actually have responsibilities.

We will enjoy doing things and connecting with family, friends, and meeting new people. It’s just going to be amazing what heaven’s going to be like, and I want you to remember that it is going to be utopia because it is the absence of sin, and it’s not like it’s going to be totally different than the way it is now. It’s going to be very much like it is, that you and I will have jobs, responsibilities, and things that we’ll do, and we’ll connect with family and friends, but minus sin, and that’s what’s going to be so amazing as we worship Jesus Christ and continue to glorify his name.

So make sure that you go to our website because you can get this message in its entirety. It’s been streamed and it’s on the YouTube channel. We encourage you to check that out.

There’s a whole archive. Just type in heaven and that’ll come right up for you, but we encourage you to also check out our Facebook page and make sure you like us and enjoy some of the posts that are being put out there, and we’re hoping they’re encouragement to your life. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post What Will We Do in Heaven? Part 1 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Who Is He in Yonder Stall? He will be reading out of Matthew 1: 18-25.

The Bible declares, I, even I, am the Lord. And besides me, there is no savior. It is only God himself who can save your soul.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by me. Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders, and I’m delighted to welcome you to Hope Worth Having radio program. And we hope that the message today will bring some insight into your faith and help you to live a faithful life for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today, we’re gonna be in Matthew chapter one, and I wanna say Merry Christmas to everyone as we are soon to celebrate the birth of our savior. And so I want us to look in Matthew chapter one and begin to talk about who is he in yonder stall. If you have your Bible this morning, I want you to join me in the gospel of Matthew chapter one.

Matthew chapter one, verse 18 through 25, and I want us to talk about the Christmas story from the gospel of Matthew, and I want us to think about there’s an old hymn that says, who is he in yonder stall, at whose feet the shepherds fall? It is that question and its answer that is so critical to each of our hearts. It is critical and important to us because it determines our spiritual destination, our answer to the question of understanding who is this babe, who is this Jesus that was sent to us in which we celebrate his birth? If we answer incorrectly, we definitely will miss our Messiah. We can make mistakes about many things in life and still be a true believer and enter into heaven, but we cannot be wrong about who the baby is in the manger.

We understand him to be as the scriptures teach us, the God-man, 100% human and 100% divine. Two complete natures combined in one person. I want us to begin to investigate that very truth as we consider who is he in yonder stall.

The first thing that I want you to see is the virgin birth reveals the deity of Jesus. Now look at verse 18 in the gospel of Matthew and note again what the scripture says. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.

After his mother, Mary was betrothed to Joseph. Before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that Mary and Joseph were betrothed.

Now we sometimes don’t understand that particular language because we live in a different culture, but in the times of the Middle Eastern culture of when Jesus Christ was born into this world, parents decided who you were gonna marry. But I want you to understand that Joseph and Mary, their marriage was arranged by their parents. And once that had been arranged and established, when the children would become teenagers, they went into a phase that they were betrothed together.

And what that meant is that they were kind of like engaged. It was a very serious commitment that was made. And then the final step would be that they would be married together as husband and wife.

This scripture says that Mary and Joseph were betrothed. That would usually take about a year in a time span. And the family’s getting ready for this great marriage.

But in the midst of that circumstance, the Bible tells us that Mary was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Now this created a great dilemma because there was really only two options as we consider this story about the virgin birth of Jesus is that either Mary was a virgin or she was not. And when we investigate the life of Mary, not only just in what the scriptures teach us, but what history teaches us, there is nothing that would indicate that Mary was ever unfaithful to Joseph.

And there was nothing that would ever indicate that if Joseph was the type of man who would not take responsibility or that he would ever try to say, well, it’s not my child. Joseph was just the opposite. He was a man of great integrity.

He was a man of great character. And so if Mary had not ever been with Joseph or she had not ever been with any man, then the only option we have to understand is what Matthew declares under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that Mary was a virgin. The angel came to Mary and in the gospel of Luke, the angel declared to Mary that she was great with child.

And the Bible tells us that Mary began to question the angel. How could this be? And in Luke chapter one, verse 35, the angel responded and said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore also that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.

The Son of God. Again, sometimes we read the scriptures and we Americanize it. And we look at it from the context of our own culture.

But in the Hebrew language, the reference to Son of God was a idiom. It was kind of a phraseology, if you will, in reference to the substance of Jesus, the very nature. And so when the Bible says that Jesus is the Son of God, it is literally saying Jesus has the very nature of God, that he has the very substance of God, that he is the very essence of God.

When the angel declared to Mary that she has conceived in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, that she has conceived the Son of God, she understood it in this terms, that God himself was within her and that God himself has come to this earth to bring salvation and redemption and forgiveness to all who believe in Jesus Christ. And that is why she would break out later in the Gospel of Luke with great praise and honor and joy to her heavenly father. The virgin birth reveals the deity of Jesus Christ.

But I also want you to see this morning that the angel’s words that were announced reveal Jesus’s deity. We come back to our text in the Gospel of Matthew chapter one as Matthew is unfolding this incredible, amazing story of the birth of Jesus Christ. His purpose is that he would help his readers to see that Jesus truly is the King of kings and he is the Lord of lords.

He has already spent in verses one through 17, he has spent the time to help us to see the kingly or the royal, the Davidic heritage that Jesus had. And now he wants us to see that he is Jesus’s God through his birth. And the angels have made an incredible announcement.

Look in verse 19, then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Mary’s pregnancy truly crushed Joseph.

The Bible says that he was a just man. We’ve already declared unto you that he was a man of integrity and character. He was devastated from a human perspective as to what was happening.

He was confused and could not truly grasp why it is that Mary would somehow be unfaithful to him. As he’s going through this process, the Bible says that an angel appeared to him and reminded him that what is conceived in Mary is of the Holy Spirit. When you read that in the original language, it means literally it is out of the Holy Spirit.

And so implying again, as we have already taught you, that Jesus is the very substance of God himself. And Joseph received this understanding and he began to grasp what was really happening, that a miraculous thing was appearing before them. John put it like this in the Gospel of John 1, verse 14.

And the word, which is Christ, was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Again, the word became flesh. Jesus has become flesh.

Mary has conceived Jesus in her womb through the miracle of the Holy Spirit. And when the Bible says that the word became flesh, it is helping us to grasp that God has now become touchable. He has become approachable.

He has become accessible, that God has not left us. He has not abandoned us. He has not forsaken us.

He has not left us in our plight of our sinfulness and our selfishness, but rather, he has come to this earth to bring us salvation and redemption and forgiveness. Can God’s people say amen? That’s what Christmas means, church. That’s what it’s all about.

That’s what we can’t forget. And we have to make sure that we take this message of good tidings, this message of great joy, this message that a Savior has been born. It is this message that we have to do well in communicating to our children and our grandchildren.

We have to communicate it well to our neighbors, our family, our friends, and every person that God puts in our path that they cannot forget that it’s so much more than a present. It’s so much more than a tree. It’s so much more than decorations.

It’s so much more than getting together with family and friends. And all those things are wonderful. And we certainly don’t look down upon any of that, but we cannot forget the real reason of the season.

And that is we are here to celebrate the coming, the advent of a Savior who has not forgotten us, but he has remembered us and he is bringing salvation. That’s what the angel’s words announced. The third thing that I want you to see this morning is that Jesus’ mission demands his deity.

Again, look at verse 21. As we are going through the narrative of this Christmas story and the birth of our Savior, we see again that the angel continues and says to Joseph, and she shall bring forth a son and you shall call his name, what church? Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. The name Jesus means God saves.

Jesus’ name and his mission reveal that he is truly God, that his deity is true. But what it means to us spiritually is this, that God saves, Jesus saves, and hence Jesus is God. I want you to see that.

Now you might ask the question, why must Jesus be God in order to save us? Why is that even necessary? Well, here’s what I want you to understand, that all of us are sinners. The Bible teaches us that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There’s not one of us that can stand up and say, hey, I am perfect, or I have never sinned against God.

And you say, well, I’m not worried about sinning against God. Well, let me ask you this, have you even sinned against your own conscience? Have you even sinned against your own morality and your own mind that you have designed? Whether the Bible has shaped your thoughts and your standards of what is right and wrong, certainly every person in their conscience understands what is right and wrong. And in normal society, there is a general conclusion of what is right and what is wrong.

And so the Bible teaches us we have all sinned and we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. And there’s no one that is perfect. We’re all selfish in some way.

And the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. A lot of people really don’t understand what death means. Death means separation.

When your loved one dies, it is the separation of their soul and spirit from their body. That’s what death means. For the believer, we understand that the wages of sin is death, is that we are separated from God Almighty as an unbeliever.

But when we trust in Christ, we are separated to go be with God. We are separated from our body. Now, the Bible teaches us that we’re either going to heaven or we’re going to hell.

And I want you to understand that there’s no in between. There’s no, hey, I hope a bunch of people pray for me and light a candle for me and somehow help me to squeeze into heaven. Because you see, friends, that’s not in the Bible.

That’s not in the word of God. Those are things that are made up through traditions and thoughts of people who would like to think that somehow there is a different way. But friends, there is only one way.

And that one way is through Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches us that there is a punishment for our sin. 2 Thessalonians 1.9 reminds us, for those who do not believe, they shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power.

The worst thing about hell is not just hell in and of itself. Jesus described hell as a place where there is weeping and there is gnashing of teeth. Jesus described it as a place of great sorrow and sadness.

Jesus described hell as a place in which we will remember. We’ll remember every opportunity that we had to come to Jesus. Every opportunity to receive Christ and his forgiveness in our life.

Every opportunity to believe in him. But friends, once you have been separated from your body, there is no chance for you to reverse course if you have not trusted Christ. And that’s why it’s so important.

The birth of Jesus means so much to us because the penalty of sin is eternal. That if our Savior was just a man, he could not eternally pay for our sin. He would just have to continue to be offered up in his physical body and there would be limitations to how much that sin could be paid for and thus our sins would never be paid for.

The Hebrew writer put it like this in talking about this same topic. He said, otherwise, referring to Christ, he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now, once at the consummation of the ages, he has been revealed to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Understanding the birth of Christ is best always understood in the shadow of the cross. For Jesus came to die. I know sometimes that’s hard for us to wrap our brain around but Jesus Christ came into this world to die on the cross for your sins and for my sins.

And because he was not only 100% man and 100% God, he was able to wipe away our sins forever and ever and ever. If you and I are to be saved, we have to have a Savior who can pay for our sins but who can pay for it eternally without taking eternity to do it. And that’s why it was essential that Jesus be born of a virgin and that the spirit of God would conceive within her the very substance and the essence of God in the very nature of God in Jesus Christ.

So that as he came into this world, he was 100% God and 100% man. The Bible declares God himself saying, I, even I am the Lord. And besides me, there is no Savior.

It is only God himself who can save your soul. It is only Jesus who can forgive you of your sins. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no man cometh unto the father but by me.

You’re not gonna get to heaven by being religious. You’re not gonna get to heaven by being better than the other guy. Some people are under the false understanding that somehow if their good outweighs their bad, they’re gonna be okay with God that he’s got a heavenly scale up there and he’s weighing out our good and our bad.

But friends, I want you to know that no matter how much good you and I do, it would never be enough for us to enter into heaven. And the Bible says that our righteousness, meaning the best of Mike Sanders and the best of you is like a filthy rag before God. And he’s not just talking about that filthy rag that is sitting in the kitchen sink that has been sitting there for several months that you wash these wonderful dishes with, but he’s talking about a filthy rag that the lepers used.

And they would come to this place where different rags were laid out under the sun and they would take those rags and they would wipe all the pus that was on their body spewing from their wounds. And rather than running it down to the laundromat, they laid it on the rock to dry out and the next leper would come and wipe their body down. And if you had ever thought, hey, somehow maybe my righteousness is pretty incredible and maybe there’s something within me so good that I would be worthy to enter into heaven.

This metaphor that God gives us that our righteousness is as filthy rags crushes that very thought and makes us to have to come to the understanding that the best of Mike Sanders falls miserably short of the righteousness of God. Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds the Pharisees, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God. You and I, because many of us have been taught about the Pharisees, we think in terms of negativity, obviously, because they were very hypocritical and they were very prideful and condescending.

But in Jesus’s day, Pharisees were considered the best of the best. They were considered the cream of the crop. They were considered some of the finest people.

And so when Jesus made this bold declaration that unless your righteousness exceeds the Pharisees, you cannot enter into heaven. Again, it was shocking to his hearers, perhaps even as shocking as you might hear. If I were to say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of mother Teresa, or perhaps I might say to you that if your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of Billy Graham, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.

You would think, man, Mike, those people did so much for society and they sacrificed so much for the poor and they did so much in telling others. How is it that you could say that? Because even the best of all of us, even the best in the cream of the crop of our own society, that unless our righteousness exceeds their righteousness, we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. And that’s why Jesus came.

And that’s why we celebrate Christmas. Because Jesus Christ came as the son of God, 100% God, 100% man. He walked on this earth and he lived a sinless life.

He obeyed every aspect of the law, different aspects of the law that you and I could never obey. He obeyed it in its minutest detail. He fulfilled it all.

And then he offered himself up as a sacrifice for your sins and my sins. He went to the cross to pay the penalty of sin. For the wages of sin is what, church? Death.

It is Jesus who died on the cross for you. He took the punishment. I like to put it like this.

He took the wrath of God for the sins of mankind so that you and I could take on his righteousness, his grace, his love, his forgiveness, and we could stand before God Almighty and we could be welcomed into our heavenly home, not because of our righteousness and not because of all the good that we have done and not because we’re more religious than the other guy, but because of what Christ did in coming to this earth, living a sinless life and dying on the cross for my sins. And friends, it is that mission, it is that purpose that reminds me that Jesus truly is God. The fourth thing that I want you to see this morning in our text is that Isaiah the prophet predicts Jesus’s deity.

Now, when Matthew was writing this gospel under the inspiration of the Spirit, he was writing to a Jewish community and they would be very familiar with the Old Testament. They would be very familiar with the prophets proclaiming the coming of a Messiah. They would understand what is being said and what Matthew wants them to grasp is that Jesus is that fulfillment of what the prophets spoke about.

So let’s look in verse 22. So all this was done, what was done? The birth of Jesus. All of the, what has been spoken of relating to the virgin birth, that he was conceived in the womb of Mary through the Holy Spirit.

So all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, behold, the virgin shall be with a child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us. The Bible teaches us something very profound here, that the prophets had already spoken. They had already said this was going to happen.

So what Matthew does is take them back to what the prophet Isaiah had said, and more specifically, what had been said in Isaiah chapter seven and verse 14. Now, what were the circumstances in this verse? There were armies that were attacking the kingdom of Judah, and they were led by King Ahaz. And fear had gripped Ahaz as he began to realize that he was under attack.

And God instructed the prophet Isaiah to go to the king and to remind him that he had a responsibility to come to God and ask for a sign. But the king in his stubbornness and the king in his pride refused to look to God and to look to God for a sign of hope and help. And so here’s what the scripture says that the prophet said to Ahaz.

I’m in Isaiah 7, 14. Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name.

What church? Emmanuel. Emmanuel, meaning God with us. Had the king been smart, he would have looked to God.

It would be smart if our politicians would learn to look to God, amen? If they would seek God for a sign, if they would seek God for the help and the hope that is so desperately needed. But sometimes politicians are so full of themselves, they can’t see beyond themselves. And I know that may upset you, but don’t be upset because in the Old Testament, they had the same problem in that they would have political leaders who were full of pride.

And yet Ahaz refused to look to God. And so Matthew explained, hey, this sign is really Jesus himself. Isaiah 7, 14 is fulfilled right now in what I’m telling you about the birth of Jesus Christ.

