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| Rev. Brent Russett |
Pastor of
Sunnyside Wesleyan Church in Ottawa:
http://www.sunnysidechurchottawa.com/ _______________________________________________________
PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, February 16th, 2014:
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‘Live as Citizens of Heaven’
Good
morning. And welcome to good news in the morning. My name is Brent Russett. I
am the Senior Pastor at Sunnyside Wesleyan Church. It is my pleasure to look at
some of life’s challenges, and then bring you some good news in the morning.
This
program is sponsored by Good News Christian Ministries. If you want to look us
up on the internet, or to re-listen to this program you can find us at Goodnewsinthemorning.ca
This
morning I want to look at Becoming and living as citizens of heaven.
Out
of the thousands of sermons I have preached, I think I have only preached two
sermons maybe three sermons on heaven. There is a reason for this. I have never
been able to preach a sermon that connected. Preaching is something like
hitting a baseball. Sometimes I preach and I hit a single or a double. But
every time I have preached on heaven, I have either struck out or hit an anaemic
bunt.
But
the passage that we are looking at today is throwing me one of those heaven
pitches again, and so I am going to take another swing at it.
I
have noticed that the younger a person is, the less they seem to care about
heaven. When I am speaking to a 20 something, heaven is almost seen as
irrelevant information. When I am speaking to a senior who is on death’s door,
it is the most relevant topic there is.
That
of course is understandable. I am not really interested in reading a travel
guide to Peru, until I am getting ready to travel to Peru. But when a trip to
Peru is imminent, I am very interested in reading the travel guide. It makes
sense that the closer one gets to the door of heaven, the more interested one
is in what is there.
I
should remind you that you don’t know how close the door of heaven is. We hear
stories on the news all the time about how someone’s life was cut short.
But
the reality is, you know that you could die at any time to be theoretically
true. But most of us don’t really believe that about ourselves. Most of us
believe that we have a while longer yet to live. So taking an interest in
heaven is kind of like taking an interest in Rome. I would really like to
travel there. Yes, it is theoretically possible that someone could buy me a plane
ticket to Rome this coming year, but it is really unlikely, and so I am not
going to rush out and buy a travelers guide to Rome – right?
So
when our passage of scripture throws me a pitch about heaven, well a lot of you
still think I am swinging in the irrelevant zone. – Right…
Besides
that – well there is the country song that says, “Everybody wants to go to
heaven, but nobody wants to go now.” That is true enough. But often I think
that the only reason that many people want to go to heaven is that it is better
than the alternative.
The
way secular people think about heaven is that we are going to be sitting on a
cloud playing a harp. – I have little interest in that – and of course that is
not a true image. But the way Christian people talk about heaven is that it is
going to be one long worship service. We are going to around the throne
worshiping God. Now don’t get me wrong – unlike many people - I like church,
but I don’t want to live in an endless church service – do you?
C.S.
Lewis says “that you can only hope for what you desire.” If our concept of
heaven is something that we don’t really desire, we are not going to hope for
it.
You see one long worship service is not in
any of our core desires. Things like joy, and love, and laughter and beauty and
intimacy and adventure and discovery, and accomplishment: those are the things that are in many of our
core desires
The
reality is that those are the things that heaven will be about.
Let
me ask you a question. What do you conceive the next life to be? Is it kind of
a whisp of this reality where we are disembodied spirits kind of floating all
around? What kind of reality do you think we will exist in?
Jesus,
after the resurrection, had a body like we are going to have in heaven. He ate,
spoke, he even had a cook out on a beach: the most real, the most ordinary, and
the most extraordinary things. He also passed through walls and ascended into
the air.
Let
me challenge you with a question. What are the first three things that you want
to do when you get to heaven? (Pause)
I
want to run to Jesus give him a big hug and celebrate his grace and mercy, and
celebrate the fact that he is renewing all things.
Then
I want to go to the feast. Think of the best food you have ever eating. There will
be dancing, and drinking and eating and storytelling, and it is going to be an
incredible party.
And
then I think I want to take some of great friends and go horse back riding into
the mountain and explore the country side of heaven. Yes there are horses in
heaven. What an awesome way to start an adventure in heaven.
The
bible talks about a New Heaven and a New Earth. I don’t know what is all going
to be like, but I know that our deepest desires for joy and love and laughter
and beauty and intimacy and adventure will be satisfied.
Heaven
will be a place where all the symbols of fear will be gone. We won’t need locks
on our doors, or to put masks on our true identities. There won’t be any talk
of being authentic, because that will be the only way to be.
