Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why I'm Not Going to Heaven | My Favorite Verses | Acts 3.21

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Christians talk about heaven a lot, but what will it actually be like? There are a lot of misconceptions. Learn what heaven's really about from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Pastor Patrick Miller )as he explains https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+3.21&version=NIV (Acts 3.21) to continue our series on My Favorite Verses. Interested in more content like this? Check out https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/do-pets-go-to-heaven/ (Do Pets Go to Heaven?) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-the-kingdom-of-god-looks-like-mark-mark-4-1-33/ (What the Kingdom of God Looks Like). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. We are currently exploring some of our favorite Bible verses and how they've changed our lives. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. Before becoming a Christian, I found the idea of going to be able to. heaven, how should I put it, unappealing? Playing harps as a disembodied soul during an eternal

worship service in the sky, it just seemed kind of boring. I'm not sure where I got this idea of heaven from, probably Looney Tunes or All Dogs Go to Heaven, but I'm sure I'm not alone in my personal heavenly vision. I'm sure because there is so much evangelical popular art depicting Jesus in that exact way. He's standing at the pearly gates in some location where a a dude went way too hard with a smoke machine. So can I be honest? I found the idea of heaven boring even after I became a Christian. I mean, it's obviously boring before I became a Christian, but even after I loved Jesus and I knew that I wanted to be with him forever, I still found this concept of heaven boring. I mean, isn't variety the spice of life? Do I really want to be doing

the same thing day in and day out? Everything changed for me when I was 20. And I heard a speaker at a conference, say in a somewhat offhanded way, I can't wait to read the next Jane Austen novel. Now, at the time, I was an English major, so the idea of reading in heaven, not just harping, well, that was a cake I could not pass on. And then I realized that there was something even better. This guy, he seemed to be implying that some people, or at least Jane Austen, would actually be writing in heaven, creating culture in heaven. There'd be pens, there'd be paper. And of course, I'm sitting there thinking, how in the world is a soul going to do that? Well, after his talk, I got lucky. Somehow I ended up in a lunch with him, and I couldn't help but ask him, what did all that

stuff mean? He smiled at me. I think he's probably a little bit confused by me, to be honest. And he quoted to me one of the most important verses in my life, Acts 321, for Jesus must remain in heaven until the time for the final restoration of all things. As God, promised long ago through his prophets. He asked if I understood what that verse meant, and I told him, no, I do not. And so he said, and by the way, he had a British accent, so just add that little flavor into your imagination. But this is what he tells me. He says, look, this verse is saying that Jesus is in heaven right now. That much is true. But that's not where he plans to stay. He plans to come back down to earth and stay here with us. And when he does, this verse says that he will bring about

the final restoration of all things. And by all things, I mean all things. He will restore this physical world, all of it, art, culture, business, people, bodies, all of it. We'll work for Jesus in heaven. We'll create for Jesus in heaven. We'll build in heaven. But heaven is in a place up in the sky. Heaven is on earth. And we will learn there. We'll eat and we'll drink there. We'll celebrate and will enjoy the best of culture all for Jesus in this new creation, heaven on earth. He then took his Bible out and he flipped to Revelation 21. And he pointed out that at the very end of the Bible, people don't go up to heaven. Instead, John describes heaven coming down to earth. He told me that the Apostle Paul's aspiration wasn't to die and go to heaven, but he read to me,

Philippians 311, that somehow I may arrive at the final resurrection from the dead. He told me that Paul longed for the renewal, not of his soul alone, but of his body. And then in verse 20, Paul, he writes this, we are eagerly waiting for the Savior, the Lord, King Jesus, who is going to come from heaven. And not we're waiting to go to heaven, but he is coming from heaven to earth to transform everything on earth. If you can't tell, I left that conversation electrified, and I left it transformed. As I read my Bible, I began to realize that, Almost everything that I believed about heaven came from culture and Christian art, not from the Bible. In fact, the notion of a disembodied heaven comes from the pagan thoughts of Plato, not Peter or Paul.

But what changed me the most was the realization that if God intended to renew all things in the future, that actually changes how I live here on earth in the present. Before that date, I kind of imagined this world like the Titanic. It struck the iceberg of sin and evil, and now the Titanic, this world is sinking. And this means that a Christian's job isn't worry about rearranging the chairs on the deck. Why would we worry about a sinking ship? Our job is to get as many people onto the lifeboats as possible because the Titanic is going down. After that conversation, I began to realize that the opposite was actually true.

Here's what happens. Yes, the boat, this world, it has struck the iceberg, but it's already sunk. It's already broken. And we're not living on it as it's sinking. Jesus came to lift that wreckage from the bottom of the Atlantic. He's not getting rid of the Titanic. He's resurrecting the Titanic. He's renewing this whole world.

He's renewing all things. And that means that the chairs on the deck, well, they really do matter because this world is going to last forever with Jesus. It means that this life, this world, what we do here, it's going to have eternal repercussions, culture matters, your work matters, your family matters, your house, your grass, your entertainment, all of it matters because Jesus wants to renew it all. The question is whether you're living like the Titanic is being resurrected or you're living like this Titanic, the world we're on,

is being sunk. Jesus wants you to live like this world is being resurrected and he wants to build that new world, that future world, right here in the present, through you. There was once an architect who built the most beautiful house he'd ever imagined. He loved this house tremendously, and so he entrusted it to a dear friend. But that friend didn't take care of the house, and the house fell into disrepair. Rooms end up burning down, and it becomes an absolute disaster site. One day, the architect comes back, and he's totally surprised by what he sees. In fact, he's heartbroken by it.

and so he spends every dollar he has to buy the house back. Now, once he's bought the house back, he's got a choice. He can knock the house down and start over again, or he could try to restore the house one brick at a time while he lived in it. The architect, he decided that he loved this house so much he couldn't tear it down. And so he moved in and he began to restore it one brick at a time. In fact, he even hired a whole team of construction workers to help him do the job. You see, Jesus is that architect. He didn't knock down the world. He came to live in it, and he paid his life to buy that whole world back.

Now he's restoring it one block at a time. You and I, we are the construction workers. We are the ones through whom Jesus wants to work. Through us, he wants to build his world of love, justice, beauty, and mercy right here on earth as in heaven. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with?

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