-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the Cafe.
00:39 Good to be here today. Hope you’re having a wonderful week. Hope all is well with you and hopefully you’re ready to dive into God’s Word and learn some truths, some spiritual truths that can only be discerned by the working of the Holy Spirit.
00:53 Amen. How are you feeling today? What’s going on with you today? Are you content with life? Are you content where you’re at? Or are you in a battle? Are you in a struggle? Are you somewhere in between? Are you just coming off the mountaintop? Or maybe you feel like you’ve been in the valley for so long. Today we’re going to look at how we should approach this life.
01:17 How we should live. How the Bible tells us we should live after being saved. So of course we know we need to be saved.
01:28 I try to preach on that as much as I can. That we should be saved. And the only way to be saved is by the blood of Christ.
01:34 That we plant the seeds. We are the hands and feet of Jesus. But truly He does the saving.
01:41 Amen. He died on the cross. He shed his innocent blood for mankind so that when they believe on Him they’ll be eternally saved.
01:46 And after accepting Christ as Savior, there’s a certain way we should live that’s quite different than how we lived before. And 2 Corinthians 5: 1-2 points this out. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
02:07 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. Amen. So we look at this verse.
02:16 We say, okay, so Paul here is writing in 2nd Corinthians that we know that if our earthly house, which could be you can think of it as your body, Amen. We have a building of God, a house not made with hands, Amen. And you can even think of it as an earthly house like your home, okay.
02:37 So, you’re living here on earth and that goes away, right. Your body, your home, however you want to look at it. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, to have that resurrected body, to have that heavenly home, that mansion in the sky, Amen.
02:52 And that third heaven, to live there with the Lord. That’s what we desire, right. And here what Paul I think is exhorting is this idea that we shouldn’t be earthly minded.
03:03 We should be heavenly minded. In fact, we should be in a groaning state of mind. You know, when I first read this verse and I studied it over the years, I always could relate to it.
03:15 I’d say, yeah, that’s true. How many times do I say throughout the day, oh Lord, come soon. And I’ll remind myself that souls need to be saved and I’ll say, Lord, let your will be done.
03:26 But if I’m honest, oftentimes I want the Lord to come soon. I believe the word Maranatha means, oh Lord, come, Amen, come soon. We really desire God to come as Christians because we love the Lord and we recognize this world for what it is.
03:41 And so if you’ve been saved or you believe you’ve been saved and you’re living in the world and you’re really jolly in the world, you’re happy in the world, everything’s going great in the world, then you have to look and say, why don’t I have a groaning state of mind? Because Paul is telling us to have one. And you know, Paul had this unique perspective. Not only did he live for the Lord here, not only did he become gloriously saved on the road to Damascus, and not only was he a the apostle to the Gentiles, but he also saw heaven.
04:14 2 Corinthians 12:2- 6. I knew a manin Christ above fourteen years ago, whether in the body I cannot tell, orwhether out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth. Such a one caught up to thethird heaven. And I knew such a man, whether in the body or out of the body, Icannot tell, God knoweth.
04:25 How that he was caught up into paradise and heardunspeakable words, which is not lawful for man to utter. Of such a one will Iglory, yet of myself I will not glory, but in my infirmities. For though I woulddesire to glory, I shall not be a fool, for I will say the truth.
04:47 But now Iforbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seemeth me to be, orthat he heareth of me. And we see here in 2 Corinthians 12:2- 6, Paul is writing here of another person, but truly, scholars believe, as far as I understand this is true, it was Paul that was caught up into the third heaven. And if you want to know technically here the heavens, you have the first heaven, that is the sky, right, where the birds are and so forth.
05:17 That’s the first heaven. You go on an airplane, you are flying in the first heaven, amen. The second heaven, that would be the suns, stars, moon, what we would call space, that’s the second heaven.
05:29 And the third heaven is above that, and that’s where God resides. And you can do fascinating research on the third heaven, how there’s waters up there, and the waters were pierced and came down to earth, and how it could be frozen water, and God is above it, and God’s throne is above it. But the third heaven symbolizes where God is.
05:45 That’s the heaven that we would know as paradise. And so we see here that Paul was called up there. He doesn’t know if he went in that body actually, physically, or in spirit.
05:54 He couldn’t tell. But either way, and by the way, that explains how real heaven is. If you can’t even tell if you’re in spirit or body, then you know it’s very real, Amen.
06:03 It’s not like he was like, oh, I can’t see my hand. He didn’t know. Either way, he was there.
06:06 And it was so amazing. It’s not lawful for him to utter these things. It’s not lawful to talk about.
06:12 And he’s writing here that if he were to say anything about heaven, the problem would become that he would become an idol. He would become worshipped because he would have given this revelation about heaven that’s so glorious that people would bow down to him. And he cannot do that because he must give all praise and glory to Christ.
06:29 And the only thing he can glory in is his infirmities. What are infirmities? Those are the things, the sickness and the problems and all this. And oh, how we turn to Paul’s writing about infirmities in these last days as we struggle so greatly.
06:42 It seems like everyone in our family, especially the older folks, all have some kind of infirmity. Amen. Somebody’s got a bad back and someone’s got a fatigue, chronic fatigue, and somebody’s got allergies and someone’s got this and someone’s got that.
06:55 And we have these infirmities that just don’t ever go away. And here Paul’s saying, that’s okay. You have those.
07:02 Why don’t you glory in those? Because God is going to show his strength through your weakness. Amen. And by the way, why don’t you groan for that heaven that I saw? You know, that groaning mentality.
