Sept 20, 2026 - What Are You Waiting For - Week 1 - The World To Come

Isaac Asimov, who's a science fiction author, proclaimed atheist, and psycho-humanist, said, I don't believe in an afterlife.

So I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell or fearing heaven even more for whatever the tortures of hell.

I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

Welcome in everyone.

My name is Jason, and I'm one of the pastors of the Christian Church.

On behalf of our team, I just wanted to say thanks for taking some time to journey with us through the scripture.

Our hope is that these words would cause you to think carefully about this Jesus we proclaim and that you would choose to trust him in your day-to-day.

And as always, if you're in the Asheville area, whether you live here or you're visiting, we'd love for you to come join us at the corner of Livingston and Depot Street in person at the Dr.

Wesley Grant Senior Southside Center.

Our prayer is that God's words would equip you for every good work that He's prepared for you to do today.

So I do, I do want to encourage, I mean, again, obviously, I think it's always great when the church gets together, and I'm not one who likes to promote, hey, church attendance, but I do think where we're headed is going to take multiple conversations to get there.

We cannot talk about all things eternity in one sitting.

I would love to.

The teacher in me is like, oh man, this would be amazing to spend hours on, but I know we're not going to do that today.

But we are also, uh, I am going to be very intentional about um having slides available that teach the historical stuff that I think is important to talk about as we consider eternal life, uh, all the things that are talked about in the scripture that way that are awaiting, we are awaiting as Christ followers.

Um but I want to show you a picture first.

This uh this guy right here, he's a uh director of photography who I think actually hangs out in Asheville quite a bit, but he is known for his uh work uh with the B uh BBC and all these documentaries that he films.

The dude has hung out on uh whaling ships for weeks just to get a whale breaching.

Like that three-second clip you see, he spent weeks waiting for, right?

He's uh he actually spent some time in Brazil waiting for uh a Jaguar shot.

27 days sitting in the woods, waiting for this jaguar to pounce so that it could bring the food back to its cubs.

Like he's his whole job is literally waiting around a camera, hoping that he captures this incredible moment.

But he's actually working on a project right now, which I think we would all find fascinating, is he's hanging out in Asheville waiting to get footage of mama bears and cubs because he's doing a thing on city bears, right?

And we as an Asheville people, we have the city bears.

This morning on my run, running down Haywood in the dark, almost ran into a mama bear, freaked me out so bad because all I could see was her eyes.

I thought it was a dog, wrong.

Bear.

I ran across the street, escaped, I'm alive to talk about it.

But the point is when you live in that kind of a world and you are just sitting and waiting, it's not that you're waiting to do and you're just doing nothing.

Like you know something is coming.

You know you're in the right position for it, you're waiting for it, you're making sure the batteries are running, the cameras are working, because something is on its way.

So it's not as if when we say we're sitting and waiting, we're not meaning we do nothing.

Because what you believe is coming will determine what you do while you wait.

I promise you.

What you do while you're waiting, what you think about what is coming will determine how you wait.

And so there are a lot of practices that I think as Christ followers we have to be able to address because the scripture takes us on a huge journey.

So that's the question I want us to wrestle with over the next few weeks.

What are you waiting for?

And like I said, I'm not talking about what are you waiting for God to do in your career or your relationships or your prayers?

I mean to cover something much deeper.

As a follower of Jesus, what do you believe all of this is moving toward?

They say some of the more developmental questions that a person will go through is okay, how did we all get here?

How did things get started?

What went wrong?

Is there any hope?

Those are some more philosophical questions that people wrestle with at different points in their life, but we all ask these questions.

And as a Christ follower, there is a very real answer.

If I stopped, if I stopped a hundred Christians and asked them about the Christian's future, I think I might get a hundred different pictures, to be quite honest.

Some people would describe floating on clouds.

I get this one quite a bit.

Some would picture becoming angels.

I have actually heard people say we become angels.

That is not in the Bible.

I need you to hear me say that.

So there are traditions that we are going to confront through this series because we're going to let the scripture do it.

You become an angel, maybe.

Some picture an endless worship service in the sky, right?

Some picture of this ghost-like experience where we leave everything physical behind.

And most would simply say, I don't know.