We again see the prophet in Isaiah chapter nine and verse six saying, for a child will be born to us. A son will be given to us and the government will rest on his shoulders and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

Friends, in all of those titles of the names of Jesus is the answer to every dilemma in your heart. It is the fulfillment of every desire in your life. For Jesus Christ will satisfy all that you ever desired in your heart and in your mind.

And though the world is looking for peace and though people are looking for peace within their own families and they are looking for peace in their own hearts, it is only found in this child named Jesus Christ. And I want you to know that this is not only foretelling the birth of Christ, but it is reminding us as we study deeper that one day Jesus is coming back and he is going to destroy all the enemies of God and all the governments that hate God and all the governments that wanna kick God out and he will establish his own physical kingdom on this earth and we as believers will rule and reign with Jesus Christ. It’s gonna be awesome, church.

It’s so mind-blowing and beyond what you could even really grasp. The Bible says as a believer that you will be a judge. It’s hard to believe when you think about the miracle of the birth of Jesus Christ that he came to die on a cross and we know the world makes Christmas into something that it’s really not about all the material stuff, but for us as believers, it’s a celebration of eternal life and that our sins are paid for on the cross through the resurrection.

So I pray that as we head into the new year, into Christmas day, that you and I will be reflecting on the significance of our Savior coming to this earth, Emmanuel, God with us. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.

The post Who Is He in Yonder Stall? first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on What is Hell Like?. He will be reading out of Matthew 25: 41-46.

I just think I’m doing enough good out there and God’s going to give me that opportunity to go into heaven. But I’m here to tell you that God doesn’t grade on a curve and God doesn’t weigh your good against your bad. Here’s the only thing that matters.

Do you have faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church and we welcome you to the Hope Worth Having radio broadcast. We’re delighted that you’ve tuned in and we look forward to sharing God’s Word with you today. We’re going to be in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, and we’re going to talk about what is hell like.

Now, some people don’t even believe in hell, but I’m telling you, friends, hell is real. It’s a place that you want to shun and you certainly want to turn your heart towards God and live for Jesus Christ. Let’s get into our study.

In the Bible this morning, I want you to join me in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25. The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, our focus will be verse 41 through 46. We’re in this series on five questions about heaven and five questions about hell.

The most prolific teacher of hell in all of scripture was the Lord Jesus himself. Did you know that Jesus talked about hell more than he did heaven? He gave over 70 references to hell in the scriptures. Teaching on hell is really the most compassionate and merciful act that one could do.

Warning people of the reality of hell is a very loving, gracious, and kind thing to do. And most importantly, it’s important to warn self-righteous religious people that they are going to end up unintentionally in hell. And this is something that we cannot retreat from.

And we think about the scripture reading that we experienced earlier in our service, and I guarantee you there was never a moment in the rich man’s life that he thought he was going to hell. But yet, his life ended up there because he did not have a relationship with Jesus Christ. And hell is full of people who are unintentionally there.

They didn’t plan on it, and they thought they were okay because they were involved in all these rituals, and they were religious, and they partook of whatever the church might require of them or the religion might require of them. Only to find out that it’s not about rituals, but it’s about a relationship, and a relationship with Jesus Christ. We cannot forget the words of our Savior in Matthew 7 in which he said, depart from me because I never knew you.

And that’s the key. How do you get to heaven? It’s who you know. But if you’re to get to heaven, you’ve got to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

We’ll talk more about that at the conclusion of our sermon. But I want us to learn in Matthew 25 some key points here this morning. I want you to pick up with me.

Jesus again is speaking to a religious crowd, and he is reminding them of what the future judgment is waiting for those who do not believe. In verse 41 of chapter 25, he says, then he will also say to those on the left hand, depart from me, you cursed into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food.

I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not take me in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. Then they also will answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you? And then he will answer them saying, assuredly I say to you in as much as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.

And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. What do we need to learn this morning on this great question, what is hell like? Well, the first thing I want you to learn is there is a real place called hell. Jesus spoke of heaven, but he also spoke of hell as a real place.

And we see in his teaching throughout the scriptures that he always is referencing in Matthew 23, verse 33, again speaking mainly to those comfortable religious people, Jesus called them serpents, brood of vipers. How can you escape the condemnation of hell? If hell were a myth, Jesus certainly would never have given such a strong warning and a frightening description of hell. If hell was a myth, then Jesus was the most deceived person ever on the planet of the earth.

And so I want you to know that Jesus was very clear that there is a real place called hell. He referenced it. He taught that those who believe in Christ spend eternity with him and those who reject Christ and do not know Christ as their savior, they are separated from God in a place called hell.

Now, everyone dies. One out of one person dies. That’s the latest stat.

But not everyone goes to heaven. Not everyone does. Again, look at verse 46 of chapter 25.

He says, these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. There is a contrast here of heaven and hell, eternal life with Christ, everlasting punishment in this place that is called hell. We need to know that it is a real place.

The second thing I want you to learn is that hell was made for Satan and his angels. We read in the scriptures in verse 41 that Jesus said, those who do not believe he will tell them to depart from me, you curse it into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. If you’re not familiar and maybe don’t fully understand that God had created Lucifer and Lucifer was the great angelic choir leader of heaven.

And Isaiah teaches us that he was a glorious and majestic creation of God, but he became so full of himself and he lifted up his heart against God and he desired to be God. And over and over again, he said, I will, I will, I will. And this pride led to Satan and a third of the angels being kicked out of heaven and cast into hell, a place that was prepared for them.

So I want you to know that hell was not originally intended for those who would be born into this world, but it was intended for Satan and his angels. And scripture is clear that hell was not intended for us. But rather for Satan.

So God created hell for Satan and his angels or his demons who now crisscross the world, who now lead to so much havoc and chaos in this world. And one might say, why did God do that? Why did God do that? Why didn’t he just overpower and annihilate them? God created you and I, he created angels. He created Satan who was an angel.

His name was Lucifer. And he gave them the ability to choose and they could choose. You don’t want somebody to love you because they have to.

You don’t want somebody to be a robot. I mean, we’re all getting excited about AI, but listen, AI has no emotions. And what I want you to understand that what God desired out of his creation is that they would give glory to him out of their will, that they would choose to love him, obey him, and follow him, and worship him, and give glory to him.

And for those who would reject God and have nothing to do with God, they would be cast into everlasting punishment, a place that is called hell. Jesus prophesied about this day of judgment in which he will separate those who believe and those who do not believe. And he reminds us that if you believe in Christ, you will spend eternity with him.

We know that great verse in John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. What a wonderful promise, amen? But what I want you to note is those in this text, particularly verse 41 and 46, that the wicked, the unbeliever, share in the same fate as Satan and his demons, in that they do not believe in Christ. Revelation 20, 10 says, and the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Now, some might embrace a teaching, well, they just become annihilated. They just dissipate. There’s no more existence.

Annihilism is what is often referred to by scholars. But I want you to know the Bible teaches just the opposite, that those who do not believe in Christ will be not only separated from God in a place called hell, but they will suffer everlasting punishment. And as if you did not get it, the Bible says in verse 10 of chapter 20 of Revelation that they’ll be tormented day and night forever and ever.

There’ll be no end to the torment. The third thing I want you to learn today is that hell is a place of eternal fire. This always brings up a lot of good questions.

The Bible says in verse 41 that it’s everlasting fire. It’s everlasting fire. The fire that you and I understand in this world is certainly a distinct fire.

But Jesus in other passages of scripture would describe hell as a place of outer darkness. How is it that fire that gives off light could somehow lead to a place that hell being of outer darkness? What I want you to know is that we may not fully understand the elements of what this fire is, but it is a real fire, and so much so that it would bring torment and suffering and punishment to those who would experience it. And in some way, somehow, and there is scientifically proven that sometimes fire does not always give off light.

Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher of the 18th century, said this about hell. There is a real fire in hell, as truly as you have a real body. A fire exactly like that which we have on this earth, except this.

It will not consume you, though it will torture you. So it’s a unique fire and something that will continue to bring punishment. Revelation 14 11 says this, the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night.

I do not say this gleefully, nor do I say this with great joy, but hell is a place of constant torment. Certainly not a place that you want to gather with your friends. It’s certainly not a place that any of you want to go to, or that you want any of your family to go to.

If nothing inspires us to share the gospel with our family, surely the understanding of the torment of hell would motivate us to overcome our shyness and our lack of courage and be bold in telling others about Jesus. I want you to learn something else, is that hell is separation from God. I want you to take your Bible this morning, and I want you to go to 2 Thessalonians.

Now, different scholars have debated this, but I want you, again, to know that everything that we strive to teach you, we always want to make sure it aligns with the Word of God. That it’s not just the thought process of Mike, or that some kind of a ritual religious system that he is imposing upon you, but rather that we can actually say, this is what the Word of the Lord says to you. For the Word of God has authority, and it has authority over us as believers.

So I’ll help you understand some of the confusion, but let’s just read 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, and let’s look at verse 8 and 9. And again, the Bible reminds us of this great judgment. In flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God. Underscore that, because it’s not those who aren’t religious enough, or didn’t go to church enough, but those who do not know God.

On those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is the gospel? We know the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection. What is the response to be the gospel that Jesus gives to us? It is to repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

When Peter stood before the thousands on the day of Pentecost, he implored them and pleaded with them that they would repent and believe in Jesus Christ. That’s what it means to obey the gospel. Verse 9, referring to these who do not know God and do not obey the gospel, these shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power.

So what does that mean? Because we understand that God is omnipresent. We understand that God is everywhere at the same time, and we embrace that and believe that, because the Bible does teach that. But is there a contradiction? What I want you to know is that there is what we understand as the general presence of God that is everywhere, but there is also the manifested presence of God.

Even the book of Proverbs reminds us that the manifested presence of God is before us, whether we are among the just or the unjust. The sun shines upon the just and the unjust, and the rain comes upon the just and the unjust, and that all that we experience in life, we are experiencing many times the grace of God, and we are experiencing the blessing of God, but the beauty of that sun rising. Some people hadn’t seen the sun rise in quite some time, but you know, you rise and you see the beauty of the sun, and you see the creation, and you see God’s handiwork all around us.

Not only do I get to enjoy that as a believer, but unbelievers get to enjoy it, right? That’s the manifested presence that is all around us. We experience his presence. We sense his presence as we are worshiping the Lord in different aspects of our life, whether it’s personally or it’s corporately in the family of God.

Maybe we’re out there witnessing, or maybe we’re sharing, caring, and helping others, and we just have a sense of the presence of God in our life. This is what we are talking about. His manifested presence that often appears into our life and begins to bring great strength and comfort and peace in our hearts.

It’s not that we can always fully explain it. The Bible says we’re given a peace that passes all understanding. It’s not of the understanding of the world, but there’s just a peace that God puts upon his people, that they are not wrapped up in the anxieties of the world, or perhaps even the worrisome of the problems of certain circumstances in your life.

But God has just granted this manifested presence of peace in your hearts, and that’s what I’m talking about in this passage in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 8 and 9. It’s not that they’ll be separated from the omnipresence of God, but they will be separated from the presence of God that manifests itself in his love, his grace, his forgiveness, his peace, his hope. So many different things that we could talk about in relation to the presence of God, and the Bible tells us that he gives those perfect peace whose mind, as the King James says, stays. It means that are focused on him.

The reason so many of you are so full of anxiety and trouble in your heart is because you got your eyes on people, and I’m just going to tell you, people are never going to meet all your expectations. You better just adjust that, and you got to know that people will fail you, and it sometimes can be very painful and disappointing to your heart. But let me tell you, get your mind focused on Christ, and he will give you that peace, and he will give you that strength to just keep moving forward for him.

That’s what I want you to know. That will not exist in hell. They will not experience the love of God, those who do not believe in Christ.

In hell, people will be isolated from God’s manifested presence, and they will be isolated from his goodness, his loving kindness, and all that is pleasant that you and I enjoy in the general creation of this world. Speaking on hell is very difficult for me. It’s very, you know, just kind of rips at my heart, and so in preparing this sermon, I wanted to make sure that you understood some things.

That what all we’ve described about what hell is like, I want you to remember that Jesus is our only ticket to heaven. And I want you to understand that because Jesus was very straightforward. He said in John 14, verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus was not pretending. He says what he means, and he means what he says. And so Jesus is the only way, and I want you to be encouraged that the reason Jesus is the only way is because he went to the cross relating to Holy Week and coming into the culmination of the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

But do not forget that Jesus Christ endured much anguish, and that he went to the cross on your behalf, my behalf, and that he endured literally, if you can, without misunderstanding what I’m saying to you this morning, Jesus took your hell on the cross. He took the wrath of God. He took the punishment of sin.

The Bible says for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There are no perfect people. They’re just not around.

I know there’s a lot of people who think they’re perfect, amen? And we know that they circulate into our circles, and they sometimes annoy us and frustrate us, but the bottom line is that we are all sinful, selfish, flawed people. And that would help you as you’re dealing with people, by the way. Just understand we start out with this premise.

That would help you in your parenting. The greatest parenting lesson a parent could ever learn is that that little child is a sinner in need of a Savior. But that would cause me to depart from what I want to teach you, and that is that you need to understand that God doesn’t grade on a curve.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to people and I said, you know, how do you know you’re going to heaven? And they say to me, well, I just feel like my good is going to outweigh my bad. I just think I’m doing enough good out there, Mike, that it will just on the scale of life will help me, and God’s going to give me that opportunity to go into heaven. But I’m here to tell you that God doesn’t grade on a curve, and God doesn’t weigh your good against your bad.

Here’s the only thing that matters. Do you have faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Did you remember the words that Jesus said? Do you remember what we read to you? The Bible says that they did not know God. Jesus said, depart from me because I never knew you.

And I know that goes against our American idealism and that we work hard and we pull ourselves up from the bootstraps and we make ourselves something in this world. And I do want you to be a hard worker, and I want you to see dignity in work, and I want you to see great value in all of that. But when it comes to your spiritual life, Jesus already did all the work on the cross.

Can God’s people say amen? And that’s why we celebrate. That’s why we’re rejoicing, because we’re not out there trying to earn points with God. We’re not out there trying to merit our salvation.

We are coming out of great gratitude, and we are putting our faith in Jesus Christ. So how should we then live? Well, consider these thoughts this morning, and that is, first of all, we need to trust God with our questions. Now, a lot of people have a hard time because they have so many questions about faith, God, and Jesus, and they can’t seem to take that step of faith until all their questions are answered.

These are people that overthink everything. You ever met these people? They overthink and they analyze till they paralyze. You know what I mean? And I have to be honest with you, and I know you’re not going to like this, but I’d rather make a bad decision than no decision.

Some of you, you haven’t come to Christ because you’ve got 30 more questions, and until those 30 questions, well, we certainly can do our best. Many, many years ago, after the first Iraq war, when I pastored in Indiana, one of the wives came to me and asked, would you meet with my husband? He has a lot of questions about the Bible, and I’ve been praying that he’ll get saved, and I said, I’m glad to. Well, it ended up that we would meet every Monday night at 6 p.m., and I would try to answer his questions, but every time I answered a question, he had 10 more.

What I’m trying to say is that we’re never going to get to all the answers. Here’s what I want you to do, that just live by faith, not explanations. Now, I’m not asking you to check out your brain, and I’m not asking you to not try to understand, but I am saying to you, there comes a point you become the dog chasing the tail, and the secret things belong to the Lord, and if there was a good answer for everything, I promise you, long before Mike, it would have been discovered.

And so, there are things that we need to just trust God, and that we have faith, and we believe, and even though we may deal with doubt, that doubt does not keep us from having faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we study the great book of faith in Hebrews chapter 11, we see that even these great men and women who made the hall of faith still dealt with doubt in their hearts. And I want you to know, doubt does not disqualify you from following Christ.

