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ALWAYS TRADING UP #1
SKI BOATS AND BRAN MUFFINS
I have a very hard Monday thought question for each
of you. Here it is: What would be the PERFECT day for Jesus to come back
to this earth?
That’s it. There’s GOING to be a day when He does come; that’s the straight
scoop from the Word of God, and it’s been our theme here on the Voice
of Prophecy for more than seven decades. But when would it be perfect?
I guess we would all say — kind of: “Well . . . TODAY! Sure. Today; it
would be wonderful if He came today. Right now.”
And yet, in the back of our minds, there might be a bit of this. “Actually,
God, five years from now might be just as good, or even better. Because
we just bought a new house; I love living in it.” Or: “One more year,
and I’m out of college, and I really DO want to be a web site designer.
Or an engineer. Or a whatever. I want to make money, have my own place,
be a this or a that. And Jesus, if You come right now, and take us on
a cloud to a place where we sit on another cloud playing harps and reading
the Bible, well, that doesn’t sound like web site design to me.”
And here’s another “wait a few years, Lord” scenario. “Jesus, I want You
to come, but I’m getting married this Christmas. I’ve never been married.
I’ve never gotten to experience — you know — all that marriage brings
with it. And I want to have kids. Tell you what, Jesus. Why don’t You
come in the year 2005. Freddy and I will be ready for You then.”
Have you ever had thoughts like those? Have you ever thought to yourself,
at least a little bit, that there might be a day BETTER than Monday, September
2, 2002? You know, I’ve had such a good life on this old planet that I’ve
thought it myself a few times.
Our title for the week is this: ALWAYS TRADING UP. That sounds like a
slogan from a used car dealership, and we’ll get into that in a bit. But
first a story which I can guarantee you is apocryphal.
A little old man named Ed passed to his rest and immediately found himself
standing at the pearly gates. The angel showed him in, and pretty soon
Ed was reunited with his wife, Ethel, and they were at an orientation
meeting held by God Himself. Well, God handed Ed the keys to a beautiful
new mansion. Actually, I don’t suppose Ed and Ethel were going to need
the security of locks and keys up there, but He at least gave him a map
showing just where on the lovely lake his 9,000-square-foot home was.
“Right over there, Ed. You can see it there next to the glassy water and
the boat dock.”
Ed looked, and this place was fantastic. God showed him the floorplan,
and it had everything Ed had ever dreamed of. Beautiful gardens. Big-screen
televisions and surround-sound speakers. Formal dining room. A room with
a pool table. Another room with a pool. Computers and gadgets and carpeting
and paintings and statues and indoor atriums and, well, EVERYTHING. It
was perfect.
“Now don’t get up just yet,” God said. “Right over there you can see that
we have six championship golf courses. And parked at your house is your
own golf cart. You can play anytime you want.”
“But . . . but . . . but,” Ed began. “The green fees must be out of sight,
God.”
And God just laughed. “Green fees? Ed . . . man, you’re in heaven! There
aren’t any green fees here. You can play whenever you like.”
Ed could hardly believe it. “God, this is fantastic.”
And the Lord went on to describe the free ski lifts. The free bowling
alleys. The free tennis courts and racquet ball. Fishing, boating, sailing
. . . all complimentary. Never having to stand in lines. No reservations,
no waiting, no paying. God pointed out to them on the map where there
were five-star restaurants and buffet lines, all open 24 hours a day.
Everything free. Hot fudge sundae bars with 700 toppings. All free.
All at once, as God was beginning to describe the complimentary hang gliding
lessons and the three-month cruises many of the saints enjoyed taking
each year, Ed leaped to his feet and began hitting Ethel over the head
with the cane he didn’t need anymore. Whack! Whack! Whack! And God had
to grab him. “Ed! Ed! Ed! We don’t do that kind of stuff here! People
don’t beat on their wives in heaven! Come on! What’s the matter with you,
anyway?”
And Ed, still red in the face, could hardly get the words out. “It’s all
your fault,” he shouted at his wife, pointing to all the wonderful things.
