Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Luke 20:28-37
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  November 17, 2019

“I hope I get to go fishing with Dad again in heaven. Except there the lake won’t have any mosquitoes and our beers will never be empty.” These were the final words of a eulogy I once heard. It is always interesting to hear what people think about heaven, isn’t it? What do you think it will be like? What are your heavenly expectations? That’s an important question, not just for Christians, but for all people. Because what you believe about life after death, or the lack thereof, changes how you live. (At least it should if you truly hold to your beliefs.) A study was conducted in 2016 looking at American belief in an afterlife. The most interesting part of the results was that while fewer Americans go to church regularly, belief in an afterlife is actually growing! It is higher than it was in the 1970s, at over 80% of the population. Isn’t that interesting? People believe in heaven even if they reject God or refuse to get serious about their spiritual life. This incongruence may be behind what I find to be a terrible irony—that while a vast majority of our country believes in a life after death, most have such undefined beliefs that they live as if this world were all there is. Admittedly, some of those include Christians do not live according to their faith, and do not have biblical expectations of heaven either. I don’t mean to come down on the guy who wanted to go fishing with his Dad in glory, but to say the very least, heaven has more to offer than a mosquito-less lake with lots of beer. 

In all seriousness though, while there may be more obvious dangers to faith, an incorrect view of heaven can threaten eternal hope in its own unique ways. Think about about the 20% of Americans who don’t believe in an afterlife. Did they decide it wasn’t worth believing because of what they read in the Bible? Or, more likely, did they reject the wishy-washy, superficial versions of heaven which are so prevalent? 

Having solid biblical expectations of heaven is so important! (Important for our Christian faith, our Christian living, and our Christian witness.) So that’s what we are going to talk about today. I want to tread carefully here, as there isn’t a great deal of information given in Scripture. But there is enough to draw some important conclusions. And Luke 20:27-38, helps us do just that. Jesus gets a question from some, in his day, who didn’t believe in the resurrection and he answers with some profound thoughts on heavenly expectations.

It all started with a group called the Sadducees. Verse 27: Some of the Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to him. The Sadducees were a sub-group within Judaism in the First Century. They were generally quite wealthy and were as much a political party as a religious sect. One of their key beliefs on is mentioned here. They didn’t believe in the resurrection of the body or any life after death. That helps us understand why they ask Jesus what they do. They start out by describing this sad and ridiculous scenario where a woman is married to seven husbands, who each in turn died leaving her no children. And then they ask this question, “So in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as a wife.” We already know that they don’t believe in a resurrection, so this is not a genuine question. They are trying to ridicule the idea of an afterlife. The method of argument they use here is called Reductio ad absurdum, or reduction to absurdity. You take an idea you disagree with and push it too far. And by taking it to the extreme, you lead people to question the idea itself. Parents often use it: “If your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you do that too? Reduction to absurdity. Now used as an argument against peer pressure, it can be harmless. But it is often used to belittle the idea of heaven, just as the Sadducees did. Those who do not believe in heaven are often quick to reduce it to the absurd.

However, while we can dismiss this dishonest method of argument, there is a skeptical part of each of our hearts which understand the Sadducees’ skepticism. I’ve presided for a fair share of funerals and I’ve seen the blank stares when I talk about a resurrection. I’ve watched caskets lowered into the ground and heard the Devil whisper in my ear: “Do you really think will change? Maybe this life is all there is and you have placed your hope in something empty.” I think we’ve all had moments of doubt. So I’m thankful for the skeptical Sadducees, even with their arrogant smirks, because they voiced before Jesus a question my heart can only whisper. 

Jesus began answering the Sadducees’ absurd question by making it clear he did not have any earthly expectations of heaven. Verse 34: Jesus said to them, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy to experience that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. In fact, they cannot die any more, for they are like the angels. They are sons of God, because they are sons of the resurrection. With those words Jesus pops the balloon of the Sadducees’ joke. Jesus makes a clear distinction between the nature of this age and that of life after death. Heaven is not simply a continuation of life on earth. In eternity, in our immortal, deathless state, in which sense Jesus says we will be “like the angels”, there is no need for the institution of marriage as we know it on earth, especially the creation of families and children that come as part of it. Because we are all going to be one everlasting family.

