The Believers Pursuit Longing for Heaven While Still on Earth
Tom Shrader expounds 2 Corinthians 5:1-9, describing the body as a temporary tent destined to be replaced by an eternal dwelling God has prepared for believers. He emphasizes the security of salvation sealed by the Holy Spirit, drawing on John 10 and Ephesians 1 to show that no one can snatch believers from God's hand. The teaching closes with four searching questions about whether one knows where they will spend eternity, whether they are heavenly-minded, and whether that hope visibly shapes the way they live.
“We are as sure of heaven as the saints that are already there. What a magnificent truth that is.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 2 Corinthians
Recorded: 2003 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 3 min
Themes: heaven, eternity, hope, salvation, assurance, suffering, holy spirit, eternal life, facing death, grieving, struggling with fear, questioning salvation, new believer, elderly, chronically ill, feeling hopeless
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 2 Corinthians 5:1-9, 2 Peter 1:13-14, John 14:1-6, John 10:27-30, Romans 8:19-23, Ephesians 1:13, Colossians 3:2, Philippians 1:21, Philippians 3, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Titus 2:9
Theological Themes: eschatology, eternal dwelling, perseverance of the saints, eternal security, pneumatology, sealing of the spirit, glorification, bodily resurrection
Full Transcript
The Temporary Nature of This Life
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16: "Therefore we don't lose heart, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison while we look not at the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen for the things that are seen are temporal, the things that are not seen are eternal."
When we closed last time looking at that section of Scripture, Paul launches our imagination into the future. At the same time, we're anchored here in the present. We look at the things around us and understand through Paul's eyes that these are temporal — these are temporary. Those things that we can't see, which are truly worthy of our time, effort, and insight, are eternal and invisible to our eye. I think we're supposed to stop and think about those things. The fact that you may or may not be able to fully comprehend them is not the issue.
J. C. Ryle writes this, speaking of 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 18: "A subject stands out in the face of this text that is one of solemn and heart-searching importance in the Scripture. It's the subject of eternity. The subject is one that the wisest man can only take in a little at a time. We have no eyes to see it fully, no mind to grasp it, yet we must not refuse to consider it. There is a depth of stars in the heavens above which the most powerful telescope cannot pierce, yet it is well worth it to look at them, learn something from them, even if we cannot learn everything. Their heights and depths about the subject of eternity that mortal men can never comprehend. But God has spoken of it. We have no right to turn away from it completely."
That is the point Paul is making here. This life is temporary. This life is passing away. All the things we see around us — and we tend to think of the things we see. Before we get too carried away with anything we build or accumulate, in about 30 years these things will be rehab projects, and in about 60 years they'll be bladed because the dirt will be worth more than the buildings. It's all passing away. Your beauty is passing away. Your strength is passing away. It's all temporary.
Ryle makes an interesting point: humbling and painful as these truths may sound, it is good for all of us to realize them and take them to heart. The houses we live in, the homes we love, the riches we accumulate, the professions we follow, the plans we formulate, the relationships we enter into — these are for a time. The things we see are temporary. The form of this world is passing away.
Encouragement in What Is Passing Away
We tend, as we say that, to have a little bit of remorse or sorrow in our heart and mind. But there is a flip side to that. Your trials are passing away. Those crosses, that suffering, that hardship, that difficulty, that anguish, that pain — physical pain included — it too is passing away. It's all passing away.
I think Paul writes these words with a couple of things in mind. First, he wants us to focus on the eternal. Second, he wants to give us great encouragement, and the encouragement is this: this stuff is passing away. If you are here today and you are hurting — if you have hardship, pain, sorrow, suffering, something difficult in your life — here is what we say to you, and we say it as a source of great encouragement: no matter how bad it gets, it can only last a lifetime, and then it is over. What is it — another 30 years, 40 years — and then it is gone, and then you are with Him forever. What a joy, what a day that will be.