And we think about this great man, John the Baptist, the Bible described him as a very courageous and bold man who stood before thousands and preached to them that they should repent and believe. He witnessed at the baptism of Christ, the Father saying from heaven, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. He witnessed the falling of the Spirit like a dove upon Christ.

He experienced and learned at the very feet of Jesus Christ in all the great miracles and ministries that he conducted. John said, he must increase and I must what? Little did John know what he was saying, so much so that when he stood before the king and called the king out for his adulterous lifestyle, the king had John thrown in prison. John was definitely going from the throngs, the thousands of people to a lonely jail cell.

He must decrease. He was so discouraged and so filled with doubt, his disciples trying to keep him encouraged came to visit John and John asked his disciples, and this is all recorded in the gospels, and John asked his disciples, he said, would you go ask Jesus if he’s the one or do we look for another? And I know you’ve been there and I know you’ve questioned and doubted, but that never stripped you of your faith. Do you understand that? And when John’s disciples came to Jesus, Jesus said, go tell them.

And he made this long list of all the wonderful things that were happening and people getting saved and the miracles that were happening. And though John did not get to experience all that in that he was decreasing, he was a man of great faith and Jesus gave a great epitaph to his life as being a man of faith. How should we then live? Not only to trust God with our questions, but to tell people the good news about Jesus.

You see, before Jesus ascended into heaven, he gave a commission to each one of his disciples and that was to go. It was not to sit on the couch and eat Doritos, but it was to go and make disciples of all nations. All that you’re doing in this world, even your career, even your responsibilities and your roles is all about making disciples and you need to gear everything in that direction.

Now you can’t go to work and say, hey we’re going to have church today, or you can’t go to work and say we’re going to have Sunday school in the secular world. But what you can do is work with people one-on-one and you can witness for Christ and you can encourage people and you can share God’s word with people. And you know we got these little contraptions, it’s called the cell phone, and you could share and you can use it as a tool of discipleship.

But get the good news out church. The third thing I want you to do is how then should we live in light of the fact that hell is real is that you and I need to be winsome people, not combative. Now we see this in 2 Timothy chapter 2. We certainly understand that our goal is to win as many people as we can.

And I want to tell you, treating people like trash and calling them names and yelling and screaming at them isn’t going to help. As I tell people and remind people, as I witness for Christ, I just gently lead people one step closer to the cross. Our job is to be a part of the rescue squad.

But I want you to be out there winsome and I want you to be the kind of person who’s trying to reach people. And I want you to be the kind of person who’s making the case for Christ everywhere you go in your life with your words and how you live. Some of you are retired and you say, well you know I’m getting bored in my retirement.

Well that’s your fault. You know get back out there. There’s a shortage of workers so get back out there.

We could use you. The last thing I want to share with you is to remove every obstacle you can that is hindering you from being an effective witness for Christ. Here’s what I mean.

In 1 Corinthians 9 the apostle said that he became all things to all men that he might win some. It doesn’t mean that he became a wrestler so he could win wrestlers. He didn’t become a drunkard so he could become a drunkard.

But I’ll tell you what he was willing to do. He was willing to sacrifice some things so he could relate and connect and reach people for Christ. Now let me just say this to those of you that are here and you do not know Christ.

I want to say this. How do you escape hell? And it is simply this. By believing the saving gospel.

Believing in Jesus Christ who died for your sins and trust in him alone for your salvation. What does that mean? It means to turn away from your sin and your selfishness and to embrace Christ as your Lord and your Savior. And what will be the result? God will pour into your heart a renewed spirit and he will grant you a new life and forgiveness and grace in your life.

And you will spend eternity forever in heaven. And so we understand that hell is real and we understand that the torment is real and it motivates us as believers. But if you’re an unbeliever today, may the reality of hell motivate you to escape it by believing in Jesus Christ.

We’re not gleeful when we preach on hell. We’re not wanting anybody to go to hell. We certainly desire the salvation of all and we are like what the scripture says, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

Please make sure that heaven is your home and that you have put your faith in Jesus Christ for your true salvation. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post What is Hell Like? first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How Will God Assign Rewards in Heaven? Part 2. He will be reading out of 1st Corinthians 3: 8-15.

Some of you will spend hours getting your kids to practice and games and I’m not opposed to any of that But you won’t sit down and pray with them. You won’t put any effort in making sure they are being fed Spiritually because we are more Interested in the temporal than we are the eternal Hello, this is pastor Mike Sanders with hope worth having radio broadcasts coming in to your home your vehicle or wherever you may be listening to us and we want to share the truth of God’s word and we hope that God’s word will Be an encouragement to you will draw you to him and that you will be a faithfully devoted follower of Christ Now today we’re going to be in first corinthians chapter three again We’re continuing our study on how will God assign rewards in heaven? So let’s get right into our study So We are called to build our lives on the rock jesus christ The storms came to both lives in this parable that jesus shared Both of them had troubles and trials and the rains and the winds poured down upon them Just because you’re a christian does not mean you won’t have problems Doesn’t mean you won’t have struggles and you won’t have trials in your life We all have different types of struggles and trials in our life But we all have to endure but the difference is the foundation of your life For the one that built his life upon the shifting sands of the world his house crumbled his life was destroyed He could not handle the weight of the struggles and problems of this world But the one who built his life on the solid rock of jesus christ He was able to endure and his house was strong and he was able to continue on And so it is in my spiritual life That when I build my life on jesus christ That I will be able to continue on for the lord even through the trials jesus said in matthew 7 24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine And doeth them I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock Here’s a question What foundation are you building on? Some of you your focus is your career Some of you your focus is maybe a particular person that you think so dearly of And some of you it’s about money and some of you it’s about an experience And some of you are building your life on the things of this world and i’m going to tell you something You live long enough And you’re going to find out none of that holds up It all collapses It all comes tumbling down and that the only thing that lasts and is enduring is the true foundation of jesus christ And you are implored and encouraged today to give your life fully freely to jesus christ to build On the foundation of jesus christ in your life I heard the story That early one morning That there was a fire that broke out in a house on a narrow street The alarm was sounded by a policeman on duty However, flames were leaping high into the air before the fire engines could get to the scene and suddenly a young man Had appeared at an upper window in his pajamas Firefighters quickly placed a ladder against the burning building nevertheless to the consternation of all He refused to come down Shouting out to the firemen that he first had to get dressed The firemen pleaded come as you are come as you are but to no avail this young man would not Climb out the window and get on the ladder and escape They tried to ascend on the stairs from below but were turned back As the wind fanned the flames into furry When the rescuer tried To enter through a window the heat and the smoke forced him away and suddenly the stairs gave way and the roof fell in The man waited too long And he was buried beneath the ruins And how much greater tragedy awaits all those who refuse to flee the wrath that is to come upon this world Because they want to go do this or they want to go do that They want to live their life a little bit or they want to try something else my friends many have rejected god’s provision of Salvation and god’s provision of safety and god’s provision of forgiveness only to find that their life Was ruined and today I want you to remember that the most important thing and the most important message I could give you Is to make sure you built your life on the foundation of jesus christ Now the second thing that I want you to learn this morning is that god will inspect the materials Not only is the foundation going to be inspected, but the materials in which we build In what our work is for god now We jump down to verse 12 and 13 of our text and he says now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold Silver and precious stones wood hay and straw each one’s work will become clear For the day meaning the day of judgment will declare it Because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test each one’s work of what sort it is each member of god’s family Has an assignment from heaven It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been saved or how little you’ve been saved Friends every one of us has assignment from god And we have a responsibility before god and we have a job to do for the lord. Jesus christ And one day you’re going to stand before god in the presence of god and you’re going to have to give an account for the assignment That he has given you Now you cannot say like maybe some students have said through the years that my dog ate it Or you cannot say well I was not feeling too good and so I was not able to get to it.

You and I may have thousands of excuses of why we did not fulfill our assignment But we will stand before god without excuse for he has given to us An opportunity that we might fulfill this assignment But not only is it important that we understand we have an assignment from god But that we understand that god cares about the materials that we use We are called to use materials that are suitable for the purpose and plans of god in this assignment In our two verses that we just read in verse 12 and 13 We learned that the building materials look again in verse 12 gold silver precious stones wood hay Straw you will note that these fall into two categories And that they are listed in descending order of value That the one category at the outset is durable materials that can withstand the test of fire And that the others at the end the wood hay and stubble would be consumed by the fire Now what that tells me first of all is that there are christians that are building their christian life and they are doing their assignment and they are building with Gold and they are building as the text says silver and precious stones But that there are other christians who are using wood hay and straw The bible is telling us that the material We use matters to god Are you with me church? I want you to understand something God has not called us to be haphazard Unintentional he’s not called us to be lazy. He has not called us to just slide by What we are doing is of great value and it will be tested before god almighty one day You’ll stand before god and give a account an account of your work for god And I want you to make sure that you understand that so I wrote down some things that I think will help you that things that I would put into the category of gold silver and precious stones When you are building your christian life when you are doing your work for christ There are some things that you need to remember are gold silver and precious stones And there’s things that are wood hay and straw but here they are write them down First of all, it’s important for you As a builder to begin with the end in mind When we built the fellowship hall we had the drawings we had the end in mind we understood What was the ultimate goal? We went up and did the science lab recently and we had the end in mind We’re getting ready to renovate the gymnasium and get it all out in the kitchen and add on some classrooms and we’re getting ready to Do some more work, but we’ve got the end in mind. We’re working with the architect with the end in Mind, we’re going to do some renovations in the auditorium and we’ve got the end in mind When we started doing the lobby there were a few complainers I had already during covid thrown away all the pacifiers.

So I had to go out and find some new ones Just kidding now if you can’t handle pastor mike’s teasing you won’t make it nor survive here Just letting you know But we had an end in mind. We could see the vision we could see what needed to be done Others couldn’t why are you doing that? Why are you doing this? Why would you get rid of this floor that has been here for 50 some years? I mean we could still use it even though it’s popping up from the ground and people are tripping over it It’s falling apart. We could still use this half over here and maybe just replace a couple pieces over there pastor mike.

No No We begin with the end in mind And just like you do in a building and just like you do in construction So you do in your spiritual life you begin with the end in mind now I know there’s a few people out there. You’re just kind of guiding sliding through life. I got you But i’m different I got goals I got things I want to achieve and accomplish and we recognize those goals We evaluate those goals and we continue to push ourselves towards these goals spiritual goals in our life And we want to reach them and I know that sometimes people say well We just kind of take it as it comes pastor well friends You’re like charlie brown They took him to target practice We’re bow and arrows and they had the target there right in front of him and he pulled back his arrow on his bow And he let it go And that arrow went everywhere and anywhere and it finally landed somewhere And so charlie brown went and grabbed the target and moved it over to where the arrow was I think that’s how some christians are We have no purpose we have no goals we have no steps we have no plan we have no strategy We’re just kind of shooting it out there and we’ll just kind of move the target and say yeah, we always intended to be here You know i’m saying But no god wants us to have the end in mind.

Where do you want to be spiritually? Where do you want to be in your christian life five years from now? What are some things that you would like to accomplish as a believer in the lord jesus christ? I’m not asking you to go out there and have multiple crusades and filled up stadiums. I’m just asking you How about this? Could you have a goal read the bible through in a year? Could you have that kind of goal? Some of you say i’ve been doing that for 10 years 20 years 30 years great. How about this? Could you have a goal That you’re going to study the bible That you’re going to memorize bible verses there’s all kinds of goals We don’t have time to go through them all but what I want you to know the kind of things that last with god Is that when we begin with the end in mind? That we’re not haphazard out there.

What is going to stand the test is we understand There needs to be a goal the other area that I think is important is to emphasize the eternal over the temporal To emphasize the eternal over the temporal Now look, he says in verse 14 if anyone’s work which he has built on it endures He will receive a reward Now sometimes there’s flash in the pans. Sometimes they’re shooting stars Sometimes people are more interested in the external. They’re wowed by the razzle dazzle and the fancy But what god cares about is the eternal What god cares about is what is happening spiritually? What is happening in your heart eternally? Have you put your focus there? Have you put your energy there? Have you put your time? Yes, there’s a lot of good things you can be involved in church and we don’t doubt any of those And we do not condemn them that they are not good But the question is are they the best? And what is it that determines the best for the believer in jesus christ it is That we focus on the eternal over the temporal But not only that we are focused on what is eternal Because I want you to know heaven and hell is all that really matters I mean some of you will spend hours getting your kids to practice and games and i’m not opposed to any of that but you won’t sit down and Read the bible to them You won’t pray with them You won’t put any time any effort in making sure they’re in sunday school that they’re in awana that they’re in church that they’re in The youth group that they’re in some kind of a ministry where they are being fed spiritually because we are more interested in the temporal Than we are the eternal and I know That rubs people the wrong way But i’m here to tell you That you aren’t going to be able to stand before god and say, you know god I taught my son how to shoot a basketball Don’t I get any credit? Ain’t gonna matter Because it’s temporal What matters is their eternal? soul Are you with me? Some of you saying I don’t have anybody to talk to about jesus.

Why don’t you start with your children? Why don’t you start with your grandchildren? Why don’t you start with people that are right in your circle of influence? Okay, another area is the internal over the external Now here i’m talking about the heart What matters most to god is the heart the bible says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks I’m telling you that god cares about our heart The bible says that jesus declared to the pharisees that they had all this garb and all this dress and fancy dress that they had But he said that their hearts were far from god You can be religious and be far from god You can be a person who go through the motions of rituals and all that and here’s the thing You don’t even know jesus christ is your savior The internal is more important than the external I want you to understand That quality of your spiritual life is more important than quantity It’s not the length You can’t sit there and brag about how long you’ve been saved in a christian When your life you’re still spiritually immature The apostle said I can’t talk to you as mature people in first corinthians 3 at the beginning He said I have to talk to you as babes in christ And that’s the way I have to do sometimes I say one thing and I know it’ll trigger somebody they’ll have a meltdown they’ll start crying and i’ll have to go find that package of pacifiers Are you with me? But here’s what i’m saying. You ought to grow in the quality of your spiritual life You ought to grow in the quality of your spiritual life because let me tell you something the world’s tough The devil’s not sitting on the sidelines It isn’t going to get any easier I know that some of you all think i’m crazy And I half believe you But I want to tell you one time I was driving a bus and I was telling my sunday school class and this little four-year-old girl came to me She said pastor mike. They’re calling me names back there on the bus And I said, you know what you’re gonna have to get tough Because all your life people are going to call you names You see what i’m saying And and you see we parent the wrong way We think we’re going to right every wrong in this world rather than teaching our children to be strong in their faith And to be strong in their walk with the lord that other people can’t define them or label them That they find their identity in what christ says about them rather than what other people say about them I’m telling you that’s quality over quantity.

You might be able to squash something little at the moment But friends when you teach that child To find their identity in jesus christ rather than in the world and what others say you’re going to build a strong believer Guess what? People are going to call you names here. I am. Did you guys know that i’m 54? I know I don’t look at do I? It’s stunning I’m, just teasing again, but I just found out this week.