07:16 Think about it. Paul writes this in 2 Corinthians 12, right? And here we are in 2 Corinthians5 with our text verse, as Paul writes about the earthly house or tabernacle being dissolved, like our body’s going away, our lives are going away. For in this we groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven, our resurrected body, our new state, our new home in heaven.
07:35 We earnestly desire, we groan, that idea of groaning, like, oh, you know, think about that the idea of going through difficult labor and groaning. Have you ever had a really bad job? It was just really, really hard and just like groaning physically trying to do it. I’ve been very blessed most of my professional life.
07:56 I’ve been in the Lord has allowed me to work on a computer in the comfort of, you know, remote work and so forth. I’ve been very, very fortunate. But I’ve had a few jobs growing up, being young and having to work.
08:08 Goodness, working waiting tables. I enjoyed that. But there was days I was tired, didn’t want to wait those tables.
08:16 And just be groaning about that. I remember one time, somebody let me work on a roofing team for a few days, I literally stepped on a nail and I was groaning about getting up on that roof and that hot sun. And y’all know is there’s parts of life that physically just make us groan.
08:30 And Paul is saying he’s writing here by the by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That’s okay. It’s okay to not love your life.
08:38 You know, as Christians, some reason we feel the pressure that we have to be at peace and at joy at all times. But we know Christ himself said in this world, you’ll have tribulation. But but rejoice because I’ve overcome the world.
08:52 Amen. Christ didn’t say this was going to be easy. Paul’s not saying it’s going to be easy.
08:58 In fact, Paul saying quite the opposite. But when we’re in that groaning state of mind, we become more heavenly minded. We accept that this world isn’t what we would want what we bargain for what we would desire.
09:10 We accept the idea that we more than likely won’t make a name for ourselves in this world. We won’t have all these dreams that we have worldly dreams come true. Oh, how the modern church would never preach a message like this.
09:27 Amen. It’s true. We may just be nobody, right? And just nobody in the world’s eyes, but somebody in God’s eyes.
09:35 And that’s okay. Paul saying it’s okay. Paul wanted to be in heaven.
09:37 And yet he was here on earth. He says we grown because we want our heavenly home and we should we should desire heavenly home. And this should again give us comfort those that do desire to be in heaven.
09:49 This should give us comfort here today knowing the apostle Paul, the great apostle Paul is telling us this, Paul shows us that this life is temporary. And so understanding this having that groaning state of mind, what does it portray? Or what should it produce?
10:06 I should say, it should produce a life of fearlessness, and a life of faith, right? So if you desire to be somewhere else, right, and you’re not there, and you know that the next chapter you’ll be there, well, then where you are now, you can live fearless, because you don’t fear losing your life. Because as Paul writes, to die is gain, Amen, you realize that, hey, in heaven, life is going to be much better.
10:33 So you’re not going to sit around and be fearful of things, you are going to be joyful in knowing that life is only going to get better in heaven. And so you should live fearlessly, living by faith, right? You know, the idea of fear is that, oh, God won’t help or God won’t provide. And the idea of faith is that God will help and God will provide.
10:58 And even the most mature Christian struggles with this battle, often on a day to day basis, struggling, battling over will God provide? Will God lead? Will God guide? Of course he will. And what he wants us to understand is it’s totally normal to be in a situation where we’re not completely content in this world, even though the Bible tells us to be content, we’re in a situation that we feel frustrated by. And the honesty of the Scripture is saying, look, it’s okay to groan, it’s okay to desire heaven, in fact that is godly.
11:32 Because what you’re doing is you are saying, by faith I believe that there is a better place. And if we understand this scripturally, by faith I believe that when Christ died on the cross, He died for me, and when I accept that free gift of salvation, I’m risen again with Him, and my place in heaven is secure. And so we are trying to go somewhere that that is not necessarily foreign to us, but that is our home.
11:59 We are going somewhere where there’s already a place for us, Amen And so all we’re trying to do is get to where we’ve always wanted to be, which is in the presence of our Lord, in the glorified body, in a place where we have no sickness, no pain, no tears, no problems, no struggles, no anxieties, no night. I heard a song on the radio about there’s lights at night in heaven or something, I’m thinking this brother needs to get in the Bible, there’s no night in heaven, there’s no night in heaven, it’s all day, it’s all light. There’s no sun because Christ is the light, God is the light, and God illuminates it.
12:37 Now someone like me, we’ve had some sunny days lately, I love the sun, I’m in a better mood in the sun, I enjoy the sun, and so the sun’s out, I say, oh I love the light, but truly a cloud will come rolling in, night will come, just as predictable as can be, and we have those trials, those struggles where we have problems that come our way, even in the best days,
13:01 but in heaven those problems are not there, in heaven that night and that darkness does not come, in heaven everything is perfect all the time, and we have our sins completely, not only washed away in heaven, but we have our sins forgotten, we’re no longer living in a fleshly body that can sin, we are now living truly in peace with Christ,
13:23 it is a wonderful place to be, oh how we’re so fortunate and so lucky to have God’s incredible love, so blessed to have God’s incredible love. So I want you to think about here what you can do with this knowledge, that it’s okay, in fact it’s good to groan and desire to be in heaven,
13:44 not here on earth, and that what can you do understanding that your place is secure in heaven, and that to be in heaven is gain, what can you do, how can you live more fearlessly, how can you show more sacrificial love, how can you give God more praise here on earth knowing it’s all only temporary, give it to God today,
14:03 He will deliver you from every snare that you have, every problem you have, He’ll do it, and He deserves all the glory, and one day we’ll be in heaven with Him.
14:12 Thank you for listening, take care, God bless, and Amen.