“If it weren’t for your stupid healthy bran muffins, I could have been
up here twenty years ago!”
Well, I said a moment ago that there was an apocryphal element to my Ed-and-Ethel
story. The Bible does teach, in First Thessalonians four, that all God’s
saints are going to arrive in that Better Land at the same time, not ONE
at a time. That instead of just being vapory spirits, we’ll have glorified
real bodies capable of driving golf carts and shooting a 63. And I’m not
here to imply that heaven is an eternal Disneyland or Fantasyland where
we just endlessly pig out on free food and golf with no green fees and
ski behind free boats. That lifestyle might be real for a week or a month
or a year, but it’s not real for an eternity. More about that as we study
together.
But what DOES ring true about our story is this: heaven will be, in EVERY
respect we can imagine, trading UP. Going from bad to good and from good
to better and from better to best and from imaginable here to UNimaginable
there. Friend, there will not be ONE THING in heaven that will be simply
“as good as” you pictured it. It will ALWAYS be UP. In every way: UP.
There’s a theme text all believers should memorize and say to themselves
many, many times a week. Here it is, found in First Corinthians 2:9:
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has
prepared for those who love Him.”
That’s quoting — the Apostle Paul, by the way — from
the Old Testament book of Isaiah. So this is a promise, or a picture,
coming to us from both sides of Calvary.
Let’s try another version. Here’s the Clear Word paraphrase by Dr. Jack
Blanco:
“The eyes of man can’t see, his ears can’t hear and
his mind can’t imagine what God HAS IN MIND to do for those who love Him.”
One more. Here’s Eugene Peterson’s The Message. And
keep in mind that these are paraphrases, not Bibles, but this is fantastic:
“No one’s ever seen or heard anything like THIS, Never
so much as imagined anything quite like it — What God has ARRANGED for
those who love Him.”
I guess Ed and Ethel and all of us today should notice
that all three of these renditions clearly state for the record that heaven
— whatever it involves — is intended just for one select group: those
who love God. Did you catch that? But we hear over and over about human
imaginations . . . and it’s consistently expressed: “Forget it. Are you
trying to visualize heaven? Forget it. You can’t. Heaven is bigger and
bolder and better than you can EVER picture.”
The NIV text notes for this passage of the Bible accurately point out
that this promise of God’s actually refers not only to what God intends
to do for us in heaven — “I go to prepare a place for you” — but also
down here, right now, as we join His family. He wants to bless us NOW,
today, as we become part of the Body of Christ. Bless us beyond our imagining.
Let’s not lose that focus. But our interest this week is in what Jesus
is doing in heaven right now, getting ready for us, and our theme for
the week is these three words: ALWAYS TRADING UP.
The irony is this, friend — and it’s really an issue of faith. Because
you can’t look forward to heaven, and the reality of trading UP, unless
you have faith in the God who’s preparing you a place. But the reality
is that most of us are pretty used to those bran muffins. Bran muffins
are REAL. Our homes down here are REAL. The golf we play down here — at
$45 a shot, with a score of 92, and the mosquitos and sunburn — that’s
real. Spouses and marriages and sex and babies and family reunions at
Christmas are real. And so we are reluctant to say, here on September
2, 2002, “God, I’m ready to trade in these REAL things, right now, today,
for YOUR MORE real things.” We’re reluctant to do that. We’re afraid to
really put our WEIGHT on that verse: “Eye hath not seen, ear hath not
heard.”
We read a good line the other day by Joseph D. Blinco. Here it is:
“To believe in heaven is not to run away from life;
it is to run TOWARD it.”
And friend, that’s so absolutely true, but it’s
a decision of faith. To believe that looking forward to heaven is to be
looking for the REAL life, the TRUE life. Everything we’ve had so far
down here is shadows. It’s bran muffins compared to endless heavenly buffet
tables groaning under the weight of every abundant thing God in His infinite
creativity can prepare for us.
Are you ready to join me in running toward that eternal life? LIFE — abundant
and free and eternal?
Wonderful. Get your track shoes on and mark your radio dial for tomorrow.
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