Somebody called me a name I mean I tell people if i’m going to call you a name at least i’ll do it in front of your face. Amen I’m, not going to do it behind your back stab you in the back right You see what i’m saying here i’m 54 and people are still calling me names But i’m not shaking I’m, not breaking I’m, not falling apart having a meltdown crying Do you understand what i’m saying? They’re, never going to stop calling me names When I get to heaven people are going to huddle together and say, well, you know what this is what we thought about mike And it doesn’t matter because all that really matters is your heart And your relationship with jesus christ and it matters where you’re at Spiritually in your life and you need to have a quality christian life and you need to have a life that is committed to the lord Jesus christ Here’s another piece of advice i’d give you is to never cut corners in your christian life Never cut corners how, many times have, we had to deal with this or that we love our forefathers thank god for every one of them But i’m not sure they were always thinking about building with the best material And so we got to come back let me just give you a word of wisdom guys Your wife’s asking you to fix something change something or upgrade something All right, and i’m going to get you in trouble you’re, going to be mad at me because your wife’s going to be quoting Me from here on out Okay, do it right the first time Because when you got to come back and fix it It’s going to cost you more amen People say, well we don’t like this or that and i say let, me tell you if you, don’t do it right now If you, don’t do it right now i’m going to tell you 20 years from now When it falls apart or 10 years from now or five years it’s going to be more expensive It’s going to be more expensive So be smart about that that’s just a little side advice hey i’m helping you ladies all right it’s time to rip out that Paneling put up, some real walls That have insulation amen Don’t be mad at me now let me tell you another thing that i want you to understand And that is that you need to commit to obedience and faithfulness to god Now look at verse 16 and 17. Do you not know? that you Are the temple of god And that the spirit of god dwells in you If anyone defiles the temple of god god will destroy him for the temple of god is holy Which temple you are What he’s trying to teach us is that we need to live lives of purity and obedience and faithfulness to god He’s teaching us that as you’re building your spiritual life Don’t forget that your body is the temple of the spirit of god and he wants you to be faithful and he wants you to Be obedient friends there is nothing more important in your life Than being faithful and obedient to god Can i tell you that friends You need to make a commitment that it doesn’t matter.

We’re going to be faithful to god We’re going to be obedient to god for that’s all that matters when I stand before god I want to be a person who’s lived a pure life who is obedient to god who is faithful to god That’s what I want Now there’s so much more that I could tell you about material But I think you can study them on your own the scriptures are filled With the material that we ought to use when we are building our christian life But the third thing and final thing that I want you to note is that god will assign rewards For our work The bible teaches us that god will scrutinize the work and bestow rewards upon us accordingly Go back to verse 8 and note at the end. Each one will receive his own reward according to his own Labor Did you get that? And then we look at verse 13 He says each one’s work will become clear for the day will declare it because it will be revealed by fire And the fire will test each one’s work of what sort it is What material did you build with verse 12 gold silver precious stones or wood hay and straw? Did you build that what would be wood? Hay and straw would be like you did it for your selfish reasons Your motives were all about you and your agenda Rather than the cause of christ And look at verse 14 if anyone’s work which he has built on it endures he will receive a what? Yes, you’re going to be rewarded for your faithfulness and obedience to god the fiery tests will expose what truly Last and it’s going to be beautiful I want you to see in verse 15 if anyone’s work is burned He will suffer loss He’s not talking about the loss of your salvation, but he’s talking about the loss of your rewards There will be some in heaven who will receive more rewards than others And you say we can’t do that because we need to have participation trophies That we need to get a medal or a trophy just because we showed up No, that’s not how it works in the kingdom of god god Will award you Based upon your obedience and your faithfulness to him and how you built the materials that you built with Note again, it’s not your salvation, but it is your awards again verse 15, but he himself will be saved Yet it’s so as through fire So it’s not that you’re losing your salvation it’s just that you if you choose to be a slacker you choose that i’m going to be a Sideline critic if you choose to say i’m going to just come sit and soak and do nothing in the church And i’m not going to do anything for my spiritual growth And i’m certainly not going to build on the things that will make me stronger and better christian that I just kind of want to Be a sunday morning christian and coast through my christian life Well friends you’ll get to heaven if you have the right foundation, but you won’t have that many awards If our work has been without quality If our work has been without commitment sacrifice dedication and faithfulness, there’ll be no reward But we are promised That if it is We will be awarded and god Will bless each of us with a reward according to his own labor Now I read the story of a band of musicians Who were in another country and they traveled from town to town presenting music to make a living And they had not been doing very well and times were hard and there was little money for any person to come to hear their music And even though their fee was small, they just could not attract a crowd Attendance had been falling off. And so early one evening the group decided to meet together and talk about their plight One said I see no reason for opening tonight another said it’s starting to snow And to make things worse we are going to have more bad weather And so they were talking back and forth what do we do Another said well Nobody cares Let’s just quit and let’s just call it off And let’s just give back their fees and let’s put this concert off And so they didn’t feel like they could do it, but there was another gentleman He was sitting in the group and they asked him.

What do you think and the man appealed? To the group and he said to them That I know you’re discouraged And I am too But we have a responsibility To those who might come And we will go on And moreover we will do our best We will do our best job of which we are capable tonight And it’s not the fault of those who came who are coming That the others do not And that they should not be punished with less than the best that we can give They were encouraged The musicians were heartened and so they decided they would move forward with the show and they never performed better than they ever had And they were excited about what they were able to accomplish and the show ended And this elderly gentleman Called the group back together After the small audience had left And in his hand was a note that someone had handed to him By one of the audience he was sitting in the audience And he said I want to read this note to you. Listen to me my friends He said I want to read a note that was handed to me And here it was. Thank you for a beautiful performance And it was signed simply Your King the greatest reward That we could receive Is well done Signed king jesus Well, it’s amazing to think about what heaven will be like And just thinking about the fact that god has made it possible for us through jesus christ to experience Eternal life with jesus christ and what a glorious Moment, that’ll be when we leave this world enter into that majestic world where we are with our savior and our loved ones Forever heaven’s going to be great But even on top of all that we’ve already shared god is going to reward you and god is going to show His love towards you by rewarding your faithfulness and your diligence for god, maybe you’ve been discouraged Maybe you’ve been thinking about walking away from your responsibilities at your church.

Don’t do it Stay faithful to god stay plugged in and continue to serve All the way up to the end and you let the lord determine your time and your seasons And we are just glad that we can be a part of it Now we want to encourage you to go to our website hopeworthhaving.com sign up for our daily Devotions if you go to hopeworthhaving.com sign up for daily devotions They’ll be sent each day to your inbox and you can begin the day with just a little devotion not long But something to keep your mind focused and encouraged as you walk with jesus christ take advantage of that opportunity This is pastor mike sanders reminding you that in christ there is hope worth having

The post How Will God Assign Rewards in Heaven? Part 2 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How Will God Assign Rewards in Heaven? Part 1. He will be reading out of 1st Corinthians 3: 8-15.

He’s not called us to be lazy. He is not called us to just slide by What we are doing is of great value and it will be tested before God Almighty One day you’ll stand before God and give an account of your work for God Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania We welcome you to the Hope Worth Having radio broadcast and we are excited to be able to be with you Thank you for tuning in today. We’re going to be in 1st Corinthians chapter 3 We’re learning about how God will assign rewards in heaven Yes, we do not earn our way to heaven But we have rewards waiting for those who faithfully serve him.

And so how are those assigned? We’re gonna look at that today. Join me as we study the Bible together This morning I want you to turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 3 We’ll be studying verses 8 through 15 if you’re visiting with us. Thank you for coming today being a part of our service We’re in the middle of a series in which I’ve entitled five questions about heaven and five questions about hell This is a good day to visit because we’re on the question of heaven and we’ve been singing about heaven We’ve been reflecting and meditating about what a day that will be what it means to us In our spiritual journey, but today I want us to think about this question in relation to heaven How will God? assign Rewards in heaven the Bible teaches us that we are going to be awarded for our faithfulness for our obedience to God Well, how will that manifest itself in accordance with the Word of God and I want us to look at that this morning Now one of the largest buildings in the United States is the Willis Tower It was formerly known as the Sears Tower built in 1973 in Chicago, Illinois There are only six other buildings in the world that are taller than the Willis Tower The Willis Tower is a hundred and ten stories high It is 1,000 454 feet high it contains 4.5 million square feet of floor space It took three years to build and at the time it cost over a hundred and fifty million dollars in the Willis Tower There are forty three thousand miles of telephone cable There are two thousand miles of electrical wiring.

There are 76,000 tons of steel there’s 16,000 bronze tinted windows and 25,000 miles of plumbing it Contains enough concrete to build an eight-lane highway for five miles The combined weight of the building is two hundred and twenty two thousand five hundred tons There are two thousand two hundred and thirty two steps from the ground floor to the roof The building is so tall that the visibility is 40 to 50 miles on a clear day The Willis Tower is an amazing building However, there is a more Significant building that is being built in our text today in 1st Corinthians The Apostle tells us about that building and he describes our role in its Construction look at verse 8 and 9 of 1st Corinthians chapter 3 the Bible says now he who plants and he who waters are one and Each one will receive his own reward According to his own labor for we are God’s fellow workers and you are God’s field You are God’s Building would you underscore that in your Bible that you are God’s building every believer is a careful builder Every believer is to be a careful believer and we have this responsibility of building our own Christian life and building the cause of Christ and building the church and accordingly how we do Will determine how God Awards us God will reward every believer for their service And he will do it at the final judgment when we stand before Christ He will award each of us according to the job that we have done Now I want us to learn three things out of this text that we’ll be sharing with you this morning Very important wants you to write these down If you aren’t a good writer, then go to the church app and you can follow along But number one is that God will inspect the foundation of our life Now let’s go to verse 10 and 11. We’ve already established that we are God’s building and we are building This great cause of the gospel and the Christian life, but in verse 10 He says according to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise Master builder I have laid the foundation and another builds on it But let each one take heed how he builds on it For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid which is Jesus Christ now any contractor will tell you that the foundation of a building Determines the quality of the building a faulty foundation will doom a building and the building will stand for a long time if the Foundation is solid and the foundation is right now The foundation of any building also determines the size of the building The foundation determines the shape and the strength of the structure when the Apostle makes the analogy Of how that he is one who is a master builder and that he has laid the foundation others build upon it He’s certainly talking about his church planting ministry where he would go out there and pioneer and he would win people to Christ and he would organize them and Mobilize them to be able to effectively serve God He would establish elders and deacons and pastors to oversee and they had the responsibility of building But he gets very Specific with us and he says let each one take heed in Verse 10 let each one take heed how he builds on it you and I have a responsibility To make sure that we are attentive to how things are to be done in Building the house of God the people of God the family of God and our own Christian life It cannot be something that is haphazard. It cannot be careless It cannot be something that we just kind of throw together at the last minute and at the outset of what we are building And our responsibility to it is that we must remember that the foundation is critical to our life and That that foundation will determine the success of our Christian life the foundation will determine the success of any body of believers the foundation will determine the size and the ability of us to Make a difference for the Lord Jesus Christ What does the Bible say look at verse 11 again for no other foundation can anyone lay? Than that which is laid which is who church Jesus Christ Jesus must be the foundation of your life and we must make sure that he is the foundation of this church family and we must make sure that he is the foundation of The purpose of all that we do as we are serving and building for the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ The Bible reminds us that Jesus is that foundation now Unfortunately, there have been many who have tried to build a religious life and they have tried to build a life That is based upon maybe rules and rituals and liturgical things that they like to do But none of those things will save your soul only Jesus Christ will save your soul The Bible says Jesus declared that I am the way the truth and the life and no man comes unto the Father but by me and friends the only true foundation that leads to eternal life and the only true foundation that leads to Forgiveness of your sins is the foundation of Jesus Christ at the very foundation of your life Needs to be Jesus and you say, how do I make Jesus the foundation of my life? well, I would start out first by acknowledging that you are a sinner and That you are in need of a Savior now many people again have never come to grips with the reality of their sinfulness They grow up thinking that they’re wonderful.

They grow up thinking they’re great and there’s nothing wrong with them But the truth is the Bible says for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God There is no exception. It doesn’t matter you say but I I grew up in the church pastor And I cut my teeth on the pews and and my family are leaders in the church It does not mean that you are not a sinner in need of a Savior God has no grandchildren he only has children and Each of us must acknowledge that and if I am going to make sure that Christ is the foundation of my life I must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. What does that mean? It means to repent and believe It means to turn away from my sins and my selfishness and to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of my life as the Lord of my life That is from all that I know and understand at the moment that God has spoken to my heart that I am willing To walk away from my sinful lifestyle and to repent to God Almighty and say Lord Forgive me of my sins and today I receive you as my Savior Jesus told a story in Matthew 7. It’s the story of a man who built his life on the shifting sands of the world in Contrast to the story of another man who built his life on a solid rock And I want you to know that it is a reminder to each of us That we are called to build our lives on the rock Jesus Christ The storms came to both lives in this parable that Jesus shared Both of them had troubles and trials and the rains and the winds poured down upon him just because you’re a Christian does not mean You won’t have problems doesn’t mean you won’t have struggles and you won’t have trials in your life We all have different types of struggles and trials in our life But we all have to endure but the difference is the foundation of your life For the one that built his life upon the shifting sands of the world his house crumbled His life was destroyed.

He could not handle the weight of the struggles and problems of this world But the one who built his life on the solid rock of Jesus Christ he was able to endure and his house was strong and he was able to continue on and so it is in my spiritual life that when I build my life on Jesus Christ Then I will be able to continue on for the Lord even through the trials Jesus said in Matthew 7 24 therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and Do with them I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house Upon a rock. Here’s a question. What foundation are you building on? Some of you your focus is your career some of you your focus is maybe a particular person that you think so dearly of and Some of you it’s about money and some of you it’s about an experience And some of you are building your life on the things of this world and I’m going to tell you something you live long enough And you’re gonna find out none of that holds up It all collapses It all comes tumbling down and that the only thing that lasts and is enduring is the true foundation of Jesus Christ and You are implored and encouraged today to give your life fully freely to Jesus Christ to build on the foundation Of Jesus Christ in your life.

I Heard the story That early one morning that there was a fire that broke out in a house on a narrow street The alarm was sounded by a policeman on duty however flames were leaping high into the air before the fire engines could get to the scene and Suddenly a young man had appeared at an upper window in his pajamas Firefighters quickly placed a ladder against the burning building nevertheless to the consternation of all He refused to come down Shouting out to the firemen that he first had to get dressed The firemen pleaded come as you are come as you are But to no avail this young man would not Climb out the window and get on the ladder and escape They tried to ascend on the stairs from below but were turned back as the wind fanned the flames into furry when the rescuer tried to Enter through a window the heat and the smoke forced him away and suddenly the stairs gave way and the roof fell in The man waited too long and he was buried beneath the ruins and How much greater? Tragedy awaits all those who refuse to flee the wrath that is to come upon this world Because they want to go do this or they want to go do that They want to live their life a little bit or they want to try Something else my friends many have rejected God’s provision of Salvation and God’s provision of safety and God’s provision of forgiveness only to find that their life Was ruined and today I want you to remember that the most important thing in the most important message I could give you Is to make sure you built your life on The foundation of Jesus Christ Now the second thing that I want you to learn this morning is that God will inspect the materials Not only is the foundation going to be inspected, but the materials in which we build in What our work is for God now We jump down to verse 12 and 13 of our text and he says now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold silver and precious stones wood hay and straw Each one’s work will become clear for the day meaning the day of judgment will declare it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test each One’s work of what sort it is each member of God’s family Has an assignment from heaven. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been saved or how little you’ve been saved Friends every one of us has assignment from God and we have an responsibility before God and we have a job to do for the Lord Jesus Christ and one day you’re gonna stand before God in the presence of God and you’re gonna have to give an account for the Assignment that he has given you Now you cannot say like maybe some students have said through the years that my dog ate it Or you cannot say well I was not feeling too good And so I was not able to get to it you and I may have thousands of excuses of why we did not fulfill our assignment But we will stand before God without excuse for he has given to us an Opportunity that we might fulfill this assignment But not only is it important that we understand we have an assignment from God, but that we understand that God cares about the materials that we use We are called to use materials that are suitable for the purpose and plans of God in this assignment in our two verses that we just read in verse 12 and 13 We learned that the building materials look again in verse 12 gold silver precious stones wood hay straw you will note that these fall into two categories and That they are listed in descending order of value That the one category at the outset is Durable materials that can withstand the test of fire and that the others at the end the wood hay and stubble Would be consumed by the fire Now what that tells me first of all is that there are Christians that are Building their Christian life and they are doing their assignment and they are building with Gold and they are building as the text says silver and precious stones But that there are other Christians who are using wood hay and straw The Bible is telling us that the material we use matters to God Are you with me church, I want you to understand something God has not called us to be haphazard Unintentional he’s not called us to be lazy. He has not called us to just slide by What we are doing is of great value and it will be tested before God Almighty One day you’ll stand before God and give a account an account of your work for God And I want you to make sure that you understand that so I wrote down some things that I think will help you that things that I would put into the category of Gold silver and precious stones when you are building your Christian life when you are doing your work for Christ there are some things that you need to remember our gold silver and precious stones and There’s things that are wood hay and straw, but here they are write them down First of all, it’s important for you as a builder to begin with the end in mind When we built the Fellowship Hall, we had the drawings we had the end in mind We understood What was the ultimate goal? We went up and did the science lab recently and we had the end in mind We’re getting ready to renovate the gymnasium and get it all out in the kitchen and add on some Classrooms and we’re getting ready to Do some more work, but we’ve got the end in mind.