Guess we'll find out when we get there, right?

I don't know if that's much hope.

I don't know if that's that offers much for people.

Uh, Isaac Asimov, who's a science fiction author, proclaimed atheist, and secular humanist, said, I don't believe in an afterlife.

So I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell or fearing heaven even more.

For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

I'm gonna be real with y'all right now.

I fell into this camp as a believer.

A boring afterlife to me was a deep fear.

Like I literally would hear older Christians say, I can't wait to sit around and worship the Lord all day long.

As a middle schooler, I'm sitting there going, that sounds so incredibly boring.

I hope God is so much bigger than that.

Because I don't even like singing with my church, right?

Like, so like it's really weird.

You got to be careful how you talk about these things around children because children have views and perspectives, and they're like, church is boring.

And if you're telling me eternity is a boring church service, is that good?

How does that work?

What is that about?

And so, as I said, there are some things we get to know in scripture.

We may not get to know everything, but here's the deal: Jesus said this in John chapter 12, he said, I don't speak on my own authority.

John 12 · chapter mention

The father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it.

And I know his commands lead to eternal life.

So I say whatever the Father tells me to say.

So you and I carry with us narratives about eternal life, eternity, heaven, hell, all the things.

And here's my challenge to us we must let the scripture confront our long-held views.

And what I mean by that is uh we can't let our emotions drive.

Some of us think we're more compassionate than God is, so we have these emotional views of eternity.

Some of us believe our traditions more than we do the scripture, so we have to be able to look at those.

Traditions are not all bad, but some of them can be wrong.

Can I just tell you that?

Traditions are not all bad.

I like traditions, but some of them can be wrong.

And pop culture, I'm telling you how much of our view on eternity has been informed by pop culture through the church's history is fascinating.

So I'm not just saying an Instagram culture is being informed about eternity through Instagram.

No, I'm saying back in the days of the early church, pop culture was influencing the way the church thought about these things.

So we're gonna walk through that.

And thankfully, God's word opens us to all of these things.

This series is gonna allow the scripture to direct us and how we think about what it will be like for those who enter the world to come.

What will it be like for those who do not?

What hope does the world have to come?

What hope is coming to this present world?

We're gonna look at heaven, hell, eternal life, and all the new that God promises.

But here is why.

And I don't just want it to be an information dump, and I know that it can be hard, but we're gonna have to do the work.

The view the church holds about the future does, in fact, change our present actions, and you will see that all through this series.

Your view on eternity absolutely informs how you live engaged or disengaged from this world.

That's why, that's the heart of engaging this topic for the next several weeks.

Now, I want to show this is this is the part where these slides will be available.

You can use them, you can look at them, you can review them.

Um, but some there are some historical benefits to a concern for the afterlife, historically, and this is not just Christianity, this is all cultures that have had a view on the afterlife, whether it's uh the Christian view or all over the place, there were two things that really benefited society through history.

And you can look in you can look through history in this.

Two things.

The first is there was a healthy fear of judgment.

If you went to a culture that had a view on eternity, there was a view that said, my bad decisions could get me in big trouble in the afterlife.

Okay.

Second view, though, is that of a belief in longing for reward.

So there were in in cultures that had these two tensions, a judgment or reward, it would motivate, don't do the bad things because I will physically pay for it, right?

Do the good things because I can be rewarded for it.

Now, I do get that.

There have been societies, civilizations, religions that have used this to control people.

I get it.

But that is not the scripture narrative.

That is not the story of scripture.

But I'm just showing you that through history, when we live in a culture that has said we're dealing with we're getting rid of internal perspective, we now live in the material, and the material only, it changes how we interact.

When I don't fear that there's a judgment, I can do whatever I want to whoever I want, because it's all that matters is this world.

Right?

When I don't fear that if I if I'm thinking, well, there's no reward, it doesn't matter if I treat people good or treat people bad, right?

We live in a society that lives the enlightenment, right?

We're now more informed or enlightened than we've ever been.

There's nothing, right?

That kind of view gets us into trouble.

We live that view, okay?

So historically, there has been benefits to cultures that understand an afterlife exists.

In other words, people believe about what they view about the future changes how they live in the present day.

But here's the problem: not everybody has imagined the future the same way.