Which still leaves the inevitable question: “Will earthly relationships transfer to heaven in any way?” And the answer is, I’m not sure. I will note that Jesus doesn’t say that there won’t be any understanding or significance to what took place on earth. And I like to think that part of our identity, which we know will to an extent be preserved in heaven, will reflect the relationships which were so fundamental in the formation of that identity here on earth. As in, if who I am today is in large part due to my parents, and my wife, and my children, friends, etc., and if, as the Bible says, I will still be myself in heavenly glory, then there must be at least some residual understanding of my earthly relationships. But that may be just a finely-tuned argument for a question that actually misses the mark. Because the question we should consider is this: “Does Jesus’ teaching about “no marriage in heaven” sound bleak and unattractive? And why is that? Have we put too much hope in relationships, or potential relationships, to satisfy our eternal joy?

I ask this delicately: Is your greatest hope of heaven that of seeing a departed husband or wife, a mother or father, grandma or grandpa, a long-lost brother or sister, a friend, a child that was lost even? I am sensitive to the fact that this is a good and God-pleasing hope, one which should not be pitted against other joys of heaven. But while there certainly will be a joyful reunion with those who’ve gone before, know that it is something about which Scripture gives relatively little detail and something on which it never shines the brightest spotlight when it comes to eternal life. Not to mention, a view of heaven which focuses on the continuation of our earthly relationships can also bring up issues that severely trouble hearts. Consider this: if the greatest joys of heaven are our reunions with people we loved on earth, then what happens if some of those we loved are forever missing? Or, what will heaven be like for those whose family is shattered by strife and hatred or for whom family and friends were effectively non-existent? Will they have anything to look forward to? An earthly view of heaven can be a difficult obstacle to faith!

Jesus’ words here in Luke 20, may not seem like enough at first, but they are just what we need. He tells us what we can know with certainty and he does so while still guarding what we cannot yet comprehend. Living as God’s children in the age to come will far outshine the highest joys of marriage and family in this age. We will find ourselves lost in the endless wonder of the new perfect family that by faith in Christ we only begin to see now. That reality will overwhelm, with eternal and lasting joy, the best that could be offered in this life even by the closest relationships and families on earth. Our families are immeasurable blessings, don’t get me wrong. But the love of our spouses, our children, our friends, at its very best here, is only a temporary reflection of God’s love which will be fully experienced every moment for eternity in heaven (1 Cor 13:12). And our present human capacities for love and joy are but a faint shadow of what they will be when brought to their fullest purity and expression in heaven. And the same will be true of our relationship with and enjoyment of one another in the everlasting family that awaits us. We will be more lovable and more capable of loving than ever before. And if that wasn’t enough, you will bask in the immediate presence of the Almighty God who loved you from before time began. You will look with your own eyes upon your Savior Jesus, the one who gave his life so that you would be considered worthy of heaven. He, who covered with his own worthiness, the guilt of all your sin in order to call you his brother or sister forever. 

That is just an incomplete, rudimentary description of the place Jesus has prepared for us. I can’t adequately describe it because it is too good to comprehend! In this world, our perspective will always be limited. Only through faith can we begin to appreciate how good it will be. I’ll end today with an illustration of this which has always stuck with me. C.S. Lewis told the story of an incarcerated woman who gives birth to a son in the cell of a dungeon. She raises him as best she can, but her son has never seen the outside world. Their cell only has one window but it’s too high for them to see anything but the light which comes through it. So the mother draws pictures from her experience—in pencil lines on paper—of the real world outside to explain it to him. But, there comes a point where her transposition of the countryside—the sky, sun, the trees, the fields—fails because of the limits of her son’s experience and the concepts in his mind. “Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. ‘But,’ she gasps. ‘you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?” “What?” says the boy, “No pencil-marks there?” [Lewis, The Business of Heaven] He cannot imagine colored three-dimensional realities which don’t have rigid shape and are not enclosed in lines, something no drawing could ever achieve. The boy is convinced that the outside world is therefore less than the visible world of the prison in which they live. The small stone cell seems better because he cannot conceive of the world that waits outside. 

We all have that limitation when it comes to desiring heaven. We only have concepts and experiences, relationships, from this world and a tendency to prefer them. But faith is certain of what we cannot see. Faith looks up at the light coming through the window and longs to be set free into a beautiful eternity of color. So even though you can’t comprehend it, listen to your Savior Jesus who speaks from experience when it comes to the resurrection and raise your heavenly expectations. Amen.