We’re working with the architect with the end in mind We’re gonna do some renovations in the auditorium and we’ve got the end in mind When we started doing the lobby, there were a few complainers. I Had already during kovat thrown away all the pacifiers. So I had to go out and find some new ones Just kidding now if you can’t handle pastor Mike’s teasing you won’t make it nor survive here Just letting you know But we had an end in mind.

We could see the vision we could see what needed to be done. Others couldn’t Why are you doing that? Why are you doing this? Why would you get rid of this floor that has been here for 50 some years? I mean we could still use it even though it’s popping up from the ground and people are tripping over it It’s falling apart. We could still use this half over here and maybe just replace a couple pieces over there pastor Mike.

No, no we begin with the end in mind and Just like you do in a building and just like you do in construction So you do in your spiritual life you begin with the end in mind now I know there’s a few people out there. You’re just kind of guiding sliding through life. I got you But I’m different.

I got goals I Got things I want to achieve and accomplish and we recognize those goals We evaluate those goals and we continue to push ourselves towards these goals spiritual goals in our life and We want to reach them and I know that sometimes people say well We just kind of take it as it comes pastor. Well friends. You’re like Charlie Brown They took him to target practice We’re bow and arrows and they had the target there right in front of him and he pulled back his arrow on his bow and He let it go and that arrow went everywhere and anywhere and it finally landed somewhere And so Charlie Brown went and grabbed the target and moved it over to where the arrow was.

I Think that’s how some Christians are We have no purpose. We have no goals. We have no steps.

We have no plan. We have no strategy We’re just kind of shooting it out there and we’ll just kind of move the target say Yeah, we always intended to be here You know I’m saying but no God wants us to have the end in mind. Where do you want to be spiritually? Where do you want to be in your Christian life five years from now? What are some things that you would like to accomplish as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? I’m not asking you to go out there and have multiple Crusades and filled up stadiums.

I’m just asking you How about this? Could you have a goal read the Bible through in a year? Could you have that kind of goal? Some of you say I’ve been doing that for 10 years 20 years 30 years great How about this? Could you have a goal? That you’re going to study the Bible That you’re going to memorize Bible verses. There’s all kinds of goals We don’t have time to go through them all but what I want you to know the kind of things that last with God is That when we begin with the end in mind That we’re not haphazard out there what is going to stand the test is we understand There needs to be a goal. The other area that I think is important is to emphasize the eternal over the temporal To emphasize the eternal over the temporal Now look he says in verse 14 if anyone’s work which he has built on it endures He will receive a reward Now sometimes there’s flash in the pans sometimes they’re shooting stars Sometimes people are more interested in the external.

They’re wowed by the razzle-dazzle and the fancy But what God cares about is the eternal What God cares about is what is happening spiritually? What is happening in your heart? Eternally have you put your focus there? Have you put your energy there? Have you put your time? Yes There’s a lot of good things you can be involved in church And we don’t doubt any of those and we do not condemn them that they are not good but the question is are they the best and What is it that determines the best for the believer in Jesus Christ? It is That we focus on the eternal over the temporal But not only that we are focused on what is eternal Because I want you to know heaven and hell is all that really matters. I mean some of you will spend hours getting your kids to practice and games and I’m not opposed to any of that but you won’t sit down and Read the Bible to them You won’t pray with them You won’t put any time any effort in making sure they’re in Sunday school that they’re in a wanna that they’re in church that they’re In the youth group that they’re in some kind of a ministry where they are being fed spiritually because we are more interested in the temporal Than we are the eternal and I know that rubs people the wrong way But I’m here to tell you that you aren’t going to be able to stand before God and say, you know God I taught my son how to shoot a basketball Don’t I get any credit? Ain’t gonna matter Because it’s temporal What matters is their eternal soul Are you with me? Some of you saying I don’t have anybody to talk to about Jesus. Why don’t you start with your children? Why don’t you start with your grandchildren? Why don’t you start with people that are right in your circle of influence? Okay, the another area is the internal over the external Now here I’m talking about the heart What matters most to God is the heart the Bible says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks I’m telling you that God cares about our heart The Bible says that Jesus Declared to the Pharisees that they had all this garb and all this dress and fancy dress that they had But he said that their hearts were far From God you can be religious and be far from God You can be a person who go through the motions of rituals and all that and here’s the thing You don’t even know Jesus Christ is your Savior The internal is more Important than the external.

I want you to understand That quality of your spiritual life is more important than quantity It’s not the length. You can’t sit there and brag about how long you’ve been saved in a Christian When your life you’re still spiritually immature The Apostle said I can’t talk to you as mature people in 1st Corinthians 3 at the beginning he said I have to talk to you as babes in Christ and That’s the way I have to do sometimes. I Say one thing and I know it’ll trigger somebody they’ll have a meltdown They’ll start crying and I’ll have to go find that package of pacifiers Are you with me? But here’s what I’m saying.

You ought to grow in the quality of your spiritual life You ought to grow in the quality of your spiritual life because let me tell you something the world’s tough The devil’s not sitting on the sidelines It isn’t going to get any easier. I know that some of you all think I’m crazy And I half believe you But I want to tell you one time I was driving a bus and I was telling my Sunday school class and this little four-year-old Girl came to me. She said pastor Mike they’re calling me names back there on the bus and I said, you know what? You’re gonna have to get tough Because all your life people are gonna call you names You see I’m saying and And you see we parent the wrong way we think we’re gonna right every wrong in this world rather than teaching our children to be strong in their faith and To be strong in their walk with the Lord that other people can’t define them or label them That they find their identity in what Christ says about them rather than what other people say about them I’m telling you that’s quality over quantity You might be able to squash something little at the moment, but friends when you teach that child To find their identity in Jesus Christ rather than in the world and what others say you’re gonna build a strong believer You Well, the bottom line is this God is going to reward those who are faithful to him now There’s a lot of reasons why we should give up but friends God wants us to power through keep being faithful Keep our eyes on him and he will reward us and our rewards will certainly be a part of us giving glory to God Again and so we’re grateful that God looks at our works.

He does not overlook them He does not forget them and though we are not earning merit to be in heaven because that’s already been accomplished on the cross But we are serving to show our gratitude to God for all that. He’s done for us and then through that faithfulness God Rewards to us as we enter into those hurly gates and live with Christ forever Hey, make sure that you are checking out hopeworthhaving.com and you are signing up for our newsletter, we have a newsletter that goes out periodically and you can take advantage of that and we can either send that to your Inbox or we can send it to your mailbox You just pick and let us know but go to hopeworthhaving.com and sign up for our newsletter and take advantage of the great Opportunity there. This is pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post How Will God Assign Rewards in Heaven? Part 1 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Be Thankful Anyway. He will be reading out of 1st Corinthians 1: 4-9.

And I want you to know that even though there are Christians that end up on detours and they end up on the wrong path, my friends, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you’re sincere, you are confirmed, you are settled, you are established in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hello, and welcome to Hope Worth Having. This is Pastor Mike Sanders, Senior Pastor of the Open Door Church.

We are delighted that you are tuning in today and that you are with us to hear this message. I’ve entitled my message, Be Thankful Anyway. Despite all of our problems, despite all of our circumstances, despite all the situations we might find ourselves in, let’s be thankful anyways.

So I want you to get your Bible today and I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and we’re going to be looking at verses 4 through 9. And again, we are admonished to be thankful anyways. God cannot say to me, I am gracious and I give you salvation, but one false move and I’ll take it away. That’s not how God works.

Now, there unfortunately are some Christians who run around and they believe they can lose their salvation. And there may be some of you here today that you live in the fear of losing your salvation. And I always tell people that if you believe that you could lose your salvation, would you please name the one sin that makes you lose your salvation? Of course, no one can because there’s nothing in the Bible that says that.

It’s very subjective. And I just can’t imagine that God in heaven would give us access by faith to this grace that saves our soul and sustains us and helps us to be all that God wants us to be. But every time we fail him, he’s going to say, I’m going to take it back.

That ain’t going to happen, my friends. But I want you to remember this, Romans 8, 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You’re not under the condemnation of God.

You are not under any kind of guilt. You are not under the judgment of God. You see, what happens, friends, is that Jesus Christ went to the cross for your sins and my sins, and he took the judgment of God.

He took the punishment of sin on the cross for you and me and friends from the beginning all the way to the end, as we’ll learn later as we celebrate God’s good work in people’s lives, is that Jesus takes care of us, and he’s going to make sure that we make it to the finish line as believers in Christ. And so you can rejoice and you can say, well, maybe they’re not what they ought to be, but I am thankful anyways of God’s grace that they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to say that God would take away your salvation every time you make a mistake, every time you sin, would mean that it is a legal gift. And I want you to know the gift of salvation is not a legal gift.

It is a gift that is given to us through a covenant relationship. Now, God did not make the covenant with us, but rather he made it with Christ, and Christ sealed it, and he delivered it to us through his crucifixion and resurrection. And remember that the Father promised the Son a gift of believers.

Jesus said, all that the Father gives me shall come to me, and he that comes to me I will in no wise cast out. You see, friends, you as a believer in Jesus Christ, I know this is stunning, it’s startling, and it may even be a setback in your life, but you are a gift from the Father to the Son, a gift of the trophy of God’s grace and his good work in people’s life. So I want you to keep that in mind.

I want you also understand the second principle about grace is that grace cannot coexist with human obligation. Now, we’re not going to say, well, God was gracious to me, and he saved me, and now I have to pay him back. You see, it’s not grace if you have to pay back.

It’s not grace if you have to pay God back. Grace is a free gift. It’s not a loan.

And I just want you to understand that it doesn’t matter what you do, you could never do enough to pay God back. Did you know that? You say, well, Pastor, why do I want to live a holy life, and why do I want to serve God? I’ll tell you why. Because you want to give praise and glory to the one who saved your soul.

And if you would live your life like that, not that I’m trying to pay God back, but I just want to give him glory, and I just want to give him praise, then, friends, that is a more meaningful Christian life, and that is a more fulfilling Christian life, and a life of purpose and significance than you running around saying, I got to pay God back. No, friends, you’ll never be able to pay God back. The third thing I want you to learn about grace is that it cannot coexist with human merit or effort.

Grace is not only offered to people who are good, but it is offered to every person on the planet. Amen? Now, think about this for a second, church. You know, some people say, you know, you got to be good enough to be safe.

No, you don’t. And some of you are saying, well, you know, I’m not as bad as the other guy. Well, friends, it doesn’t matter.

I want you to understand it like this. I know this would be a hard image for you to create in your mind. We’re all back there in the back.

We’re gonna run, and then we’re gonna jump and try to touch the top of this ceiling. Now, that’s about 30 feet up there, and the only way you can get to heaven is if you touch the top. Let me tell you something.

Some of you are going to do better than others, but some of you are going to do worse than others, but let me tell you something. It doesn’t matter because none of you, including Mike, are going to ever touch, in your own effort, the top of that ceiling. Let me tell you, the only way you’re going to do that is through somebody helping you.

And it’s the same way in salvation. Some of you might live a little bit better than the other person, and some of you might live a little worse than the other person, but it doesn’t matter because we all fall short of the glory of God. Are you with me? The Bible says we’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God, and so we all fall short.

The only way we’re going to ever reach the righteous standard of holiness of God to be able to enter into the pearly gates and to live with the Lord Jesus forever and ever is going to be through the grace of God. It’s going to be through what God does for us and his help in that he saves our soul. And yes, you say, well, I’m better, and I did this, and I did that, and look how many times I came to church, Pastor.

Friends, none of that merits or earns you a place in heaven. The only way you get to heaven is through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to me except through the Father.

And the only way you’re getting to heaven is you got to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You say, but I’ve been good, Pastor. Your goodness won’t save you, but the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ will save you if you would surrender all to him and believe in him this morning.

Christianity is set apart from any other religion in the world. Every other approach to God is based on a bartering system. If I do this, God will do that.

Most people believe that they’re either saved by works or their experiences or the things that they have somehow accomplished. But I want you to know that in Christianity, man is not the negotiator. We have no grounds to negotiate with God.

We are nothing but poor, humble sinners. And Jesus Christ, through his wonderful grace, stooped down as the King, and he lifted us up out of the miry clay of our sin, and he set our feet on a solid rock. And for all who believe in Christ, they will have everlasting life.

But I want you to know that if nothing will fire you up, it is the wonderful promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ. And see, here’s the thing I want you to know, that every person that believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the church family, in the community, in your family, that they have the promise of eternal life. And I want you to be thankful this year for the people in your family that are saved.

You say, well, Mike, they’re not always what they ought to be. I know, and neither are you, and neither am I. I tell people up front, I just want you to know if you join the church, I’m going to disappoint you. I’m going to fail you.

It’s not that I’m out there trying to. It’s not that I wake up and say, how can I make your life miserable every day? It’s just that I’m human, flesh and bones. And so we got to be understanding.

And I just want to encourage us as a church to be thankful like the apostle Paul was for the Corinthians, for God’s grace in their life. The second thing I want you to see that he was thankful for was that they were enriched, being enriched in everything by him. Look at verse 5, that you were enriched in everything by him in all utterance and all knowledge.

Well, Paul surprises us here. The apostle is saying that he gives thanks to God that they have been enriched in everything and come short in no gift. Look at verse 7. It says there, so that you can come short in no gift.

He’s talking about spiritual gifts. The Corinthians were a very gifted people. They had all kinds of spiritual gifts.

We don’t have time to teach on them this morning, but I want you to know, even though they were gifted, they were carnal. They were fleshly. They reacted in the flesh.

They responded in the flesh towards one another. If you take time in your own personal time with the Lord and you begin to read this text, what you will find is over and over that the Corinthians were handling things in the wrong way. But Paul, the apostle, he is thankful for the wonderful work of God and how he has gifted his people in their lives.

Now, there were three particular gifts that the apostle brings to our attention. I want you to see those in verse 5. First, he uses the word utterance. It is probably better translated speech.

Some of you may have a translation that uses that. It’s the idea that they could tell God’s truth with boldness. The church was gifted with many who were not afraid to share their faith, not afraid to tell others about Christ.

No wonder this church was an explosive church, a growing church. No wonder so many good things were happening in that they were reaching out into their corrupt community and people were coming to Christ. It’s because the church was filled with evangelists who had the capacity to speak for him.