Okay, not everybody has the same view of the future, and that's a problem, right?

Historically, there were three major ways ancient cultures imagined life after death.

Okay.

Ancient cultures, first being shadows.

You continue to exist, but you are a shadow of yourself.

You've probably seen historical doc stories about this.

The idea is you die, you move on to a shadow world.

Some cultures actually believe that that shadow has the opportunity to escape into a new body.

So you can kind of see this concept of reincarnation beginning to develop long ago.

Second is Plato.

You'll be amazed how much of the Christian view is formed by Greek and Platonic view of the afterlife.

First, the soul is freed from the physical world.

This dude had the thought that material bad, spirit, good.

Goal is to be freed from the material, go into the spiritual.

Escapism is what that is known as.

Escaping the material world so that I can step into a future spiritually.

There's a lot of thoughts that come along with that.

Third, though, you have this radically different vision coming from the Jewish prophets.

That of resurrection, a view that was like, whoa, you're talking physical body, a physical embodiment.

Somehow there's a physical existence after death.

This is the vision, not souls escaping creation, not just barely existing as a shadow of yourself, bodies resurrected, God with his people.

This was a very different understanding of eternity.

As Christianity moved further into the Greco-Roman world, it entered cultures that were already deeply interested in immortality.

Okay?

Surviving death, right?

If you survived Rome and you could survive just for a day and you lived on for another day, that was great.

But everybody knew I'm probably gonna die young.

I gotta know that everything's good moving forward, right?

So that the church is moving into a culture that's already so obsessed with escaping death.

Thankfully, Jesus has something to say about that, right?

Thankfully, the Christian message is powerfully God conquers death.

There's eternal life available through Jesus.

Nothing is wrong with that.

But over time, that part of the Christian hope would become emphasized at the expense of the bigger picture.

It became about an individual's salvation rather than God restoring his creation, establishing his kingdom, defeating evil and death, dwelling with his people.

The Christian focus then turned to my eternal life, my salvation, my soul, my destination after I die.

Notice the shift.

Restoration of creation becomes escape from creation.

And a people participating in God's kingdom becomes an individual getting into heaven.

Not to say that those all aren't important, but can't you see how easy the shift would go from the full picture to a kind of stunted picture where Christianity simply becomes about, I gotta make sure I don't go to hell.

Is that God's big plan from Genesis to Revelation?

I don't think that narrative carries enough weight to get us all the way from Genesis to Revelation.

It's not a big enough question to carry the entire biblical story.

But before we look at the story, scripture actually tells, I want to clear the way on two competing stories that you regularly hear right now.

And they can kind of influence the way Christians believe, but it is not the Christian hope.

First, the first says we're waiting for progress without the Spirit.

Every political season, somebody mentions progress.

It is a view, it is an evolutionary view that would suggest somehow we will progress so far in advances in technology and education, we eventually will fix it all.

And granted, we've made some great technological leaps.

Folks, we have not educated sin out of the heart, though.

Child pornography is still on the rise.

Prison numbers are higher than ever, addiction levels, depression levels, suicide levels.

But we're enlightened.

There's an idea that says eventually we will progress far enough ahead that we will fix this place.

That's not the Christian hope.

The other story moves in the exact opposite direction, which you see, right?

Instead of saying we'll fix the world, we say forget the world, let's get out of here.

Some of us may have adopted that.

That's existence without material.

That's an adoption of more of a Greek Roman philosophy of escapism.

The body doesn't ultimately matter, creation doesn't ultimately matter, earth doesn't ultimately matter.

The goal is to escape all of this for a purely spiritual existence somewhere else.

Right?

So one says we'll fix it, the other says we'll escape it, and the scripture says neither of those stories.

So what does the story of scripture say?

Um, I created this one so that you get you you just kind of have a brief.

This is how I would probably teach getting through Genesis to Revelation.

But the idea is that Genesis, God creates a good world, and this will be as fast as you've ever been through the Bible.

Genesis, God creates a good world.

The fall, humanity corrupts that world.

Abraham, God chooses one family through whom he's going to restore blessing over all the earth.

Israel is that family that becomes God's vessel.

Israel's a part of that story.

The prophets, God promises that restoration is coming.

