Emmanuel - God with us and we with God Forever

Father God, as we continue to worship you now and the reading of your word and the hearing of it expounded, we pray, Father, that your Holy Spirit will soften our hearts and open our eyes.

Quicken and enliven us, Lord, that we will be attentive to your word, to your work, the working of your Holy Spirit in each of our lives.

Father, we pray that you will make your presence known in a special way, an unusual way, even as we continue in this time together.

That we will know that we have met with you through your word and the working of your spirit.

We submit ourselves to you now and we thank you and praise you for your goodness, for your grace, and most of all for the Lord Jesus Christ.

In his name we pray.

Amen.

Our scripture reading is found in the book of 1 John, chapter 3.

1 John 3 · chapter mention

And we'll read the first few verses, and then we're going to also read a passage in Revelation 21.

So 1 John chapter 3.

1 John 3 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible with you, there should be a pew Bible located in front of you.

And I believe it's on page 1022 that you can find this scripture passage.

And if you're here this morning and you don't own a copy of the Bible for yourself, you don't have a copy of the Old and New Testament that you own personally, I want to encourage you to take the Pew Bible that you have and take it home with you as your own.

It's our privilege to be able to give away copies of God's Word, and almost every week we're able to give out Bibles, and it's just a joy for us to be able to do that.

And we would like for you to take that home and make it your own.

And so we are.

She was gone.

The other room watching cartoons.

It just life is so fleeting, those moments of joy that we want to just hold on to.

And yet they they they're just gone.

And life is like that.

We capture these moments.

And maybe for some it was a holiday or a vacation or time with family or friends, and then we look back and we reminisce.

I think about that in sports.

You may know I'm a Packer fan.

And I think about that, I think about um Super Bowl victories.

Now, you Vikings fans have to just imagine at this point.

But I I think about Super Bowl victories, and you you go through the entire season, game after game, finally you get to the you get to the postseason and you're playing the playoff games and you're watching your team and they get to the Super Bowl, and you can imagine this, and you Vikings fans know that at least.

You they get to the Super Bowl and they win.

And for just that moment, as you're identifying with this team, and vicariously you're celebrating with them, and and there's a sense of elation and joy, but it's fleeting.

Because the next day you're looking to the new season, and and and the team may be Super Bowl champs, but the the next season's coming, and then you have to defend your title and go through the whole thing over again.

And it's so fleeting.

Life is so fleeting, even in these pinnacles that the world holds, and yet uh these teams, I remember seeing an interview of Tom Brady once, and he was talking about the fact of after winning multiple Super Bowls, and he said, Is this it?

Sproul notes this.

He says, What we want is not temporary happiness, we ache for a happiness that is permanent.

Such is the quest of the soul, the destiny for which we were created.

Have you ever been homesick?

I know when I was in college, my freshman year, uh, I left, I drove, said goodbye to my parents in Wisconsin, hopped in the car, packed with all of my belongings, drove down to Georgia, and I was fine the first month, but there was one night when I was sitting there in bed, and I can still remember this as vivid as it was yesterday, and I was sitting there, and all of the weight of missing my family, my parents, my friends, and all the food, it just hit me.

And I remembered sitting there in my bed, just weeping, longing to be home.

C.

S.

Lewis wrote this: He said, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

We were made for fellowship with God.

We were made to dwell with God.

We were made to behold God's face.

We were made to find our joy and our satisfaction in God and Him alone.

This fellowship that we long for was broken.

But one day it will be fully restored.

John, notice what he said there in that passage in 1 John.

He says, Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared.

We don't know fully what it will be, but we know this that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

And this morning I want to talk about and really go through the breadth of the entire Bible to talk about what our deepest longing is and what our ultimate goal is for our existence, to dwell in the unveiled presence of God.

And I want to encourage you, and I'm going to refer to, and just I'll hold them up now, uh, two books that I want to encourage you to read.

The first one is by Randy Elkorn, and as far as the contemporary book, it is called Heaven.

And it is, in my estimation, as far as contemporary books goes, uh the best book on the subject of heaven that I'm aware of as far as contemporary books.

Another book that's a little older by R.

C.

Sprohl called The Soul's Quest for God, particularly the final uh chapter in this book.

And if you're looking for further reading on what we're going to talk about this morning, I would recommend those two books to you.

We've been talking about this reality of the presence of God, and that has been our theme through this entire Christmas season.

And so I want to refresh our memories and then move forward with looking ahead of what is our ultimate goal.

If you remember, we talked about the glory of God was veiled at the fall.