You’ll note the second gift was knowledge. I want you to see that there in verse 5. He says that in all knowledge, not the knowledge of science, not the knowledge of math. I’m sure there were people who had that knowledge, but the spiritual knowledge, that they had the wisdom and understanding of God.

They had a knowledge of God’s truth, that they had this wonderful understanding of how the Lord came and died on the cross and that he resurrected and all who believe in him can have eternal life. They had this knowledge and they had spiritual insight. Unfortunately, they didn’t always use it for the benefit and the blessing of others.

You remember, and you can go there later this afternoon in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, that the apostle reminds the Corinthians that knowledge puffs up. It can make you prideful. I’ve met many people who know a lot about the Bible, but they’re not humble servants, and they use their knowledge of God and his word as a weapon in their relationships.

They use the knowledge of God to humiliate and demean others, and perhaps that was part of the problem with the Corinthians, blessed with this wonderful knowledge, but didn’t always apply the knowledge in a way that was loving and caring and supportive to the family of God. But Paul does give thanks that they have this knowledge. You’ll note again, he talks about gifts in verse 7. He says at the beginning, they were not short in any gift.

You know the Bible teaches us that we have spiritual gifts. When you come to believe in Christ, you’re given a gift. Unbelievers don’t have a gift, but we as believers have gifts.

You say, I want to learn more about these gifts. Well, they’re in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, they’re in Romans chapter 12, they’re in 1 Peter chapter 4. These are just an overview of some of the spiritual gifts that are out there that the Bible teaches that the Spirit of God gives us. They were not shortchanged in any gift.

They were blessed with many spiritual gifts. The spiritual gifts always fall into three categories, church. Remember this, there are the sign gifts, there are the speaking gifts, and there are the serving gifts.

At the Open Door Church, we believe the sign gifts have been completed. They were given to the early church to help in the transition from the old covenant to the new covenant to be a sign unto the Jews. You say, how do you know this, Mike? Where do you come up with this crazy stuff? Well, just read 1 Corinthians chapter 14.

1 Corinthians chapter 14 tells us that the sign gifts were for the Jews to understand that the Old Testament and the old covenant had been fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. And now we were transitioning into a new covenant of grace. And the gospel would not just be limited to Jews, but it would go unto all the world, unto Gentiles, unto every people group.

And God gave those sign gifts to the apostles and the early church as a validation of his messengers and a verification of his message that anyone who ever believes in the name of the Lord shall be what, church? Saved. I like to hear you say that because I think it’s a wonderful testimony. But I want you to consider this.

What gifts has God given you? What gifts has God given you? And are you using those gifts? But you got a problem? You want to use your gift? You want to be engaged? Then you got to be that squeaky wheel. You got to be that squeaky wheel. Let the elders know.

Let the pastor know. Let the staff know. Let us know that, hey, I’m gifted.

I want to use my gift. Don’t forget about me. I’m over here ready to serve.

But here’s what I want you to remember. Be thankful. Be thankful that God has enriched every believer.

Whether they use their gifts or not, they have been gifted by God. And there’s so much we can be thankful in other people’s lives. The third thing I want you to see that the apostle was thankful for was the testimony of Christ that is in each one of us who believe.

Look at verse six. Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, the testimony of Christ, the testimony that Christ saved them, the testimony of Christ that He was working in them. Now, I love this word confirmed.

I want you to circle it in your Bible. Here’s what it means. Settled or to be made steadfast, to be established.

This is what Christ has done for us through His work on the cross and us believing by faith. He has confirmed us. He has established us.

He has rooted us. And I want you to know that even though there are Christians sometimes that end up on detours and they end up on the wrong path and sometimes they’re not making all the progress that they should be making in their faith, my friends, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you’re sincere, I want you to know that you are confirmed. You are settled.

You are established in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of you are worried about your children, aren’t you? You remember the day they came to Christ. You remember the day they prayed that prayer.

You remember when they reached out to God with all sincerity and humbleness and they asked the Lord to save their soul. And yet their heart has drifted. Maybe they’ve been distracted and maybe they’re on a path that is a little destructive.

And you’re wondering, is there anything in that heart that has been redeemed by God? Well, friends, I want you to know this, that even if they’re not all that you want them to be, if they were true and God’s word is true, I believe that they’re a child of God and that we have to do everything we can to bring out that best. And I’m going to tell you, drilling down on them, beating them up verbally, ragging on them about every mistake in their life, that’s not going to help them. Here’s what you need to do.

You affirm them. You admonish them, but you affirm them of this wonderful confirmation of God and what he did in their hearts as a little child and that they truly are established in the faith and that they have been made strong in Christ and that they just need to bring out that potential and they need to bring out that best in them and that you need to rejoice and give thanks this Thanksgiving for the testimony of Christ in them. You see, Paul, he had confidence about God’s ability and God’s commitment to the church at Corinth.

There were times that he probably buried his face in his hands thinking, what else could these people do? But you know what? He was confident of God’s good work in them, through them, and around them. Later, he would tell the Philippian church that he would remind them that he had confidence that he who began a good work in them would complete it. Do you believe that God would complete his good work in the hearts of your children? Would you believe that God would complete the work in those around you, even though they sometimes let you down? Would you believe that God can do that? Yes, my friends, and we’re talking about the work of salvation.

God can complete and will complete in the heart of all those who believe in him his good work. Our confidence is not in the methods of man or even the intimidation or manipulation of man, but rather our confidence is in God’s great power. What I want you to do is go home today.

I want you to claim that verse in Philippians chapter one, I think it’s verse four, and I want you to claim it for your children. I want you to claim it for family members, for friends, and I want you to claim it and pray it for them. And you say, Lord, not that you forgot, but I just want to remind you.

Amen. Have you ever done that one? I have a few times. Lord, I know you don’t forget nothing, but I just want to remind you.

You say, Pastor, that’s terrible. Well, I’m just trying to be like Moses. Just trying to be like Abraham.

Just trying to be like Ruth, who always reminded God of his promises to the people. So I remind God of his promises, and I pray them to God, and I ask God to fulfill these promises in the hearts of those he has truly saved and that he would continue to do his good work in their life. Now, we got to fast track.

Number four, and that is the soon appearing of Christ. What else was he thankful for? The soon appearing of Christ. Look at verse seven.

We already talked about that they came short in no gift, but look at this, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look at verse eight, who will also confirm. There it is again.

We see it in verse six. Now we see it in verse eight, who will also confirm you to the end so that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. How wonderful.

The second coming of Christ is mentioned over 300 times in the Bible. People wonder, is God coming? You might be like the scoffers in 1 Peter who didn’t think that Christ would come. Where is he? And Peter reminded them that our God is not slack concerning his promises, but is long-suffering to us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

You say, why is God letting this world spiral downward? Why is he allowing all this lawlessness and crazy that is going on in this world? Let me tell you why, because he is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance. Some of you, you’re trying to figure it all out. It’s really simple.

Man left to himself will make a mess of himself. And you see, they all kicked God out of the schools, and they kicked God out of the courtroom. They kicked God out of government, and they kicked God out of the public square, and they kicked God out.

And you see, God, he could take a hint. He knows. And so God, he gets out of the way.

And those people that think they’re so smart, and they think they know what they’re doing, well, they’re destroying themselves. I feel sad for the children that they’re destroying these days. But let me tell you, why does God let all this take place? Because he still is wanting people to be saved.

And that’s why the church can’t shrink back. We can’t cower down. We can’t whine.

We can’t complain. We got to step up and speak up. And we don’t need to be hateful.

We don’t need to be obnoxious. We don’t need to be rude. But we need to be a people who are sharing the wonderful news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You say, Pastor, what’s the answer to all this crazy? Jesus. Jesus can straighten lives out. Jesus can fix broken hearts.

Jesus can save souls. And Jesus can deliver us from the mess that we have made. We just have to put our faith and our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is coming again, church. But until then, we are to be working, and we are to be reaching every person that we can. The apostle was thankful for the soon appearing of Christ.

We see the signs of his coming all around. And so that ought to tell us to get even more busy. Some of you are saying, I need to slow down, Mike.

I need to get in the slow lane of life. Let me tell you, friends, jump out of that slow lane, and you get back in the fast lane, and you serve God until he promotes you to heaven. Amen? There’s going to be a day we won’t have time.

So I want to encourage you to live in light of Christ’s second coming. Are you? Are you living in light of the Christ’s second coming? You wake up and look for him. The Bible says in Titus 2.13 that we’re looking for that great blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

He hasn’t come back yet, but he’s coming soon. So I better get busy and get as many people to heaven today as I can. You see, what motivates you is not politics, and it’s not even people’s response to you.

It’s that it ain’t going to be long before Jesus comes, and we got a lot to get done before he comes. Amen? But the final thing I want you to see, and it may be the best point, the apostle was thankful for God’s faithfulness and his fellowship. Would you look at verse 9 again? God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Can we deny that God is faithful? Can you and I, no matter how much troubling times we have seen and how many people might have let us down and failed us? Friends, it doesn’t matter. The world will disappoint you. People will let you down.

But let me tell you who will never let you down, and that is our Heavenly Father. Amen? God is faithful. God is faithful.

His goodness will follow us all the days of our life, and we will end our lives giving tribute and honor to the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we leave this world and we enter into that beautiful place that Christ has prepared for us, there isn’t a one of us that’s going to regret all that we did for God, and there isn’t a one of us that’s going to testify that God was unfaithful to us. My friends, this Thanksgiving, I want to encourage you to be thankful for God’s faithfulness and that he called you into the fellowship, because God is faithful.

And let me tell you the areas that he’s faithful in. He is faithful to complete the salvation of all who believe in Jesus Christ. It is from beginning to end.

He is the author and the finisher of your faith. And so in between, yep, some dips, some detours, some struggles, some trying times, but he’s going to get you to the end, church. I already told you that.

But I want you to remember that, that God is faithful. He’s faithful to help us to resist temptation. There’s the temptation to live in anger and bitterness towards those who’ve let you down.

There’s the temptation to be mad at every person that didn’t follow through with what they would say to you. There’s the temptation for you to torch bridges in your life and to live a life of isolation and never have any relationships in your life. But let me tell you something, friends, that’s not what God wants to do.

That’s not what God wants you to do. God wants you to show grace and mercy. You say, well, they’re not worthy of me showing grace and mercy too.

How about that one? Neither are you worthy of the grace of God shown to you. You’re not worthy to be called into the fellowship of Christ. I’m not worthy that he would be so faithful to me.

Be careful, church, that you don’t let the temptations of your emotions and your flesh and your cardinality cause you to burn bridges. The Bible says, no temptation has overtaken you except such as common to man. But God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.

Now, we think of these verses just in the context of maybe lust, sexual sins certainly is included, but let me tell you what I want you to think of it in this context, and I believe it’s very applicable and especially at Thanksgiving time, is I want you to ask God to show you the way of escape of being tempted to be angry, bitter, and hateful. To those who have hurt your heart, and I want you this Thanksgiving to be thankful for every person. Let me tell you what the way of escape is.

It is prayer. When you pray to God, he empowers you with his spirit and his word, and he will help you that even though you’re upset at that person, that you can be thankful for that person and God’s good work in their life. Yes, friends, God has called us into his fellowship.

His Son, Jesus Christ, is our Lord. He has gifted us, and he has blessed us, and our confidence is not in ourselves, but it is in him. The apostle had a regular habit of thanking God for the people that were in his life, and this week I don’t want you to be cast down.

I don’t want you to be discouraged. I want you to learn the habit of thanking God anyways. I want you to thank God for every person in your life, even if they’ve let you down.

Would you pray with me? Have you let the problems of life weigh you down that you can’t even give praise to God? Are you thinking about the things that are praiseworthy or the things that are defeating you and discouraging you? God wants you to be thankful anyways. We know that there are many problems in this world, and I wish we lived in a perfect world, but we don’t. So here we are, what do we do? I think one of the things is that we have to be Christians filled with gratitude.

I hope this message has been a blessing to you and that you have been encouraged by this message. We want to also let you know that you can access more of our sermons and messages on YouTube. Just go to YouTube and type in Hope Worth Having, like our channel, or subscribe to it, and then you can see all the different videos.

There’s Q&As, there’s some discussion panels, and there’s also sermons teaching on different topics and books of the Bible. So take advantage of that, and we want to remind you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post Be Thankful Anyway first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Will There be Degrees of Punishment in Hell?. He will be reading out of Luke 10: 12-16.

Because Jesus said today you will be with me in paradise that thief went to heaven not because of his works or lack thereof He went to heaven because of his faith in Jesus Christ Anybody who is cast into hell is cast into hell because they do not believe in Jesus Christ Hello, this is pastor Mike Sanders with hope worth having radio broadcast and today we’re gonna be in the gospel of Luke chapter 10 We’re continuing our study about heaven and hell today The topic is will there be degrees of punishment in hell you might be surprised by the answer So join me as we look into the gospel of Luke chapter 10 Bible this morning I want you to join me in the gospel of Luke chapter 10 And we’re going to continue our study on five questions about heaven and five questions about hell When we come to the gospel of Luke it is a gospel of repentance Like no other gospel it places great emphasis on the word repentance and whether it is Jesus himself or John the Baptist or the Apostles we constantly see this word repentance emerging in this gospel It is because God is calling us to turn away from our sin and to turn towards Christ and to receive Him as our Lord and Savior and this desire that God has That we would repent of our sins is that we might be spared and saved from the wrath of God Eternal punishment in a place that is called hell When we think about the topic of hell, I’m sure there are many questions that emerge in our minds But the question that I want us to consider this morning is will there be degrees of punishment in hell? Many years ago when I first came to the open-door church Only a few months into my ministry here a lady who is now in heaven came to me in the lobby After a morning service and she said you don’t preach on hell enough I kind of wish she was still here to hear this whole series. Amen, because I know she would be happy Anyways, I had done a series on hell actually when I first came and I addressed this very topic I had made mention of it not a whole sermon like today But I had made mention that there were degrees of punishment in hell again that stirred her up and so she came and told me that I was wrong and I needed to repent and So I have such wonderful members and they’re always striving to encourage me and the Lord takes them sometimes He just takes them to heaven But he took her and if I said her name you all would know her but I won’t do that But I just so vividly remember how she was upset that I would teach on this topic That I would mention that there were degrees of punishment So I put all these verses together for her and I gave them to her and said you study and you conclude whatever you want well, she never did come back and admit that the Bible does teach that there are degrees of Punishment in hell and one of the areas that we see this is in the gospel of Luke Chapter 10 and I want you to follow along with me and I want us to learn some things this morning That will help not only answer the question But give us a broader understanding of what the scriptures teach and particularly our Lord and Savior about Hell look with me in verse 10 of chapter 10 of the gospel of Luke but whatever city you enter and they do not receive you go out into the streets and say The very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you Nevertheless know this that the kingdom of God has come near you But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that day Or Sodom than for that city Woe to you Khorazin woe to you Bethsaida For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyree and Sidon They would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes but it will be more tolerable for Tyree and Sidon at the judgment than for you and you Capernaum who are exalted to heaven will be brought down to Hades or hell look at verse 16 He who hears you hears me and he who rejects you Rejects me and he who rejects me Rejects him who sent me there are four things that I want us to learn this morning out of this text that are very important for us to remember and Number one is that sinners will be punished according to their deeds sinners will be punished according to their deeds Now I want to remind you that Jesus said in Matthew 16 27 for the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His father with his angels and then he shall reward every man according to his works When you read the Bible you will find times that the scriptures talk about Salvation by faith or by grace through faith And then you read scriptures like this that talk about we are rewarded by our works When we take our Bible this morning and we go to Romans chapter 2 verse 5 the Bible says this but in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and Revelation of the righteous judgment of God who will render to each one according to his deeds eternal life to those who by patient continuance in Doing good seek for glory honor and immortality but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness indignation and wrath Tribulation and anguish on every soul of man who does evil of the Jew first and also of the Greek Now friends the Bible is teaching us that we are not only rewarded according to our works or our deeds But we are punished according to our works and our deeds that in no way Negates the fact that we are saved by grace You and I must understand that we come into the kingdom of God and we come into a Relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ based upon the work of Christ on the cross It is through the cross and the resurrection That Jesus has not only paid the penalty for my sin and all who believe in him But he is also secured the future in heaven with God through his resurrection For all who believe in Christ that it is not based on your church attendance It is not based upon what you do or do not do for God in having a relationship with him But the Bible teaches us that the Christian faith Living for God is more than just being saved It’s more than just saying I received the Lord as my Savior and I repent of my sins and turn to Christ That is that we are called to do good works as a matter of fact We are called to be passionate and zealous as God’s people for good works now one might wonder why? Why would we do good works? Why would we be so on fire for God to want to make a difference for God in the kingdom of God on this earth? It is because first of all we have great gratitude and we have great Appreciation for what God has done in saving our soul can God’s people say man. I hope that’s true in your life But second of all that we have a desire within us that we want to see people come to Christ to receive Christ and give their life to God and the Bible says you will be rewarded It is true some Christians as first Corinthians 3 tells us their works are gonna burn up They will not last when they are tested why? Because their works are about self and it is true that a Christian many times Can be involved in the wrong things and their priorities are all messed up and they are not advancing the kingdom of Christ as much as they are advancing their own personal cause or some Humanistic cause and I want you to know that all that burns up But those who invest in the spiritual and they invest in the eternal and they invest in the kingdom of God they are the ones that will come forth as having works that are of silver and gold and a Fine metal and they stand the test of God and Jesus will reward them For their faithfulness and their obedience to God He will reward them for what they have done for him and what they have sacrificed for his cause Now friends if that is true in Relating to heaven it is also true in Relating to hell you do not go to hell because of all the bad works You do not go to hell because of your terrible lifestyle you go to hell because you do not Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ you understand that and I want you to recognize that There’ll be some people in heaven that will shock us because we’re gonna be looking at their works But Jesus is looking at the heart and you say Mike give me an example that think of the thief on the cross Now friends understand that to be put on a cross.