He keeps promising, he keeps promising.

Even though Israel keeps wandering and wandering and wandering, he keeps promising.

But then Jesus shows up.

The king arrives, and God's reign begins.

And as Jesus resurrects and ascends to reign in heaven, he is calling the shots even now.

And the church is a picture of Jews and Gentiles beginning to live as kingdom people now.

And in Revelation, the king returns, and what began in Genesis finally reaches its intended destination.

That's the Bible in one minute.

But we don't keep that full story in view.

That is what the prophets and the disciples and the early church were waiting for.

These aren't people dreaming about escaping earth.

They are waiting for God to put things right.

Big difference.

Human progress says we fix the world.

Spiritual escape says we leave the world.

Biblical restoration says God redeems the world.

These are different views.

And they lead us to different ideas about how to live on the earth.

So when people in Jesus' world talked about eternal life, I know for us, because of the culture we have grown up in, we immediately hear, how do I get my soul into heaven when I die?

Important question, right?

That is not necessarily the way they thought about it.

They lived inside that story, I just told you, in under a minute, mind you, they were waiting for God to restore what was broken, fulfill his promises, establish his reign, raise the dead, bring his people into what biblical authors described as the age to come.

You will see that phrase in scripture.

And sometimes you just glance over it, you don't think about it, you don't consider it, but the age to come.

So this age, and this is typically how they viewed it in the Old Testament, this age is a world marked by sin, brokenness, and the effects of the fall.

Right?

That's the age.

We all get that age.

The age to come is God's renewed creation, fully restored.

This is when you would see restoration, justice, peace, righteousness, life, God's reign, restored creation.

This type of language would be used to represent the age to come.

And by the time Jesus comes on the scene, everyone agreed about a few things.

The world is broken, Rome is really violent, and as a people, we're still longing for freedom.

But the resurrection of Jesus does something unexpected.

It actually merges these two ages.

This age, this age to come, somehow, the age to come has already begun.

So if you if you're like into the graphic effects world or graphics world, you you understand gradients, right?

When it goes from solid to you can see the blending of the two to another solid.

Right now we're kind of in between in the blending of the two and how things work.

This is the tension Christians live in.

It's called the now, but not yet.

Now we still experience sin and death.

And yet we experience freedom from sin and eternal life.

That's what the scripture tells us.

Now we still await God's kingdom, and yet Jesus says the kingdom has arrived.

Now we still await resurrection, and yet Jesus has already raised from the dead and conquered it.

This is the very moment that lets us know the future has, in fact, invaded the present.

The resurrection is much more than a personal.

Experience.

But in between, with all that Jesus is doing, Jesus tells a story about what is currently going on that I think best describes where we're at.

In Matthew chapter 12, Jesus says, But if I am casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has arrived among you.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

For who is powerful enough to enter the house of a strong man and plunder his goods?

Only someone even stronger, someone who could tie him up and then plunder his house.

Jesus' critics are accusing Jesus of working with the devil.

Like you're casting out demons, you're doing all these good things, and you're using the power of the devil.

And Jesus is like, Are you serious?

I'm doing the exact opposite.

I'm robbing this fool's house.

Right?

Jesus doesn't say a weaker man.

He says there is a strong man who has had a grip on things.

And it's gonna take someone stronger than him to come in and take back what he has.

Jesus says, I'm that stronger man, y'all.

I'm robbing this fool's house.

Every healing, every demon cast out, every broken person restored, these are signs of what God will one day do completely in the age to come.

The kingdom isn't fully here yet, but as many scholars have said, the invasion has begun.

I like that.

But again, I'm telling you, it changes the way you interact in the world.

This means that Easter, our celebration of the resurrection, isn't just for us, it's for the entire universe.

It's not just about you and me escaping.

Creation knows that his resurrection is the beginning of new creation.

Because of Jesus, something is happening in the world and in the cosmos around us.

Listen to Romans 8.

You tell me where Paul stood.

For all creation is what?

Waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.

Against its will.

I love, I mean, this is huge.

Like creation is like, we didn't sin against you, God.

People did, right?

Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse.

But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay.

For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory.

For we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.

We too wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including what?

The new bodies he has promised us.

