Bible Passage: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: June 20, 2021

Bulletin June 20, 2021

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

If the bus for heaven pulled up outside the front doors of this church this morning and was leaving in five minutes, would you get on?  That seems like it ought to be an easy one, right?  Who wouldn’t get on the bus for heaven?!  But it’s not that easy, is it?   It only takes a couple seconds of thought and we start to think about family members we would like to talk to before we go, or maybe there is an event like a wedding or a birth that tugs on you to stay here.  Yet on the other hand, we’re talking about HEAVEN!  It makes me very thankful yet again that God doesn’t ask us to make the decision about when to go to heaven!  He makes it!  And his ways and his timing are always perfect.

But the question makes us feel the “tension” that exists in the life of a Christian.  It’s a very real tension, this tension of living on earth and going to heaven.  It’s a tension Paul felt in his life, too.  And that is what Paul writes about to the Corinthians in our text today.  He writes as a man who feels that tension, that uniquely Christian tension of Living on Earth and Longing for Heaven.

Our text comes immediately after a section of this letter in which Paul has acknowledged that outwardly in this world we are wasting away (4:16-18).  The troubles and the trials and the stresses of living in this sin-damaged world take their toll on a body.  We get old.  We get weak, and then weaker.  We wear out.  That is reality.

But in chapter 5, Paul confesses Christian hope:  We know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal home in heaven, which is not made by human hands. (v. 1)    Notice the words Paul uses.  He compares life in this world to tenting, but heaven he calls a building.  None of you live in a tent.  Oh, you might have a tent and use it OCCASIONALLY and TEMPORARILY.  It’s good for a weekend.  Maybe even a week.  But after a week in a tent, you sort of miss home.  You miss that building, with a roof that doesn’t leak and hot-running water and indoor plumbing and a refrigerator and a furnace and an air-conditioner.  That building with a permanent and solid foundation that doesn’t feel like it’s going to blow away when the wind blows.  For Paul, for us, this life is the tent, heaven is the home, or as the author of Hebrews says, the city that has foundations (Hebrews 11:10)!

And so Paul confesses something about living on earth.  He confesses that he groans (v. 2, 4).  It’s not the whiny kind of groaning so common.  “Life’s not fair! I want more!  I hate my job!  I’m overworked!  I’m underappreciated.  Blah, blah, blah…”  Paul’s is a sanctified groaning:  In fact the reason we groan is that we long to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven…To be sure, while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (v. 2, 4)  Paul kind of moves between two metaphors, talking like heaven is a building and like heaven is clothes.  But the point is the same:  Paul groans because he wants to be in heaven!  He wants all that is mortal to be “gulped down” by the life of heaven!  He wants to be done with death and dying.  He wants life in heaven!  He even goes so far as to say that he would much prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. (v. 8)

This groaning, this yearning for heaven, it’s natural.  Paul says that God is the one who prepared us for this very purpose (v. 5)  “For this very purpose.”  That means everything Paul has been talking about and groaning about! Think about that.  God prepared us for immortality in his presence.  Jesus didn’t live and die on the cross and rise again so you could live in your current “tent” forever.  He didn’t redeem you at the cost of his blood so you could work a 9-5, have a nice house in the suburbs, and then retire in a condo in Boca Raton and spend your time trying to become a single-digit handicap.  No!  This is all tent-living!  Jesus redeemed you so that your mortal body would one day be raised, changed, glorified.  He redeemed you that your mortality might be “gulped up” by the immortality secured by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead!  Jesus did all he did so that you can one day leave this poor, flimsy, leaky, hot, humid, mosquito-infested tent of fabric and live in the mansion Jesus has prepared for you in heaven!  Given those two options, who wouldn’t groan for heaven?

Friends, it’s okay to want to go to heaven.  That doesn’t make you twisted, deranged, unstable, antisocial, dysfunctional, or dangerous to society.  We don’t have to put you under surveillance for saying and feeling such a thing.  Job felt that way.  Remember his words?  After confessing his faith in his living Redeemer and the resurrection from the dead, he said, How my heart yearns within me! (Job 19:27)  Job was ready to be done with the tent; he wanted heaven.  Paul spoke the same way, not just in our text.  When he wrote to the Philippians he confessed his yearning to go to heaven when he wrote, I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. (Philippians 1:23) It’s okay for you to think about, and long for, heaven!  Especially when the difficulties and deficiencies of tent-living are felt.  When we feel the strong “drag” of our own mortality, when we see the sad dystopia of a world frustrated by sin, when every earthly prop gives way (and they all eventually do), it’s okay to groan for heaven.  Longing for heaven does not mean something is wrong; it means you know that Jesus has made things right, and there is a better life coming. Longing for heaven means you’re Christian.

But until that day when we are clothed with the heavenly, we must live in this world.  And Paul speaks a little bit in our text about living on this earth while longing for heaven.  And for this reason we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home or away.  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he did while in the body, whether good or bad. (v. 9-10)  Now, at first it might sound like Paul is saying, “One day I’m going to stand before Judge Jesus, so I better work hard to make him happy so that he lets me in!”  But we know from reading all of Paul, he knows better than that.  Paul knows that we are saved by grace through faith.

But we also know Paul has a healthy respect for God’s judgment.  Paul never trifles with it.  It hangs there in the future.  It is unavoidable.  We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. (v. 10)  Nobody gets a pass.  But notice, Paul calls Jesus “Christ.”  The Anointed One.  The Sin-bearer of the world.  Paul knows the Judge already.  He knows him as Savior!  And he trusts him as Savior.  Paul wants to live on this earth in a way that is pleasing to him.  Not to be saved, but because he is saved!  Paul understands he is training to live in heaven one day, and not hell.  So he might as well act like a citizen of heaven, not a future citizen of hell.  So, we too, while living on earth we will make it our goal to please him; we will live as the people Jesus fashioned us to be.

There is no bus to heaven outside the doors this morning.  But one day we will all make the trip.  Until that day – that day determined by God alone – we will do what Paul says in our text.  We live by faith and not by sight (v. 7)  We will live each day trusting that God’s promise of heaven is sure, and Christ’s work to get us there is sufficient.  And in that faith, we live on earth…and long for heaven.

Amen.

Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-716390. All rights reserved.

If you would like to give an offering after today’s worship, click here.