The Church in Heaven

Text: Hebrews 12:1-3, 22-24

Focus: Relationship instead of Judgment.

Function: To invite people into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Form: God Only Knows

Intro:

Today is All Saints Day

Praise God, last week we brought into the fellowship here at Bear Creek, Jim and Pat Shephard.

Today we are baptizing (baptized) Sheri Wine Benges in her desire to rededicate her life to Christ and join us in her Christian journey.

Although Church membership is not a biblical doctrine, the covenant to community has always been an integral part of what it means to be a believer.

There is a lot of meat; I mean solid spiritual food, in these verses read. I could preach several different sermons based on the theology underlying these principles.

But the Holy Spirit has led me this morning to talk about the nature of the Church.

I titled the message, “The Church in Heaven.”

Now in thinking about that, we could imagine something like the Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, the Sistine Chapel, Saint Patrick’s church in New York City, the Crystal Cathedral, take the greatest image and architecture of all of that and then say, “it doesn’t even begin to compare with the image of the Temple of God in heaven.”

When I talk about church, and you know this already, I am not talking about the building.

The church is the body of Christ. The Church is the people who belong to Jesus. They make up many denominations, races, nationalities, and political ideologies.

You, if you have trusted Jesus as your Savior, and I are the church.

(SHOW) The Church is EVERYONE who has trusted in Jesus.

To get technical, we can’t really “go to Church” because we are the Church and everywhere we go, the Church goes with us.

Now, I am not so nit-picky about words to say that it was wrong to say: “Go to Church.” Because it is also an expression in our common understanding of the English language to mean that we are going to worship God in this building.

But here is a dimension about the body of Christ that you may not have pondered on. I don’t think I have ever heard a sermon on it. I know this is the first sermon I have preached about it in 24 years of ministry.

The Church is in Heaven as well as on earth.

When we leave this earth to go to our heavenly reward, we don’t leave the Church; we just get relocated to another group.

The neat thing about that group is that there will be no denominations, no segregation, no civil religion that anoints one country over another. Nope, we will all be one in Spirit, mind, theology, care for each other and worship.

So the author of Hebrews, in the twelfth chapter is striving to encourage Christians to remain faithful in the midst of good times and bad, in the midst of trials and tribulations, in the midst of poverty or wealth.

(SHOW) Keep your eyes focused on Jesus.

He tells us first; to be a part of the Church, keep your eyes focused on its founder, Jesus Christ.

In verses 1-3, we get this picture of God’s family, and if I can get familiar, we got Jesus, as our big brother who is the one who has gone before us and set a standard that is really high.

This isn’t like the classic story of the younger brother who went through school and didn’t live up to the expectations of his older brother.

There is nothing in shame about this.

But what we have is a man whom we have an awesome respect for that is clearly a great example that we strive to live up to.

Jesus set a very high bar for us and we’ll look at that as we finish this sermon.

But for right now, let us look at this great leader, this tremendous example that Jesus, our Lord and Savior set for us in context.

I love Hebrews Chapter 11. It is a chapter of faith. It tells the story of the great men and women of the faith who were amazing in what they did and accomplished.

He tells of Moses who gave up a Kingdom to follow God. And he parted the Dead Sea and delivered God’s people from oppression.

He tells of Daniel, who was faithful to God and when thrown into the Lion’s den for his prayer life, God shut the mouths of lions.

He tells of Gideon who rescued Israel against an army of 100,000 with just 300 men.

He tells of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who refused to worship the idol, were thrown into the fiery furnace and survived.

It is a great adventure. I tell you, if you haven’t read Genesis through Esther, then you have missed some really wonderful adventures. It is exciting reading (except for endless genealogies in 2 Chronicles).

He sums those books up in verses 32-38 of Hebrews 11.

Let us start by looking at vs. 32 through the beginning of 35.

(SHOW) Hebrews 11:32-35a: And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection;

We used to sing this chorus: “I got the Victory.” It was a great song about how Jesus helps us through every trial that we have.

It is a great thing that faith does for us. God cares about every situation and if we have faith, wonderful things can happen.