The Earthly Tent and the Eternal Building
So Paul makes that point as he closes chapter 4. Chapter 5, verse 1 begins with this: "For we know" — it is certain to us, we know this — "we know that if this earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
Paul is summarizing this thought and beginning to drive home a very important truth that has profound and significant impact on our daily life. He talks about our earthly existence. He talks about this body as a tent. That would mean a great deal to the nomadic tent dwellers of that time. Paul is a tent maker. They would understand that when you talk about a tent, you are talking about something that was temporary.
The Earthly Tent We Live In
It's not too secure, not too sturdy. I can't imagine ever being in the circumstances where I'd try to set up a tent, but if I were, I have to believe it would not look particularly good. While I might be able to jimmy-rig something and pull it tight for a moment, I believe that after a very brief period of time, that tent would begin to bag and sag and drag — just like your earthly tent.
Peter gives essentially the same thought in 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 13 and 14: "I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent." He says, as long as I live here, I need to remind you that this thing is passing away, that this body will be no more. You see the phrase there — "torn down." He's talking about dying.
When it's torn down, it's not the end — it's the beginning. We move from this tent, this temporary structure, into a permanent structure, into a house, into a building from God, built by God, not built by human hands, not built by any created thing.
What Jesus Prepared for Us
Keep your finger in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and turn left to the Gospel of John, chapter 14. Frequently people say they're looking for something to study, something to spend time on, meditate on, pray through, and really begin to understand. John chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17 are a great section for that. These are Jesus speaking to the disciples the night before He is killed, and these words are obviously designed to be comforting — to them, and to us as well.
"Let not your heart be troubled." Those had to be great words. The disciples didn't even comprehend what was going on at the time, but Jesus knew they would reflect back on it, and He wanted it fresh and foremost in their minds that they were to be comforted. "Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am there you may be also. And you know where I am going."
Thomas says, "We don't have a clue. Lord, we don't know where You're going. We don't know the way." And in John chapter 14, verse 6, Jesus speaks those words so familiar to us: "I am the way, and I am the truth, and I am the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me." That is a passage we use all the time speaking of salvation, with Jesus clearly saying, "I am the way." There is no other way. There is a passage to the Father only through the Son.
A Place Prepared Specifically for You
What I want to draw attention to is a little phrase that Jesus uses twice. He says, "I'm going to prepare a place for you — a house for you." It's easy to read that and let it go, but it has been very helpful for me to think about not just heaven as a vague concept, but to start to see what Scripture actually seems to say about it. Randy Alcorn's works are very helpful in that area. I don't know that he has all of it right, but he certainly provokes your mind and your thinking.
Jesus said, "I'm going to prepare a place for you," and it is very reasonable to assume He means He will customize it — that it is for you specifically, a place you would be comfortable in, comfortable with. Many of you know that we are in the process of moving. We purchased a house, sold our other house in a couple of days, and we've been ripping out, painting, cleaning, and moving lights around to customize it. But we don't have it exactly the way we want it yet. We're short the funds to get it where I'd want it, and even at that, I can already tell you we've been asking ourselves, "Why didn't we put an outlet there?"
The idea is that Jesus goes and prepares a place perfectly for you. Since we are all different, does that mean the places are different? I think so. I have some sense of what it might be like — no barking dogs, though there may be dogs. No cats. It's heaven. I don't know exactly what it's going to be like, but here's the point He's making: we live in this tent, it's going to be torn down, and He is going to replace it with a place made for you.
Groaning for What Is to Come
Keep your finger in the Gospel of John, because we'll come back to it. Return first to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 2, where Paul tells us we should be anxious for that place: "For indeed in this house, in this tent, we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, and inasmuch as we have put it on, we shall not be found naked." It's not that we will be disembodied. We are going to have a new body. Jesus' resurrected body was the prototype.
Paul says we groan. We long for that place. Look at verse 4, where he uses the same words again: "For indeed, while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened." Paul writes the same theme in Romans 8: "For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but we ourselves groan within ourselves."