That was like being sent to the electric chair today I mean you had done such heinous crimes that not even Society had accepted it. We’re not even talking about God. We’re just talking about man standards Society standards had said we’ve had it with this guy and he is living such a Riotous life and such a life that is out of tune with what we accept that we’re gonna put him on a cross and the thief on the cross Recognize quickly that he was a sinner that Christ was not Worthy of being put on this cross and he said remember me now Here’s a guy whose life was a mess, but his heart up to that last moment believed in Jesus Christ and Jesus said today You will be with me in paradise and I want to say to every one of you that have a burden for a family member a Child a parent a spouse my friends up until their final breath They can be reached for Jesus Christ, and I don’t want you to be discouraged You say well, I want them to give their life to God when they’re young So do I but it some people are hard-headed like pastor Mike a man and We have some hard heads running in our Family tree and so you look at your life and sometimes.

Yeah, my kids are a chip off the old block and You know you begin to wonder and understand maybe but I want you to remember That we can still reach them because Jesus said today You will be with me in paradise that thief went to heaven not because of his works or lack thereof He went to heaven because of his faith in Jesus Christ Anybody who is cast into hell is cast into hell because they do not believe in Jesus Christ Their lifestyle may reflect that they don’t believe but at the last moment They have the chance to come to Christ like that thief and to receive Christ But those who do not believe in Jesus Christ God will unleash his judgment upon them, and he will come forth after them and he will Punish those who reject his love and they reject his grace And in Romans 2 as well as what Jesus has taught us that there will be punishment For those based upon their deeds meaning that there are degrees in hell Just like there are rewards in heaven some Christians are going to be more blessed if possible But they will be more blessed in heaven than others because of their faithfulness and their obedience to God and there will be those unbelievers who will be punished According to their deeds now the second thing that I want you to learn is that sinners will be punished according to the light that They received the light that they have received now friends Let’s go to Luke chapter 12. We’ll be back in Luke chapter 10 trust me But I want you to look at something in Luke chapter 12 verse 47 Luke chapter 12 verse 47 Two verses and that servant who knew his master’s will and did not prepare himself or Do according to his will? Shall be beaten with many stripes but he Who did not know? Yet committed things deserving of stripes shall be beaten with few For everyone to whom much is given from him Much will be required and to whom much has been committed of him They will ask the more Friends the light that you are given is the light that you are accountable to Let me put it to you this way the revelation that God has given you brings Responsibility to every heart This is what is going on in Luke chapter 10 if you will note again that Jesus said to his disciples when you go into a city and that city rejects you You’re telling them how to be saved you’re teaching repentance and faith in Christ, and they reject you He said you let them know which is a symbolic way that the Jewish people would do is that they would wipe the dust off their feet and Saying the kingdom of God has come near to you and you’ll be held accountable Move on now. Why would Jesus say that very thing to his disciples? Because he wants them to understand that the cities that his messengers went to Had received so much more revelation Than some of these other cities who did not have as much revelation What are those cities look at verse 12, but I say to you I’m back in Luke 10 that it will be more tolerable in the day meaning the day of judgment for Sodom then for that city Sodom was destroyed According to the Bible in Genesis 19 by brimstone and fire You’re familiar with Sodom and Gomorrah, and it was a city that was infested with homosexuality Sexuality selfishness lasciviousness and just unrighteous behavior and God is saying to these other cities that it’ll be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for those cities Who rejected the gospel message from my apostles and from my messengers? You had more light than Sodom and Gomorrah you had more revelation Than Sodom and Gomorrah and therefore you will have a greater Judgment upon your life now.

Let’s look at verse 13. Woe to you Corazon woe to you besidia For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyree and Saddam They would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes to add to the sting of his declaration of judgment upon these cities Jesus again is contrasting for cities He says woe to Corazon woe to besidia. What’s so unique about them? They are cities that were Jewish cities and then he says hey Look, if the mighty works had been done in Tyree and Saddam, what’s so significant about them? They were Gentile cities.

And what are you saying these cities that had the light of the Old Testament? they had the light of The understanding of the law they had the light of having heard the gospel message Had these cities Repented then they would have done well, but they rejected what Christ did Jesus in his ministry had done great Miracles and he had preached great messages we know and understand that according to the Gospels these cities were around the area where Jesus had taken the bread and multiplied it into feeding the 5,000 and yet they would not believe in Jesus Christ. They would not follow God and Jesus says these Gentile cities Tyree and Saddam they would have repented a long time ago They would have come to God easily They would have repented and been sitting in sackcloth and ashes now Again, think about this in the mind of a Jew that they believe that they are righteous They believe they are right with God and they believe because they are religious that they’re okay with God and that all these other Pagan cities all these other cities that do not worship God the true God While they are definitely going to hell and in here Jesus comes along and he says look You’ve been given more light to whom much is given much is required You have the revelation of the truth and that brings Responsibility upon you, but you have rejected Christ and he is saying these evil cities These pagan cities and they had the same light as you they would have repented you are held to a higher Standard what has God revealed to you that you have left undone? What has God given to you that you have not maximized for him? And I know that you will say I have all these reasons and excuses Why I have stumbled and fumbled and not been able to be obedient to God but they will not hold up when you stand before God and You must understand that whether you’re a believer or an unbeliever to whom much is given much is Required and it’s something you need to communicate Clearly to your Children the third thing I want you to learn is that some will have a more severe punishment than others I want you to hang in there with me Jesus tells them in Luke 10. It’ll be more tolerable for the pagan cities Than for the Hebrew cities that rejected his messengers and we see this illustrated again in the Bible So join me again in Hebrews just get over there to Hebrews chapter 10 It’s in the back of the Bible the New Testament because I’m leading us to a point church And I think you’re gonna be blessed and encouraged Hebrews chapter 10 verse 29 through 31.

Here’s what he says of how much worse punishment Do you suppose will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot? Counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing and Insulted the Spirit of grace for we know him who said Vengeance is mine. I will repay says the Lord and again The Lord will judge his people it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of The Living God the Hebrew writer is writing to people who were considering going back to Judaism They had publicly professed their faith in Christ But upon doing so they began to endure and face a lot of persecution and some of them were saying you know what? We need to get out of this We need to go back to Judaism because our life was easier and the Hebrew writer several times throughout the scriptures He sends a clarion call a warning do not retreat Do not go back Because how much more how much worse of a punishment for those Who trample the Son of God who insult the Spirit of God? You have had this revelation. You have had this light and yet you turn your backs on God and he is saying your judgment will be greater and that is what he is saying if Sodom and Gomorrah Tyree and Sidon were destroyed.

How could Chorazin, Basidia and Capernaum escape? You see these is the contrast to the Gentile cities and the Jewish Hebrew cities And so Jesus wants to make that clear now the final thing that I want you to learn this morning Is that some will receive greater damnation than others? The people who have heard Jesus teach and witness his miracles his authority They are left with no excuse Jesus put it like this in Matthew 23 verse 14 Woe to you scribes Pharisees hypocrites for you devour widows houses and For pretense make long prayers Therefore you will receive a greater condemnation People who were religious on the outside but had no relationship with God and they were using their religion To lead people astray and trying to impress others with their long prayers Jesus says you have a greater condemnation, but when we come to our text having already addressed These contrasts of these cities that are Jewish and Gentile Jesus comes in verse 15 and talks about another city It is called the city of Capernaum and he said and you Capernaum who are exalted to heaven Why would? Capernaum be exalted to heaven right this damn Capernaum was the headquarters of Jesus’s ministry how blessed a community would be to have the headquarters of the ministry of the Savior how blessed the people would be To know that right there in Capernaum is the headquarters of The ministry of the one who would give his life for them. It is no wonder that Jesus would say Capernaum you’re exalted to heaven You have this incredible blessing, but note he does not stop and he says you will be brought down To Hades you will be brought down to hell. Why? Because Having been at the central core of the ministry of Christ Having witnessed him equipping and training his disciples having experienced the blessing of having the Savior to kind of go back to headquarters and get things organized and reorganized and to strategize and to mobilize the disciples for the kingdom of God Capernaum Refused to believe that Jesus was the Messiah refused to follow Christ refused to believe in him and my friends Jesus reminds them because of this great privilege that they Will certainly face a greater damnation now C.s. Lewis said this Indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one the gentle slope the soft underfoot without Signposts, you can easily walk through life and you can just kind of coast Don’t take any of this serious Just be apathetic be indifferent to what the preacher has to say Just kind of go through the motions and don’t take life too serious when it comes to spiritual things You can go down that gentle slope It is the safest road to hell or you can respond And say Lord forgive me for not recognizing the great opportunities You have given me the revelation you have bestowed upon me and commit your heart to Christ There are three implications this morning for unbelievers What I want you to know is that hell teaches us to fall on our knees and repent Believe in Christ we personally all of us deserve to go to hell But the good news is that you don’t have to You don’t have to go to hell and the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ it is by coming and humbling yourself at the foot of the cross and Receiving Christ as your Savior and turning away from your sin and your selfishness and following Christ For those who trust in Jesus will arrive at the gates of heaven Can God’s people say man? For believers this morning the doctrine of hell Should cause each and every one of us to rejoice over what we have been spared from We are not worthy to go into heaven.

You aren’t a little better than the other guy It’s just that God’s grace has been poured out onto you. And when is the last time you said Lord? Thank you for awakening my heart and thank you for saving me from my sin. And thank you For sparing me from the punishment of my sin in hell for this church the doctrine of hell Reminds us that what we do matters because we are on a rescue operation We are on an assignment from heaven every one of us that is part of this church family we are on a mission to reach out and get the gospel to as many people as Possible and it is our responsibility To submit and surrender to that mission every day of our life to quit playing games To ask God to forgive us for our indifference and to revive us For a new passion to see souls save For God has made it hard for us to go to hell He has made it easy through his work on the cross for us to go to heaven and we should not be ashamed as Believers to tell every person we can we must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved Get behind these ministries get behind the gospel get behind whatever way that you can and whatever time you can and Get involved and don’t be just someone who sits and soaks But be fully engaged in whatever ministry God’s calling you to in this ministry in its totality and be involved because friends Hell is a real place a place that is as real as where you are dwelling right now And it is a place for those that reject God and do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior You don’t have to go to hell You can put your faith in Jesus Christ Repent of your sins and turn to God today and receive him as your Lord and Savior This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

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Pastor Mike will be speaking on What Will We Know in Heaven Part 2. He will be reading out of 1st Corinthians 13:12.

The Bible tells us in Revelation 21 for that God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying and neither shall there be any pain for the former things are passed away. Hello this is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church with Hope Worth Having and we are delighted to have you here today and we’re going to continue our study on what we will know in heaven. That’s a great question.

You know the Bible talks about heaven 582 times in 550 verses and so this morning I want you to join me as we begin in 1st Corinthians chapter 13 and verse 12 and let’s begin to learn more about what the Bible teaches on heaven. And not only are we overcoming death as believers but our loved ones who have already preceded us in death are going to overcome death for the scripture says that the dead in Christ shall rise. Isn’t that wonderful church? I mean just reflect upon that think about how momentous that will be how majestic will be to see your loved one rise.

The Apostle said to live as Christ this is the essence of your life. I know that some of you are pursuing that career. You’re pursuing that money.

You’re pursuing that American dream and I’m not against any of those things as long as they’re kept in perspective that your life is Christ. It’s all about Jesus. Wherever God plants you, whatever he uses you, whatever skill sets he gives you, whatever career he gives you, it’s all about Jesus.

Here is something that you don’t hear a lot but you and I need to be reminded. It’s not about you. It’s about Jesus.

It’s about Jesus. Don’t believe the lie of the devil. Don’t believe the lie of the world that it’s about you.

But remember that it is about Jesus Christ. Think about this what John the Revelator said in Revelation 14 verse 13 relating to death. I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me write blessed are the dead.

Think about that for a second. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. Yes, sayeth the spirit that they may rest from their labors and their works do follow them.

God does not forget what we have done for him and he rewards us. And so again, what is the perspective of the Bible about death? It is not one of finality. It is not one of end for the believer.

It is blessedness. It is gain. It is life.

It is to be in the presence of God enjoying all that God has for us. Now, we have many perspectives of heaven. Perhaps some of you are like what Mark Twain said to Huck Finn and Huck Finn was not really interested in heaven and so he said all a body would have to do was to go around all day long with a harp and sing forever and ever.

That would take me out because A, I can’t play a harp and B, I can’t sing. But a lot of people think that’s all you’re going to do. We’re just going to float on clouds.

We’re going to just sing and we’re just going to play an instrument. But friends, that’s not all you’re going to do in heaven. So let’s talk about this.

I want you to write this down and I hope you’ll do further study. Don’t be scared that there’s five points. First of all, remember that Pastor Mike will cut off his sermon when necessary.

And then B is that not all these points have a lot of sub points so we’ll be able to move through them quickly. But number one, our knowledge in heaven will be greater than it is now. I want you to remember that.

Again, I think that’s self-evident in our text, isn’t it? Verse 12, we know in part but then, meaning face to face, I shall know just as I also am known. So your knowledge is going to be greater. I love what the apostle said in 1 Corinthians 2, 9, but as it is written, I has not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love him.

I say it to you all the time. I know you get tired of it. I hope it’s a comfort to you.

I really do, that none of your loved ones went to heaven and were disappointed. They were not let down and they were not bummed out and they did not say, I want to go back to suffering. I want to go back to sorrow.

I want to go back to struggle. I want to go back to sin. I want to go back to dealing with difficult people.