We considered the reality of Adam and Eve.

They were in paradise with God, they were dwelling in God's presence.

God walked in their midst.

And then one day they chose out of for Eve tempt for Eve deception, and Adam was tempted, and they chose to rebel, to sin against God, to turn their back on God, to go their own way, to do it their way and not God's way.

And in the moment that they sinned, there was a riff that was created, there was a gulf, a separation that was created at the moment of that first sin that we still experience to this day.

We saw in Genesis chapter 3 that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

They were expelled from the presence of God.

And we saw that sinful humanity cannot dwell in the presence of a holy God, because God is pure and holy and righteous.

And so in mercy, God provided a covering for them and made a promise to them that this situation would be rectified.

But that from that moment on, even now, in the fullest sense, on earth we don't experience the unveiled presence of God.

We looked at Moses, and if you remember, Moses, who walked with God, was a friend with God, he asked to see God's face.

He asked God to reveal his glory to him, and God answered him.

In Exodus 33, he said in verse 19, and I said, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name the Lord, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy in whom I will show mercy.

But he said, You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.

And so he puts him in the cleft of the rock and he covers him.

And as the glory of God passes by, there is just this fleeting glimpse, a backwards glance of the glory of God, because the unveiled glory of God Moses could not see.

We saw that in the tabernacle in Exodus 40, when God came down in the Holy of Holies, there in the tabernacle, there was a veil that was there, and the throne of God was there, the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat was there, and God's presence was made manifest.

It said the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle, and Moses was unable to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

In the tabernacle, there was a veil that was there.

There was the holy place, and then there was a veil, and behind the veil was the holy of holies, the the sanctum sanctorum, the most holy place where this ark was, and there was a veil there, and nobody could pass through, because there behind the veil was the presence of God.

And the high priest could only go once a year making atonement, uh, first for himself and his sin, and then on the Day of Atonement making atonement for the sins of the people.

And tradition has it that uh a rope was tied to the foot of the priest, even when the priest would go in, for if he went in in an unworthy manner and he died there, then then they could pull his body out.

But the point was that nobody could go into the presence of God in his glory.

In fact, we saw that when we saw Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

He Isaiah sees a vision of the throne of heaven.

And when Isaiah sees, and it says, the train of the robe filled the temple, and the temple shook, and Isaiah said, Woe is me, for I am undone, for I'm a man of unclean lips.

I live among a people of unclean lips.

My eyes have seen the Lord.

And so we recognize that there is this great gulf fixed because of our sin.

Because of being sinful human beings, uh, there is this barrier that we cannot be in the presence of God, in his unveiled glory.

We saw as well that in Christ, God's glory was revealed.

And we talked about that and spent a week of looking at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ reveals the glory of God, and yet we recognize that even in his humanity, when Jesus Christ, being God incarnate, had taken upon himself human flesh, taken human nature, and even then his glory, the glory of God, even though it was revealed in a significant way, was still veiled.

And we only see glimpses of it.

We see it on the Mount of Transfiguration when the veil is lifted, a corner of the veil, so to speak, was lifted.

Let me share another story found in Luke chapter 5, verses 1 through 8.

Luke 5:1–8

Of just a moment when the glory of God in Christ was revealed.

And on this occasion there was a crowd that was pressing in to hear the word of God, and he was standing on the lake of uh Ganesaret, and he saw two boats in the lake, and there were fishermen who had gone out to them, and they were washing their nets, and they were already done fishing, they were washing their nets.

And getting into one of the boats, which was Simon, Simon Peter's, he asked him to put out a little from the land, and he sat down and began to teach the people, and the acoustics there off of the water would have enabled his voice to have traveled further, and so now he's teaching the people.

And when he had finished uh preaching, he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Put out in the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

Now, Simon was an expert fisherman, and he had already been fishing all night, had caught nothing, and they had already painstakingly taken their nets out of the water and had begun to clean them so that they could be prepared again.

And Jesus, this amateur, says, Go out and drop out your nets again.

And that's the last thing that Peter wanted to do was to have to rewash his nets because of putting them in the water.

He hadn't caught anything.

Simon answers, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing.

But at your word I will let down the nets.

And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.

They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both the boats so that they began to sink.

And notice what it says in verse 8.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.

He caught just a glimpse of the reality of who Jesus was, and he realized that he was in the presence of the holy.

And he says, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.

Jesus both reveals the glory of God, even though the full glory of God is not seen.