When he talks about the Church that is already in heaven, he is talking about these people who have gone before us as great examples.

It is easy to be a Christian when we read those stories of victory that those people experienced by faith in God.

But then look at the rest of verse 35 to vs 38:

(SHOW) …and others were tortured, not accepting their release, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.

This part doesn’t sound so good. Some were poor, some, unlike Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego didn’t get miraculously delivered from the wicked people, but instead they became Martyrs.

Did they have less faith?

No, the whole chapter is a litany of people who have gone on before us as great men and women of faith: people with faith to receive a miracle, people with faith to trust without.

I particularly like the end of verse 38 when he is talking about those who suffered in great faith: “People of whom the world was not worthy.”

With those who remained faithful even though they did not see blessings, but suffered.

That is the context of this command to consider the actions of Jesus so that we don’t lose heart and stop being faithful.

Jesus raised the dead, healed the sick, opened the eyes of the blind. Sometimes, He miraculously moved from one location to the other. He walked on water. He turned the water into wine.

But he was also abandoned by His friends. He also cried out in terror the night before His crucifixion. He lost his cousin and His father.

(SHOW) This command to remain faithful is given to us in both good times and bad.

So, I want to talk about the theology of the Church.

That is exactly what it is. A whole supporting cast of people who encourage us, lift us up, enable us, lead us and help us until we too get to heaven.

Then, remember that this family, this body does not stop when we die.

We are in unity with those who have gone before us.

We don’t pray to saints here because it looks to Roman Catholic. But let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater on that issue.

(SHOW) The saints in heaven are rooting us on.

Jesus, when proving His divinity says, in John 8: 56-58: Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He knew I was coming and was glad." The Jewish leaders: "You aren't even fifty years old--sure, you've seen Abraham!" Jesus: "The absolute truth is that I was in existence before Abraham was ever born!"

Now, I use this verse in theology to prove the Deity of Jesus Christ. The next verse tells us the leaders thought it was blasphemy and picked up stones to kill Him and that was one of the times that He just disappeared so that they couldn’t kill Him.

However, do you see the conversation He has with Abraham? He tells them that Abraham, their ancestor is in heaven and in heaven he is caring for his children. Abraham is both aware and excited about what is going on here on earth.

That is why the text says:

(SHOW) The Spirits of righteous men made perfect:

• We are declared righteous by Jesus Christ.
• But while we are here on earth, we are not yet perfect.
• Perfection (complete maturity in our Christian faith) will only come when we get to heaven.

God sees us as perfect, because He sees us forgiven through faith in Jesus.

We are declared righteous, but He knows we haven’t obtained perfection yet.

So, the passage is talking about the Church, the community of believers who are here both on earth in heaven as a group that God has given us to help us succeed in our Christian walk.

But we are called to press on to that prize.

Now the history of the Church has been less than stellar.

Too many times, the wrong thing has been done and people have been hurt.

Remember this:

(SHOW) Only Jesus was perfect.

We need to focus on His example.

When the Church loses sight of Jesus, it loses sight of everything.

We can’t look to a man, a denomination, a group of people and certain creed; we need to focus on Jesus Christ.

And look at the example He set for us and his endurance comes from these principles in the first 3 verses.

The example he asks us to consider is:

• (SHOW) For the joy set before Him
• He had hope in a reward
• He had confidence in God’s promise
• In other words, He lived by faith
• (SHOW) Endured the cross
• Only Jesus can die as a sacrifice for our sins
• But we are called to live for others, just as He did
• Make that happen in your home
• Make that happen in your business
• Make that happen in your school
• (SHOW) Despised the shame
• That doesn’t mean we have to like it
• I know He says, “consider it all joy…”
• I know the apostles rejoiced to be counted worthy to be persecuted for His name
• But that doesn’t mean that the pain of it isn’t real

So, we are called to live together in this community, this body, this family

We accept that some of us are weird, some of us are weak, some of us are strong, all of us have victory in one area

All of us have weaknesses in another area.

(SHOW) We live with each other in weakness and in strength

Making up our minds not to judge weaknesses in others because we have our own, albeit different weaknesses.

CONCL:

Come join this family