Somehow we've all gone, well, those are spiritual.

We have written that onto the text.

Paul didn't write it that way.

The new bodies he has promised us.

We were given this hope when we were saved.

If we already have something, we don't need to hope for it.

What are you waiting for, right?

Or waiting.

The apostle Paul saw a very messed up material world, and he was not preaching.

It's all gonna burn.

I've heard a lot of people talk that way.

That is not how Paul spoke.

Paul let believers know that we aren't the only ones waiting.

All creation is waiting for its redemption.

And Paul uses the word eagerly.

Eagerly means excitedly, enthusiastically, or ready for it.

If creation was groaning and being like, oh no, God's gonna destroy us, right?

The escapist mentality might be, yeah, he's just gonna destroy it all, and we're just gonna get out of here.

Genesis, the age to come, has broken into this age, and what happened to Jesus is pointing toward what God intends to do with everything.

That's the biblical narrative.

That's why the biblical story doesn't conclude with everyone leaving creation, it concludes with God coming to creation.

Genesis gave us a garden, Revelation gives us a garden city, the New Jerusalem, the place where God dwells, comes down to dwell with us, just like Adam and Eve walk with God in the cool of the evening.

We will do once again rivers, trees, nations, cities, a physical and embodied existence, not some escape from all things physical.

Revelation chapter 21.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

I think some people jump to, but you got to fight through all the first 20 chapters of Revelation to get to it, right?

That's hard.

You're like, what the heck, dragon late?

What, lady?

What is this?

I don't get it.

You get to 21, and you're like, okay, that's what I get.

I get that, right?

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared, and the sea was also gone.

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, Look, God's home is now among his people.

He will live with them, and they will be his people.

God himself will be with them, he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.

All these things are gone forever.

And the one sitting on the throne said, Look, I'm making everything new.

And then he said to me, Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.

Notice Jesus doesn't say, I'm making all new things.

There's a difference between making all things new and I'm making all new things.

Somehow we have done this thing where we've gone, Christian spirituality, and I'll turn into a spirit, and then it's gonna be better than I can even imagine.

I don't know what to imagine.

Like if it's all new things, I'm worried that God is good.

And is the new stuff he's gonna make gonna compare to the beauty of standing on top of Mount Pisca and looking out at a sunset?

Is God gonna be able to, whatever he's gonna, with the new things?

What is it gonna be?

I don't, it's like it's a blob of sparkles and things.

I don't know.

I don't know what to picture.

We don't have to come up with what to picture.

Eternity is gonna be more familiar than I think we even understand.

But that's what the scripture teaches.

And so as the band comes, if God called his physical creation very good in Genesis, revelation does not end with him abandoning it, it ends with him healing it, perfecting it, and filling it all with his presence.

So what are you waiting for?

Not for humanity to eventually fix itself, not to escape physical existence, not to die and go somewhere.

We're waiting for the king to return.

We will talk about heaven, hell, all the in-between, between when Christ returns, the dead are raised, the righteous to eternal life, the wicked to whatever, right?

We'd all want to know.

We all want to have those conversations, and we will.

But they all fit inside this bigger story from Genesis to Revelation.

You and I, as believers, we're not waiting to get out of here.

We're not waiting to fix it.

We are waiting for this age to finally and fully give way to the age to come.

We are waiting for what Jesus started at the resurrection to reach all of creation.

That is what we are waiting for, and that is a bigger vision than let's get out of here.

Sometimes what is true, I believe, can sound stranger than fiction.

I get it.

But honestly, we're talking about Jesus raising from the dead, so let's just jump right there.

That's stranger.

I can't explain it.

I didn't come up with it, but for some reason, God's plan involved the conquering of death.

And you and I need that.

We desperately need that.

We're not just waiting around.

Through Jesus' resurrection, the age to come has already broken in to this age.

That means God's people, we get to begin living the life of the coming age today.

That's what that means.

And by his spirit, how we view eternity will have everything to do with how we view today.

Let's pray.

We just wanted to say thank you for listening to the Highland Christian Church podcast today.

And if you ever want to connect with us, send prayer requests, ask questions, or for any other reason, you can visit our website, www.highlandchristian.com, or you can send us an email at highlychristian.com.

Let's see it.