Heaven

The Neighborhood Church

We begin our "After Life" series with heaven. Everybody wants to go to heaven (cue old country song) but everyone has different ideas of what heaven will be like. Where the Bible only gives us a glimpse of what’s “After Life”—pop culture and popular ideas have filled in the rest of the picture. Where do we start? What is the focus of Christian hope? What can we know of what's ultimately unknowable? We explore these questions and more. NOTES -- 1. What we’re really talking about when we talk about “Heaven” 2. What we know of what’s ultimately unknowable—we have to admit and accept some mystery! 3. How we can rest easy before we rest in peace // The picture the Bible gives is not as clear as our culture's imagination // Heaven is simply not the focus of the Bible and our life // Heaven is not our ultimate hope nor our final home (the end game is a new heaven and new earth becoming one) // QUOTE -- "Heaven is important but it's not the end of the world." (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope) // In the New Testament we get glimpses of a pleasant postmortem place (Luke 16.22, Luke 23.43; Philippians 1.23; 2 Cor. 12.4) // Are we inherently immortal? (1 Tim. 6.15-16; John 3.16; Rom. 6.23; 2 Tim. 1.10) // Heaven = God's Realm // It's more about where God is, less about where we go. The Biblical trajectory is more "top-down" than "bottom-up" // We have enough glimpses to trust an eternal God for eternal life after death. But the ultimate hope is resurrection. // BIG IDEA 1 -- What we mean by “heaven” is step one of the two-step process of eternal life. Christian hope is a resurrected bodily existence on a renewed earth: not a disembodied soul on a cloud. // BIG IDEA 2 -- Eternal life is contingent upon our connection with the Source of life: Jesus. // SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- John 14.1-6 // You can trust Jesus to bring us to the Father. You can trust the Father to keep us safe in his care--with all those who've gone before--until Jesus returns. We know enough to know that we can rest easy after life before Jesus returns and all is renewed.