Heaven Is a Dwelling Place In My Fathers house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.-John 14:2, emphasis added Heaven is the eternal and very distant world that is the abode of God, the angels, and glorified believers. But to help us grasp some of its wonder, join me in a look at: What is heaven? Heaven is a dwelling place. Jesus has told us that there are many dwelling places in His Fathers house. The most frequent association with heaven is that it is the place where God dwells. Although God is the central inhabitant of heaven, He is not its only resident. The angels live there as well, as more than a dozen verses tell us. The company of the redeemed also lives in heaven; at the end of Elijahs earthly life, God took him up to heaven by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1), and Revelation repeatedly portrays glorified saints as inhabiting heaven. A preponderance of the Bibles pictures of heaven show it to be a crowded place. When you think about heaven, though, dont consider it to be an endlessly huge place. Think about it in Bible terms. Let me show you one that just makes me chuckle-a reference to heaven in the Old Testament. I love this one because it reminds me of our family of ten! (You might say that our home is a little bit like heaven in this sense.) Right in the middle of warning King Ahab about the consequences of his sin, there is this little note in 1 Kings 22:19: Then Micaiah said, ‘Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by, on His right hand and on His left. What is that all about? Well, heaven might be huge, but the idea is that everybody will be crowded right around the throne-as close as they can get to God! Do you see what it is? Heaven is shown to be a massive place that could house 100 billion people-each having a room with space that would equal the size of a whole palace of their own. Yet, in spite of that, the descriptions of heaven almost remind me of what my beehives look like: the queen bee is right there, and all the bees are gathered together as close to her as they can get. That is what heaven is like: we will all be gathered together around our heavenly Fathers throne just to be near Him! What does that have to do with my home? When Bonnie and I are brushing our teeth, Id say that 90 percent of our family is standing right there by us brushing their teeth as well. And, if Bonnie is in our kitchen, everybody is right around her in the kitchen. Why does my family stay so close by? Because we love to be together! Do you know what heaven is? A dwelling place of those who want, more than anything else, to be where God is. They want to adore Him, worship Him, magnify Him, see Him, know Him, and be with Him! For that reason, Jesus was named Emmanuel, God with us, so that we could get to be with God! Being with God forever is the fulfillment of everything about which the Scriptures speak. God created Adam and Eve for fellowship with Him, and to walk with Him, but they fell into sin and broke that bond of fellowship. So, through Jesus, He came back to redeem them-to bring them to Himself by offering a means of escape from the curse of sin-from the penalty they incurred because of their transgression. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ became the fulfillment of those promises (Matthew 1:21, 23). God came to be with us so that we can go to be with Him. The ultimate description of heaven is the dwelling place where we get to be with God. We get to know Him, to be like Him, to see Him as He is. We get to spend forever with the One who loved us and gave Himself for us! If we die in our sleep, as David said, When I awake, I will awake in Your likeness because I want to be like You, and I want to be with You (see Psalm 17:15).
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 07:57:17 +0000
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