And we saw as well when we looked at Revelation chapter 1 in the risen Christ, and we saw his glory radiating there to John while he was in the island of Patmos.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

And yet we recognize that in his earthly existence prior to the cross, his glory was not fully seen.

In fact, in John 17, he says, I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave to me.

And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had before the world existed.

So we're reminded again and again in the Bible about the reality that we cannot be in the unveiled presence of God.

And even now, even having come to faith in Christ, here in our earthly existence.

Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 12, the great passage on love, he says this at the end of it.

1 Corinthians 13:12

He says, For now we see in a mirror dimly.

And that's our earthly existence right now.

You have come to faith in Christ, and yet our experience of God is fleeting.

There are those moments of worship where there's just an unusual sense of the presence of God.

And you wish that you could linger there, but you can't, and you wish that you could manufacture it, but it's not a moment that can be recreated because it is a divine expression of his grace.

It's not something that's manufactured by emotions and music.

It's the reality of God's presence, but it's so fleeting.

It's there for a moment and then it's gone.

And Paul says here, we see through a glass, through a mirror dimly.

We want to see God.

That is the longing of the human heart.

And we fill it up with so many other things.

I think it was Pascal that said that we have a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts.

There is this hole in our hearts, and we try to fill it with so many other things, but nothing else fits, and nothing else satisfies because we were made for God.

That's why Augustine could say in his confessions that his soul was restless until he found his rest in thee.

And to this day we find our souls are restless.

And even though we are in Christ, that we have asked Christ to forgive us of our sins, he has given us new life.

And yet we recognize that all we have now is a foretaste of what is to come.

That there is so much more that we long for that we have yet to experience that is in the future.

For we see through a mirror dimly.

This is why the Apostle Paul could say in 2 Corinthians 5 Therefore, being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.

Or we walk by faith, not sight.

We walk by faith, not sight.

God is invisible to us.

God is, and it doesn't matter.

I don't have 20-20 eyesight anymore.

It's about 2150 in one eye.

Even if I had 20-20 vision, I would not see God.

If I had 2010 vision, I would not see God.

Because it's not a matter of vision with my eyes.

The reality is that the sin is still a barrier to seeing God.

He says, though we are at home in the body, we're absent from the Lord, we walk by faith, not by sight.

We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

If you remember at the end of, after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples, and then after that, a week later, Thomas wasn't there, and he hears about it.

And he's struggling with that.

And so Jesus appears to Thomas and says, Look, look at my scars.

Put your hands in my scars.

And then he says, he commends those who are who believe without seeing.

He says, Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.

But the Bible promises us that one day that will change.

Jesus tells his disciples on the Sermon of the Mount, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

And the reason why I cannot see God yet is because I am not yet pure in heart.

I have been genuinely made new by Christ, but I am not totally new.

There is a process of growth, there is a process of sanctification, there's a process of becoming more and more like Jesus, but I'm not there yet.

And none of us are.

And so as a consequence, we long still to see God, and it's a longing that we don't experience in full.

Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14 says, tells us to strive for holiness.

Hebrews 12:14

It says, without which no one will see the Lord.

Until we are absolutely, totally, and completely holy, we won't see the Lord.

But there's coming a day when faith will be sight.

The glory of God will be revealed.

What are we waiting for?

Anyone ever ask you that?

What are you waiting for?

You're standing there and they, well, what are we, as Christians, as believers, what are we waiting for?

What is our goal?

What do we long for?

Now, in part, in part, we know that if the Lord tarries, that each one of us will pass through that veil of death.

And the Apostle Paul, he talks about that in Philippians chapter 1, beginning in verse 21.

Philippians 1 · chapter mention

He's wrestling with this while he's uh in jail.

He says, he says, For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

If I live in the flesh, this means fruitful labor, yet which shall I choose?

I cannot tell.

I am hard pressed between the two.

My desire is to depart and to be with Christ, for that is far better.

Now notice what he says.

He has two choices here, and they're really not his.

It's God's providence in his life.

But as he's wrestling with this, he's saying there are two realities here.

One is to live, which is good, and he doesn't say that to go to be with the Lord is better.

Notice what he says.

He says to go and be with the Lord is far better.

And when we pass through that veil of death, the reality is that we will be more alive and more fully in the presence of God than we have ever been.

But there's a greater hope than that.

So what are we waiting for?

Some people are waiting for the rapture as an escape hatch.

To get out of this messed up world with the pain and the misery.

They can't even figure out a budget.

This world, every day we read the news and we and we wonder how long, O Lord, how long.

Even so, Lord, come quickly.