Amen? Our loved ones bust into heaven with great joy. The Bible says, in thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand, there are pleasures forevermore.

So it’s so awesome. And I want you to know that when we get to heaven, the degrading effect of sin on our minds, that is gone. And when we live in this world, your mind isn’t as good as it used to be.

Do you remember that? But I’m just saying that our minds aren’t as sharp as they used to be. You think about these kids when they’re little, man, they’re just soaking it up. You know what I’m saying? And everything you say, they remember what you say.

Have you noticed that? My grandson Isaiah, he was in trouble last Wednesday and his mother said to him, you better straighten up or I’m going to give you a spanking. And Isaiah respond to his mother. He said, I don’t have time for that.

Now, where did a two-year-old hear that from? He probably heard it from his mother’s grandmother. But he said, I don’t have time for that. And these little kids, their minds are so sharp.

They soak up everything. It’s amazing what they remember. As we get older, our minds are not as mentally sharp.

But friends, what I want you to understand is when you leave this world, you may not remember things down here and you may have forgot to brush your teeth this morning, but in heaven, your mind is as sharp as it ever was. It is blessed and you are intellectually able to understand. Remember what Philippians 3.21 says, that God who will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself, this body, which includes our mind, every aspect of it, my friends, it is going to be one day transformed.

Hallelujah. And one day, we are going to have a brand new body. And I understand it’s not immediately, and I understand it’s after the resurrection, but it’s still a great promise and it’s still a great hope that God is going to give you a new body.

Now, people talk about getting their knee replaced. They talk about getting their hips replaced, and they talk about getting their shoulders replaced. And I’m sure it won’t be long, they’ll be implanting AI in your brain.

Okay? And I’ll be pastoring AI people. But none of that compares to the original creation, and none of that compares to the new creation of a new body of what God has in store for us. And so, we understand.

Think about it. Really, it’s this, that God is moving everything back to the way it was before sin entered the world. And what it was like for Adam and Eve in that paradise, in that garden of beauty, and all that God had created.

And so, when we think about sin entering to the world, we understand that Adam, certainly his mental capabilities, were greater before the fall than they were after the fall. So, I want you to know that our knowledge in heaven is greater. It is better.

It is sharper in heaven than it is now. Number two, I want you to learn that even though it will be better and greater, that we’ll never be omniscient. We will never be omniscient.

We will not know everything there is to know. Please keep that in mind. You won’t have all knowledge in heaven.

You won’t have everything figured out in heaven. You won’t have all the answers in heaven. I know some of you believe you already have all the answers.

We appreciate you, but we know that sometimes your answers aren’t right, but we just say to you, that’s interesting. Because you’re a brother and sister in Christ, and we don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that’s interesting. People tell me all kinds of crazy things.

So, I just say, well, that’s interesting. I think to myself, do I have time to debate with this person? And if I debated with them, would they even change their mind? Right? And so, I just say, well, that’s interesting. But I want you to know, today, we possess a very limited understanding.

The Bible says, we know in part. We’ve read it twice in this passage. We have a limited understanding of life.

And one day, though, we’re going to see better. But it does not in any way imply that you are equal with God in knowledge. So, please don’t go up there thinking in heaven.

Please. Our pastor told us we would know everything. No, you won’t.

Which will lead me to my third point, where I really want to spend some time with you, and that is that we will continue to learn and grow in our knowledge throughout all eternity. You’re going to continue to learn and grow. You say, well, I thought I was done.

And some of you are like, I’m never going back to school. Well, you’re going to the school of heaven. And it is a wonderful school, because your mind is sharp.

And you’re absorbing. Your knowledge is sharp. You’re going to be able to learn and grow.

So, what we know in the eternal state will not be static. But it will always be increasing. We will always be learning.

God made and designed us to be a people who will grow and learn. And let me tell you something, that you will revel in it. You will enjoy it so much.

There’ll be times that you’ll be walking around, and you’ll bump into the old apostle Paul. And you’ll be asking him 100 questions about what it was like. And he’s like, look, I told the other Christian this.

I ain’t got time to tell you guys. You’ll say, we got all eternity, Paul. Tell me the story again, and how you came to Christ, or how you handled that shipwreck.

Or, I’ve always wondered about this thing in the Bible, or this thing that you wrote. What did you mean, Paul? What did you mean? And so, it’s going to be beautiful. Now, what will we learn about in heaven? Please write this down.

But Revelation 6.10 gives us a little insight here. And I want you to know the context. It’s the tribulation period.

These are martyrs who are standing before God Almighty at the throne. And they cried out, the Bible says, with a loud voice, saying, how long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? They didn’t know everything. They were in the throne of God.

And they were wondering, and they were asking questions. Isn’t it great that when we get to heaven, we’re going to be able to ask questions, and nobody’s going to be offended? And I doubt that God’s going to say, because I told you so. But we’re going to learn and grow.

So, what are we going to learn? Number one, write this down, we will learn more about the person of God. We’re going to learn more about who God is. Who is God? Oh, friends, you think you know the holiness of God.

Wait till you get to heaven. You think you know about the righteousness of God, but you and I really don’t understand all of its depth, and breadth, and height, and width. We haven’t fully grasped the faithfulness of God, and the goodness of God, and the loving kindness of God, all these wonderful attributes that describe who our God is, all these wonderful words that we use to praise his name, to give him glory.

You are going to know the person of God in a greater and deeper way beyond anything that you’ve ever experienced here on this earth. That is going to bring great joy to our hearts as we learn about the person of God. Because I want you to understand something, one of the great passions of your life should be even now, to be learning about who God is.

And the more that you spend saturating your life learning about the attributes or the characteristics of God, your spiritual life is going to grow and expand in ways that you never thought to be true. But I want you to know the second thing is that we’ll learn more about the plan of God. Now, this is important.

We already told you in Revelation 6.10 that they were asking Jesus, Lord, how long is it going to be? When are you going to avenge our blood? When are you going to make things right? When is your justice going to fall down in the tribulation period? Look at verse 11. They go on, the Bible says, and white robes were given unto every one of them. And it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season until their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed as they were should be fulfilled.

You know what happened as they asked the question? God said to them, I want you to be patient. I want you to rest. I want you to remember that I got a plan and there’s still more martyrs in the tribulation period.

There’s still more people who are going to have to die and be promoted to heaven. And so they had to understand the plan of God. And you know, as you and I go through life, it’s hard for us to understand.

It’s hard for us because we see so much suffering in this world. We see so much sadness in this world. We feel it personally, what is going on.

And we say to God, how long? How long, God? Will you leave us in this state? I sometimes visit our members or our shut-ins and people in our church and they say, you know, Pastor Mike, why has God left me here? I mean, I don’t know God’s perfect plan, but bare minimum, the best I got is he definitely wants you to pray. But God has his reasons. Letha Koontz lived to be 107 in our church and I would go visit her and she would say to me, why am I still here, Pastor Mike? And I said, because God knew that Pastor Mike would need all the prayer he could get.

And you see, friends, God has a purpose and a plan. I can’t explain it all. The Bible says the secret things belong to the Lord.

And I want to give you some words of wisdom for those that are grieving. Brothers and sisters in Christ, when you minister to them, don’t act like you have all the answers. Are you with me? Sometimes we need to do what the Bible says and weep with those who weep.

You understand? We don’t have good answers. I don’t know why God called your loved one home and I don’t know why he promoted them. And you’re not helping by telling me that you got it all figured out.

It’s better to be humble and encouraging and comforting that you’re here to help out in whatever way that you can. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 12, 1, wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Here’s what he’s saying to us.

Don’t give up. Keep running the race. Endure.

There are already those who have gone on before you and the great host of heaven is cheering you on. And from heaven, they see the big picture. And from heaven, they understand the plan of God.

And from heaven, they see how God is putting everything together in such a beautiful way that it will bring glory to his name. But you and I are down here. So many things are besetting us.

Sin is besetting us. Suffering is besetting us. Our struggles are besetting us.

Different things in our life are weighing down on us and they hinder us from enduring and staying faithful and keep going for God. But there’s a host in heaven that’s saying, don’t quit. Don’t give up because God has a plan.

My friends, one day we’re going to see everything from a divine advantage point. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s going to be beautiful. Let me tell you something else you’re going to learn.

You’re going to learn about the power of God. We will learn more about the power of God because see, now I have days and I have moments where I experience the fullness of his spirit and the fullness of God. And I get to experience his great power in my life.

But can we be honest, church, that many times we find ourselves living in the flesh, responding in the flesh, handling things in the flesh. And as a result of that, we don’t experience the power of God. But when you’re in the presence of God, his fullness will be all over you, in you, and through you, and that you’ll be experiencing this great utopia moment in heaven throughout all eternity, and you will truly know what it is to have the eternal power of God operating in you.

It’ll help you to continue to move forward for the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let’s look at our fourth truth. Well, look at that.

Here we are on number four. We still got a couple hours to go, so I feel good. Number four, we will remember.

Now here’s a tough one. We will remember our past experiences. Now I know that some of you are revolting.

Let me help you. I know you need to help me. And we can have some good times with this down the road.

But let’s talk about it right now. I want you to think about your memory because your memory is an essential part of your personhood. That means your memory is an important part of who you are.

Think about that. We see this manifested in our loved ones who have had dementia, Alzheimer’s, and their memory has been stripped from them, and they cannot recall. And many times people have shared with me that, you know, Mom, she said things that she would have never said, or she did things that she would have never done.

And people have recalled to me how different things have happened. They’re like, that’s not my mom. That’s not my dad.

That’s not my spouse. Because this terrible disease of dementia and Alzheimer’s has stripped their memory. And what I’m trying to say to you, that our memory is a part of who we are, and it impacts our life.

The things that we have experienced, they shape our hearts, our thoughts. Our relationships, we have a special affection for those who are in our family, those who we love and care about, those that we have sacrificed, our children that we’ve raised, grandchildren that we have loved on. And these things are in our life as we recall the memories of our spouse and the memories of people in our lives that have been so important to us, and they affect us.

But when that is gone, we’re different. And so I want to make the case to you that we will remember our past experiences. Because without memory, how could we appreciate and give gratitude to God Almighty for the splendor of our salvation? How could we remember that Jesus saved us from our sins? The Bible tells us in Revelation 21.4 that God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, and neither shall there be any pain.

For the former things are passed away. Again, in Isaiah 65.17, the Scripture says, For behold, I create a new heaven and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. Let’s try to understand the Bible because it seems to conflict with what I’m telling you.

And let me help you. The Bible tells us that God will take our sin and he will cast it as far as the east is from the west to be what? Thank you. I’m just making sure you’re still awake.

Now, let me ask you a question. Do you believe the omniscient God who knows everything doesn’t know about your sins in the past? Why would the prophet say that? Because the Bible uses what we often do as ourselves as metaphors to describe the significance and the impact of what God might do in our life. You and I talk like this.

We say it’s raining cats and dogs out there. It ain’t raining cats and dogs. You know what I’m saying? You just are using metaphors and idioms and different terminology to describe what it’s really like.

God knows everything. And when he tells us that God is going to give us a point where we’re not going to remember no more, he’s talking about the full impact of sin and death and sorrow. But we will recall, we will remember because he will wipe away our tears.

But let me tell you something, that when you get to heaven, its impact upon you will be mitigated and minimized in your life, that it will not affect you, that you will continue to go on. It’s like your little child that fell and bumped their head, but then all of a sudden there’s a new toy in front of them and they forgot all about that. And so it is in our life that when we think about the splendor, the glory of God, the things that we might ever be tearful of, that God will wipe away, it’s not like he’s going to erase your memory and that somehow you’re going to be a different person up in heaven than you are here, but that you are going to be this same person with the same personality and the same experiences, and you’re going to know, and you’re going to know greater, and your mind’s going to be sharper, and you’re going to be able to recall things even better, because you will know face-to-face, fully, all things that God wants you to understand.

And you will grow, but it doesn’t mean that you won’t recall, or you won’t forget, but God will give you the ability that it no longer causes you sorrow, and it no longer causes you sadness, and it no longer breaks you down emotionally. And you will not focus on the past, but you will focus in the present of all the glory and the majesty of our Savior. Now, why are we really here? Because of point number five, we will recognize one another.

What will you know in heaven? Well, let me ask you some questions. Do we recognize loved ones here? Do you know who your loved ones are? Do you know who your children are? Do you know who your grandchildren are? Yes, and let me tell you something. You will not know less in heaven than you know on earth.

You will not know less. When you get to heaven, you’ll know more. Some of you have children in heaven.

Some of you have spouses in heaven, and you have parents in heaven, and you have loved ones in heaven, and you have dear friends in heaven. But I want you to know that we will know our friends, and we will know our family when we get to heaven, and it’s going to be a glorious reunion, and it’s going to be sweet, and it’s going to be better than it’s ever been here on this earth. Why? Because sometimes we get offended down here.

Have you noticed that? I mean, even the people we love, they offend us. And in heaven, you’ll never be offended. Your wife can tell you how to drive, and you’ll still, guys, won’t get upset.

You’ll be, it’s okay, hon. Thank you. It’s a blessing to have you right next to me telling me to turn left.

It’s so beautiful. It’s beautiful. How do I know this, Pastor? How do you know this? Luke 24, real quickly.

I don’t have time to break all this down, but in Luke 24, the disciples of Christ recognize the resurrected Savior. And you see, your body will be just like his body, and you will be recognizable. And how he lived after his resurrection is how you will live.

Well, let me tell you something. I got to thinking about Jesus and his resurrected body, that he ate fish. He got the disciples around, and he said, come and dine with me.

And I’m just thinking that in heaven, it’s going to be so glorious, and it’s going to be so wonderful that we’re just going to eat all kinds of food, and my friends, there’ll be no calories. There’ll be no fat, sugar, all those things. They’re gone, all right? Now, that’s a little speculation on my part, okay? I’m still looking for a Bible verse.

But in Luke 16, another example, Lazarus and the rich man clearly identified one another. They had recollection of each other’s interactions before they died. In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul told the Thessalonians that they were his joy, and they would be his crown in heaven.

And he referred to them as being people he would know, and they were ones that he had won to the Lord, and that he would know them. But 1 Thessalonians 4 reminds us that our loved ones will resurrect, and that we will spend eternity with them. Luke chapter 9, on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John intuitively recognize Moses and Elijah as the glory of our Savior was pulled back and revealed to these great disciples so much.

They said, Lord, let us build a tent, and let us just stay here for a while. And he said, nope, that’s just a picture for you. We got to get back to work.

And of course, in our text today, 1 Corinthians 13, 12, we shall know even as we are known. It boils down to this, church. We will be at least as discerning, as smart in heaven as we have been here on this earth.

We see now in a mirror, the image is poor. It’s dark. It’s dim.

But one day when we see Jesus face to face, it’s going to be clear. It’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be special.

It’s going to be beyond what you can even imagine in your mind. And let that rest in your heart and encourage you in the days ahead. Would you pray with me? We can certainly read different passages on heaven, and we know that God teaches us that we’re going to know each other in heaven.

And one great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, said, I’d hate to think that I’ll be dumber in heaven than I am on earth. And so how important it is for us to recognize that we are going to have great fellowship and connection with our loved ones and even people we don’t know that we will know. And we’re just going to continue to grow in our faith.

So it’s such a blessing to think about what we will know in heaven and the things that we’ll get to enjoy and get to learn and grow together. Now, I want to encourage you to check out our website, hopeworthhaving.com. And on that website, there’s many different things that you can learn about. You can keep up with some of our sermons and you can watch us live.

In addition, you can check out different aspects of our newsletter. So jump on that website, hopeworthhaving.com, and see what the Lord has for you as you continue to grow in your journey of faith. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.

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