Hiding,
shame, and the things that hold us back from being all that we are meant to be
– will be no more.
Now I
know a lot of people, when they think about heaven, hope they make it. I know
some who are pretty sure they won’t make it. But here is what the Bible says.
John 3:16
(NLT)
16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, (that
is Jesus) so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal
life..
Having
eternal life and getting into heaven are not about what you have and haven’t
done, it is not about how good or how bad you have been – it is about putting
your faith your trust your belief in Jesus. If you will enter into a
relationship with and trust him and follow him as he gave you the power – you
are going to get to heaven.
1 John 5:13
(NLT)
13 I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so
that you may know you have eternal life.
It is
possible to know that you are going to heaven. It is all about what you do with Jesus. If you are not sure if you
are going to heaven then why don’t you talk to Jesus right now about it? Give
Jesus your life, and ask him to come into your life, ask for forgiveness of all
the wrong that you have done, and ask him to give you his life, and goodness.
Jesus is always faithful to his world. The
bible says that everyone who believes in Him will have everlasting life.
If
you have never made a decision like that, I would invite you to do that while
we listen to this music.
MUSIC – Shepherd of Heaven by Paul Turner and Brian
Doerksen 3:47
I
have talked about heaven as if it is a place that when it is our time we are
going to go to. It is like when it is time we are going to emigrate there. And when we feel it getting closer we tend to
want to know more about it. And while that view is not completely wrong, it is
not completely accurate either.
But
Paul says in Philippians 3: 20 (NIV)
But our citizenship is
in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ
For
those of you who have become followers of Jesus, for those of you who have
given your life to Jesus and put your faith in Jesus Heaven is not only where
we are going. Heaven is in fact “our home and native land.”
Peter
says:
1 Peter 2:10–11
(NIV)
10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you
had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful
desires, which wage war against your soul.
Peter
says that it is really this world where you are a stranger. Although you might
be a Canadian, you are really a foreigner here. You see your citizenship is in
heaven.
So
the image that we are going to emigrate to heaven isn’t quite right. The
reality is that we are expats here.
I
don’t know if you have ever had the experience of travelling to a foreign
country. You can be quite comfortable in that country, but often Canada comes
up in your conversations and in your thinking because that is where you come
from.
And
if you hear of another Canadian close by, you try to connect. If you hear of
another Canadian close by you kind of hope internally that they are living in
such a way that they are doing their country proud.
With
all this in the background I think we are ready to get to today’s verse:
Philippians 1:27 (NIV)
27 Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of
Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence,
I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for
the faith of the gospel.
The
New Living Translations puts it this
way,
Philippians 1:27
(NLT)
27 Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a
manner worthy of the Good News about Christ. Then, whether I come and see you
again or only hear about you, I will know that you are standing together with
one spirit and one purpose, fighting together for the faith, which is the Good
News.
The
NIV is a minimalist translation, it translates the verse, conduct yourself in a
manner worthy of the gospel.
The
world conduct is a very specific Greek word that has the idea of the conduct of
a citizen.
The
NLT is an expansive translation, and it express this verse, you must live as
citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News.
Remember
that we believe that scripture is inspired by God. It is not inspired in a word
for word dictation of scripture – if that was the case we would all have to
learn Greek and Hebrew to read the inspired word of God. It is the truth behind
the words that are inspired. That is why it is helpful to read a couple of
different translations, so that you get the nuances of the truth that the
passage is trying to express. I believe that in this verse the New Living
Translation helps us out the best.
Philippians 1:27
(NLT)
27 Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a
manner worthy of the Good News about Christ.
Maybe
it was just me, but when I was growing up, I always found this verse which I
first read in the King James and then in the NIV , “Conduct
yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel” a rather heavy verse.
I
heard this verse saying, be good, be truthful, be holy, be right, - and it
always had very somber overtones for me. Jesus gave his life for you, live in a
way that is worthy of that sacrifice.
I heard this verse saying, live up to
expectations. People who lived like this
were very serious people. People who lived like this took everything seriously.
In some ways it was a very guilt inducing verse. How can I ever live in a
manner worth of the gospel?
Is
that how you read it? I don’t know that I should have read it that way. It
seemed like the gospel, which means good news, it seemed that the good news
wasn’t very happy news.
So
what does it mean to conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel – the
good news?
The
gospel as you know, tells us that none of us can be good enough, or righteous
enough, or holy enough, to earn God’s favour. The good news is that it is not
my own righteousness that saves me, it is the fact that Jesus gives me his
righteousness and takes my sin away. I am not saved because I deserve it. We
are saved because God loves us, and Jesus gave himself for us. That is the
gospel.