The Ache for Heaven
We wait eagerly for our adoption. There is an anticipation, an excitement. We ache for heaven. Remember Larry Wright in the last few years of his life. While he never complained — he didn't complain at all — he was so anxious for heaven. He understood the truth of Philippians 3, which we will look at more next week: that this is not our home, that our citizenship is in heaven. He groaned for that. He could not wait for this mortal body to be swallowed up and to take on that permanent dwelling, that resurrected body.
God's Purpose and the Holy Spirit as Pledge
Now look at verse 5: "Now he who prepared us for this very purpose is God." It is God who prepared us for this very thing, for that dwelling place. It is God who prepares us for heaven, and He gave us the Holy Spirit as a pledge — other terms we might use there: a seal, a guarantee. This is part of God's divine plan, His declared will.
Before the foundations of the earth, the Father chose those that He would save. The Son came at the appointed time and died on the cross to save that specific group of people. At the specific point in time, the Holy Spirit invades that life, changes that heart, causes that person to be born again, and places in us a desire and a thirst for repentance and obedience. God prepared this. He did it. It is an act of His will, His work — not yours, not mine. He created it, He prepared it, and we have a guarantee. We have the Holy Spirit.
In Ephesians chapter 1, verse 13, Paul writes: "...in him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, in whom also having believed, you were sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance." The image of a seal would have been very familiar to them. Paul speaks of an official mark on a document or a letter — or the seal that was placed on the grave when Jesus was laid in it. There would be hot wax, and a signet ring or similar instrument would be pressed into it to leave an imprint. What that meant was that the item was secured. If the seal was broken, it had been tampered with. It was secure. It was authentic. It declared ownership. It declared authority.
The Certainty of the Believer's Security
The Holy Spirit has been given to those of us who are believers, and it secures us. We are as sure of heaven as the saints who are already there. What a magnificent truth that is. We are certain of heaven — as certain as those who are already there. If you took communion this morning, and if you are truly converted, if you truly know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are as certain of heaven as the saints already there. It declares your security and your ownership. You are not your own. You were bought at a price. You are His. You are a bondservant to Him. It is His authority. It is authentic.
He who began a good work in you will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus. He started it. It is not you hanging on to God — as if you are holding on, and after a while your arms begin to shake, and you begin to tremble, and perhaps you let go. No. He has all of you.
Jesus the Good Shepherd: No One Can Snatch You Away
Look at John chapter 10. Jesus is speaking the parable of the Good Shepherd. John chapter 10, verse 27: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." Jesus frequently, when He would teach, would close by saying, "If you have ears to hear, let them hear." What is He saying? There were people standing around who could hear the words but did not understand them, did not comprehend them. His sheep — those who are truly His — will understand. And how will we know that they are saved? They will follow Him.
"I will give them eternal life. They shall never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hands." Did your grandfather ever do something like this? My grandfather did. He'd put a dime in his hand and say, "If you can get my hand open, you can have the dime." You go through that futile exercise, trying to pry that fist open. I found a way to beat him. He'd close his hand, and I'd walk up to him and step on his foot. His hand would fly open, and I'd get the dime every time. Always had the angle. When the girls were little, we'd do the same thing, let them work at one finger at a time — but there was no way.
That is what Jesus says here: "I give them eternal life, and no one can snatch them out of my hand." It is absolutely impossible — no more possible than a two-year-old prying a dime from your hand. There is a better chance of that than of you being grabbed from God's grasp. "My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand." You are secured.
Jesus' Claim to Be God
I want to spend just a moment on verse 30, a brief sidebar. Jesus says, "I and the Father are one." Periodically, people will say to me that Jesus never claimed to be God. Well, what is He doing here? Look at verse 31: "The Jews took up stones again to stone him, and Jesus said, 'I showed you many good works from the Father. For which one of them are you stoning me?' And the Jews answered, 'For a good work we are not stoning you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God.'" That is exactly what Jesus did in John chapter 10, verse 30. He claimed to be God, because He was God. You are secured.