We long for the end of this time.

We long for that day when when the dead in Christ are raised and those who are alive will be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, will be transformed.

But friends, even that isn't our ultimate hope.

Well, then perhaps we're waiting for that time afterward, the time after the return of Christ and his millennial kingdom, when Christ visibly reigns on the throne of David and he fulfills all of his promises to his people.

As glorious and spectacular as that is, friends, that is not our ultimate hope.

And we know that because sin still exists.

As you read in Revelation chapter 20, you get to verse 10 and you realize that when Satan is loose, that the masses of people who are still sinners, who externally followed God because of Christ's visible reign on earth, and yet they've never been converted, and so they follow after the enemy.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

That's not our ultimate hope.

What is our ultimate hope?

Our ultimate hope isn't just when we die.

It isn't at the rapture or the resurrection when we receive glorified bodies, although that is the beginning of what we are seeing.

But the fullness of it, the fullness of it, is beyond even that.

Our hope is found in, as we read in Revelation chapter 21.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

The Bible tells us that after the millennium there's a great white throne judgment, and all those who had not put their faith in Jesus Christ our judge, the books are open, that those whose names are not found in the book of life, that they were judged based on the things that they had done, that their judgment is just and they receive their punishment in proportion to the sins in which they've committed, and then they are separated from God's presence, and death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire.

And then it says in chapter 21, I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth have passed away.

All of the residual reality of sin is gone.

Not just in our glorified bodies, not just in us, but in all of the existence of the created order.

Jesus told us, he said, Let not your heart be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father's house are many rooms.

If it were not so, I would have told you, but I go to prepare a place for you.

When Jesus was resurrected and ascended, it says he went to prepare a place for you.

He says, And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also.

Notice what it says in Revelation 21.

This is the place for which Jesus, when he resurrected, has prepared.

He says he saw a holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And then look at verse 3.

And I heard a loud voice from the throng saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

Look at Revelation 22.

If you're ever Bibles open, I want to point out one more passage and then close.

Revelation chapter 22, beginning in verse 3, and there's much more here, but I just want to highlight one phrase in chapter 22.

Revelation 22 · chapter mention

Notice what it says here in verse 3.

It says, No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.

That's verse 3.

And then verse 4.

They will see his face.

In the Garden of Eden, when man was expelled and banished from the unveiled presence of God.

And even now we see through a glass dimly.

And even after the resurrection in the millennium, while sin is still there, there is a sense in which the fullness of the manifestation of God has not yet appeared.

But, beloved, there is coming a day when faith will be sight and we will behold with unveiled faces the glory of God fully and completely.

How is this possible?

Because Christ died on the cross, we're able to dwell in the unveiled presence of God.

We have been forgiven because Christ took the full penalty for our sins.

We have been declared justified in God's sight.

We have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

It is not our righteousness, it is Christ's righteousness that enables us to be in God's presence.

We've been adopted into his family and received all the benefits of being a child of God, and one day we will receive glorified, renewed bodies, and all vestiges of sin will be removed forever, not just from us, but from the entire created order.

There's coming a day when we will be resurrected with glorified bodies.

There's coming a day when the present world will pass away with all sickness, sadness, sin, and separation.

That's a day after the millennium.

That is a day when heaven and earth are joined together forever and God dwells among his people and his glory is fully unveiled.

That is the day when we will see God's face.

That is our ultimate hope.

That is our ultimate goal.

Let me end with a quote from the final chapter in R.

C.

Sproull's book.

He says this in the enjoyment of this blessed vision, this beatific vision, the soul finally reaches the goal of its supreme quest.

At last we enter into the haven where we find our peace and our rest.

The end of restlessness is reached.

The warfare between flesh and spirit ends.

Peace that transcends anything in this world fills the heart.

We reach the heights of excellency and sweetness only dreamed of in our mortal flesh.

We shall see him as he is.

No veil, no shield will hide his face.

The immediate and direct vision will flood the soul from the wellspring on high.

The highest joy, the greatest pleasure, the purest delight will be ours without mixture and without end.

One taste of the felicity will erase all painful memories and heal each dreadful wound incurred in this veil of tears.

No scar will remain.

The pilgrim's progress will be complete.

The body of death, the burden of sin, will vaporize the moment we behold his face.

Friends, that is our goal.

Would you stand now and receive the benediction of the Lord found in the book of Jude?

And listen carefully to this benediction.

Listen carefully to what Jude says here.

Says, now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.

To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever.

Amen.

Amen and amen.

You are dismissed.