The
way I was reading this verse was--- live in such a way to show that you deserve
the gospel that says you don’t deserve what you got. That doesn’t make any
sense. It doesn’t make sense to try to deserve something you don’t deserve.
That
is why I spent a lot of time talking about heaven today. As citizens of heaven,
conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel.
Our
citizenship is in heaven. We come from a country, we are citizens of a country
that speaks into our core desires for
joy and love and laughter and beauty and intimacy and adventure. Heaven is
a place where there is celebration. It is a place where we walk in freedom with
God where he knows us and we know him. It is a place where we give and receive
love freely. It is a place where intimacy is valued. It is a place where beauty
is esteemed. It is a place for adventure, a place for creativity and a place
for curiosity. It is a place where God permeates all of those things.
That,
my friends, is your home and native land. So when Paul says as citizens of
heaven, “conduct yourself in a manner worthy
of the good news”, he is saying conduct yourself in a manner that is
congruent with the culture of heaven.
Are
we more congruent with heaven when we have a sense of well being and joy, or
when we are dour? As citizens of heaven, walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.
Are
we more congruent with heaven when we love and let ourselves be loved, or when
we build walls around ourselves so that we keep each other out and don’t let
anyone in? As citizens of heaven, walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.
Are
we more congruent with heaven when we revel in what is beautiful and good and
true and right, and lovely, or when we are fault finding and negative? As
citizens of heaven, walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.
Are
we more congruent when we live lives of adventure or when we live lives of
mediocrity? As citizens of heaven, walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.
Are
we more congruent with heaven when we are being creative or when we are being
distracted? As citizens of heaven, walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.
Of
course it is also congruent with heaven to walk in purity and justice and
mercy.
Walking
in a manner worthy of the gospel is not about trying to deserve something we
don’t deserve. It is about living out our own culture in a land where we are
foreigners and aliens.
I
don’t know if you have noticed, but we are not in heaven yet. There are so many
things that come to steal our joy. There are so many things that try to stop us
from loving. There are so many things that war against intimacy. There are so
many things that mar beauty and promote ugliness. There are so many things that
war against adventure and against creativity. The call of the gospel is that we
come from a different place, and the place where we come from has a culture
that trumps the culture that we live in, now.
Philippians 1:27
(NLT)
27 Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a
manner worthy of the Good News about Christ. Then, whether I come and see you
again or only hear about you, I will know that you are standing together with
one spirit and one purpose, fighting together for the faith, which is the Good
News.
Sometimes
living out the culture of heaven means that we have to stand together with
those who are also living out that culture. Sometimes it means fighting
together to maintain our sense of joy and good and life. Sometimes trying to
live out of the culture of heaven and conducting ourselves in a manner worthy
of the gospel is hard.
I
have had the privilege of visiting believers in Peru and visiting believers in
Uganda and Ghana. There are a couple of things that struck me about the
Christians I met there. First of all I was struck by how difficult their lives
are. A lot of them worked very hard and
very long hours. They dealt with very difficult circumstances. Death was a very
present reality in life.
The
other thing that struck me was how joyful they were. Because life was so
difficult here, heaven was much more real to them. Because heaven was much more
real to them, they adopted the culture of heaven much more readily and it
showed.
What
I am calling you to do is to live out of your culture. The Bible says that God
has placed eternity in our hearts. The Bible says as followers of Jesus that
you are citizens of heaven. Live out of your culture.
Chose
joy, and fight the joy stealers. Choose love, and fight the love killers. Chose
beauty and adventure, and relational closeness because this is what is in your
heart by the grace of God.
As
you live in this world, conduct yourself in a manner that is worthy of the good
news. Live in such a way that the good news, really looks like it is good news.
Philippians 1:27
(NLT)
27 Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a
manner worthy of the Good News about Christ
Let’s Pray:
Lord
Jesus, thank you so much for the good news. Thank you that you loved us so much.
And thank you for the hope of heaven. Lord, help us to live out of that culture;
to live as citizens of heaven.
Lord,
I pray that you would help us to choose joy and love - and adventure - and creativity
- and beauty.
I
pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank
you, Listeners for your words of encouragement, and for keeping us in your prayers.
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My name is Brent Russett and it has
been a pleasure to spend this Sunday morning with you.
May
you know Jesus Christ personally and
profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside
deep within your heart. And may the
heavenly Father surround you with His constant and abiding and accompanying
love
- Rev. Brent Russett
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