The Believer's Longing for Home
You're sealed. The Scripture is very clear. I want you to know that you have eternal life. This day you can know you have eternal life. Now you can live like it.
Verse 6, Paul summarizes these five verses and says, "Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we're at home in the body, we're absent from the Lord." That is opposite of how we typically say it, isn't it? We typically say, absent from the body, present with the Lord. What Paul is saying is, while we're at home in this earthly tent, we're absent from the Lord.
He is not saying we don't have contact with Him. He is not saying God is some distant, removed God and we have no correspondence or connection between the two. We just saw that we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. God the Holy Spirit lives in us. We communicate to Him as we pray, and He communicates to us through His Word. We have contact with Him. We are just not in His presence.
And because of that, Paul says we should groan. We should be homesick.
A Five-Year-Old Who Gets It
When I taught chapter 4, verses 16 through 17, after one of the services, a lady came up and shared that her five-year-old daughter had just had an interesting experience. The grandmother is dying, so they told the five-year-old and wondered how she was going to handle it, comprehend it, and deal with it. The five-year-old said, "Well, I want to go see Grandma." So they took her in, guarding themselves, wondering what she was going to say.
The five-year-old went up to Grandma and said, "Grandma, aren't you excited about seeing Jesus? Aren't you?" And that five-year-old told her mom afterward, "Mommy, I love Jesus more than you." There is a five-year-old who gets it. She is really homesick. Do you have that homesickness, that yearning?
Longing for Him, Not Just for Relief
I have said this before — I love my life. God gave me a wife who is low maintenance to no maintenance, and I am very high maintenance. I am hard to live with, hard to be around, hard to hang in with. I wanted girls, and God gave me girls — solid, emotionally balanced girls. We have been in our house 21 years. I love this house. I love my job. I love my kids. God dropped Tyler into our life. I love my life. But I would trade it in a nanosecond to be out of here, to be with Him.
I will admit that sometimes the motives are not pure. Sometimes I am just tired — tired of the sin, tired of the bickering and fighting and all that goes with it. But make sure you do not fall for this trap: the idea that you just want to get to a place where all the suffering is gone, the pain is gone, the healing is there. That is not the key part of heaven. The key part of heaven is being in His presence.
We have contact with Him now, but it is at a distance. When we leave here, we will be home. Randy Alcorn writes, "Our passion for God and our passion for heaven should be inseparable. The more we learn about God, the more we get excited about heaven. The more we learn about heaven, the more we get excited about God." A.W. Tozer writes, "Let no one apologize for the powerful emphasis Christianity lays upon the doctrine of the world to come. Right there lies its immense superiority to everything else within the whole sphere of human thought or experience. We do well to think of the long tomorrow."
Heaven as Home
This is not home. That is home. When I think of home, I don't think of some sterile place. I think of eating, of people coming over and hanging out, of being together with friends and people you love. I have to believe there is an aspect of that to heaven.
When the girls were smaller, Sarah came to me and said, "Dad, I want to go and everything, but aren't we going to get bored? Holy, holy, holy — is that all we're going to do?" The more you think about it, the more you contemplate it, the more you start to yearn for it, and the more you realize it is going to be home.
You know the phrase, "You can never go home again." That is not true. We are going to go home for the first time. We are not home here. Think of those words from Amazing Grace: "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun." Forever. There is going to be so much happening.
What Heaven Might Hold
Do you think we will continue to learn, continue to grow? If the earth is still going on, do you think we will be able to see what is happening down here? I wonder if the dead will pray for the living. The Scripture seems to indicate that the saints intercede. Don't you yearn for that?
People get excited about events like the Super Bowl, and those things are fine. But this world's greatest spectacles are nothing in comparison to what is coming. Verse 7 says, "For we walk by faith, not by sight."
Living by Sight Versus Living by Faith
There are those who are walking around today identified as the "faith movement." They have belief, they have faith, they see healings and miracles, they pray in tongues — and they celebrate all of that. But it strikes me that they don't actually have that much faith. It strikes me that they're living by sight.
Show me the latest miracle, the latest healing, the latest hype. I find it burdensome, frankly, to listen to some of this — another miracle, another healing, another round of excitement. I am not diminishing that God can do that. I'm simply saying they are not living by faith; they are living by sight. Look at this, and look at that, and look at this.
Here is the sight I have: an empty tomb. I don't need any more than that. I have this Word, and I don't need any more than that. I don't need to see crutches thrown away and wheelchairs emptied. Faith is the assurance of the things we hope for, the realities we cannot see. I don't need to see these things — we know they are here.
We see God's grace in our own lives. He will never leave us or forsake us — that doesn't always feel true, does it? But it is true. He will always forgive you if you are truly His, and sometimes we don't feel forgiven, but that is a reality we cannot see. We live not by sight, but by faith.
It is not accidental — and I find it amusing — that the wave now among many of these faith movement figures is to claim they have gone to heaven and returned with reports. One of them was watching a vision and saw David, talked to him, and began describing him in detail. I don't buy that for a second. You know what we actually know? We know that one day we are going to be with Him in heaven. We know it because God says it.
Our Ambition: To Please God
Verse 8 says, "And we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body than to be present with the Lord." Paul says elsewhere that he is torn in both directions, but here he says he thinks he would like to be with the Lord. And therefore, he continues, "we have as our ambition, whether we are at home or absent, to be pleasing to God." That is why we live. That is the goal — to please Him.
That is Paul's highest goal, and it is the highest goal of every believer. The word is best translated "pleasing." It is used in Titus 2:9 to describe a slave whose passion it was to please his master — to be pleasing to him. Everything flows from that single ambition.
Four Questions: Starting with Eternity
I want to close by asking you four questions. The first is this: Do you know where you are going to spend eternity?
Scripture tells us there is a heaven to gain and a hell to shun. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says the wicked shall be punished with everlasting destruction. Scripture is clear that all of us have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God, and the wage of sin is death — it is separation. Hell is in your future apart from Christ. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.
I had a lunch last week with a man I had been anticipating meeting for a long time. He is 88 years old and a fairly well-known figure. I wanted to talk about his field of endeavor, and he wanted to talk about religion, so we went back and forth. He asked me directly: "Do you believe everybody's a sinner?" I said yes. Then he walked me through his thinking and said, "God is willing that none should perish — so no one is going to hell." He is a terrific man and I had a genuinely good time. But the problem is, that is not what Scripture teaches. Scripture teaches that there is eternal damnation.
By far the most popular view in the world today is that we all go to heaven — justification by death. All you have to do is die, and unless you are Saddam Hussein, and even then unless they have pictures proving it, apparently you are still somehow in heaven. That is the prevailing assumption, and it is wrong.
I had tea with me today — Good Earth tea, so it is a little New Age-y — and there is always some pithy little saying on the bag. Here is what Pearl S. Buck said: "I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings." She has issues. Faith in human beings? Did she not read a newspaper? And yet I don't want to make complete light of it, because I am sure there are people here who believe they are okay, or believe it will all work out, or believe that somehow toward the end everything will come together for them. You have no guarantee of that. The heaven we have been talking about for the last forty minutes is not yours unless you know Christ.
Does the Future Shape How You Live Now?
Does knowledge of that future affect the way you live here? Rick Holland, when he was here last week, used Philippians 1:21 — "For me to live is Christ, to die is gain" — and he called it the Christian Manifesto, two resolutions bound together in a single verse.
Living in Light of Eternity
We anticipate death, and so we live for Christ. When we talk about worship, we don't just mean our time here with music. We mean our whole life. Present your bodies as an act of worship.
There was a young lady who came to see me this week. Her grandfather had died, and he was not a believer. She said what I've seen so many times: for a real Christian, that's when the rubber meets the road. Now you've got somebody you really love and care for, and they're not a Christian. They don't care about the things of God, they expressed no interest in them, and now they're dead.
It is amazing to me how fast the preacher or the priest wants to somehow get these people into heaven, and yet you know they're not there. She said, "I feel somewhat responsible. He didn't respond. I know God's sovereign. What should I do? What should I feel? What should I think?" I said, "What do you think?"
She said, "Well, number one, I have to tell you what it's done — it's made me very grateful. Because Grandpa in hell makes hell more real." And when hell became more real for her, heaven became more real. And when heaven became more real, her heart was filled with gratitude.
She said secondly that it had convinced her evangelism is very, very important. And lastly, she said it had convinced her that righteous living is key.
Are You Heavenly-Minded?
That is the question: is your knowledge of the future affecting the way you live? Or are you one of those people playing the game, saying, "Yeah, I think it may happen. I think it may come. I know I'm going to die, but we'll see how it works out." Maybe you have your own version of what the Catholics call purgatory — the idea that you're not good enough for heaven but not bad enough for hell, so you go somewhere in between, a spiritual renovation happens, a couple of people burn candles, and you get into heaven.
No. Listen, when you're dead, you're dead, my friend. It doesn't do any good to be praying for the dead. They're dead. They're either in heaven or hell. There is no purgatory. Who goes to heaven? Those who know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Who doesn't? Everybody else. It's that simple.
Do you know where you're spending eternity? Paul writes in Colossians 3:2, "Set your mind on the things above, not on the things of earth." Are you thinking about this at all? I plead with you to become so heavenly-minded that you finally become earthly good.
When that happens, we don't give up trying to please God out of duty or out of trying to earn our way into heaven. We get involved in something like the N25 project because we see people with needs and we have the provisions to meet those needs, and we understand how much God has given us. We understand that when we see somebody who is hungry or thirsty and we reach out to them, there is a sense in which we are reaching out to Christ — and that moves us out of thanksgiving and gratitude and a desire to serve, not out of obligation. I become so heavenly-minded that I am now earthly good.
The Joy of Knowing Where You're Going
Should the reality of heaven be evident in how we live? It seems to me that if someone truly knew they were moving from this world into heaven, it ought to change their life. I remember when the girls were young, taking them to Disneyland. For weeks beforehand, they'd be ready to go. One time — and this was a one-time thing — I was going down to the airport and the girls were there, and we were going to take them to Disneyland but we hadn't told them. I told them I had to go on a business trip.
I said, "Why don't you guys come with me?" They said, "Oh, do you think Mom would let us?" I said, "I don't know, go ask her." They came back and said she said they could go, and I said, "Let me see if I can get tickets." So I got the tickets, and now we're there on the plane — it's great, it's exciting. As we're driving, they asked what I was going to be doing, and I said I had meetings all day. They asked what they were going to do, and I said there was a Walgreens right by where I was going.
Just as I said that, we pulled up to the sign that said Disneyland. I got goosebumps. I wish I had a picture of their faces. I could see them in the rearview mirror, and they were going nuts. They were so excited.
You see people arrive early at Disneyland and everyone's waiting — they can't wait to get in. Just knowing you're going to Disneyland makes a physical difference in you. Wouldn't knowing you're going to heaven make that same difference? Isn't there something powerful about saying, "I am going to heaven"? Shouldn't it show?
One of the great things that happens when people come into East Valley Bible Church is that they say they see people who are happy and want to know the secret. I think the real secret is that these people understand this life is temporary, and what is eternal is heaven — and that joy is contagious.
A Look Ahead
Now, wait a minute — isn't there a judgment? Aren't we judged? You bet you are. So next week we'll take a look at that.