HEAVEN
What We Will Do, Part 1
Selected Scriptures
Now the question tonight, as you know the whole series on heaven has been basically built around a series of question, we've been posing some basic questions and trying to answer them from the Word of God. It's not really a sermon, it's just really kind of a Bible study and that's what it will be tonight. We'll just be looking together at God's Word to see what the answer is. But the question for tonight is: what will the redeemed do in heaven? What will the redeemed do in heaven?
It's interesting to read, as I have read six or eight different books on heaven and looked up various articles and read various journals, articles and nosed around a little bit in a file that I have with things on heaven that I've collected through the years, and it's curious to see what people think heaven is like. It's also curious to see what people think we're going to do there. Some suggestions have come that what we're going to do in heaven is sit on the edge of a cloud and play a harp. And you've seen that depicted in a kind of a cartoon fashion. Others have suggested that some of us are going to polish the stones in the foundations of the new Jerusalem. And there are a lot of bizarre kinds of things like that.
Some have suggested that we won't do anything at all, that we'll just go to heaven and basically do nothing. It will just be forever rest, forever doing absolutely nothing...which sounds to me like hell not heaven. But nonetheless there are some who think that's what it's going to be like, just go there and do nothing forever. I can't do nothing for 30 minutes let alone forever. But nonetheless that...that kind of concept is depicted a little bit in the writings of Rudyard Kipling, no great theologian, who wrote "When earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, when the oldest colors have faded and the youngest critic has died, we shall rest and faith we shall need it. Lay down for an eon or two till the master of all good workman shall put us to work anew." Well he gets around to work sooner or later but it's the eons or two of doing absolutely nothing that bother me, a sort of Rip Van Winkle view of heaven, I guess.
What is it that we will do in heaven? Will it be just eternal nothing? Will we just sort of hang around heaven, strolling and strumming our way through forever? Or will it be that we will have something to do, something to plan for, some responsibility, some goal and objective that's going to demand all of our powers to put in motion to effect? Now those are the questions we want to answer.
And I guess part of understanding what we will do in heaven is to first of all understand what we will not do in heaven, are you ready for that? We will not do wrong, and that will eliminate a lot of problems. We will not do wrong. We will not sin, none of us will ever sin any time. We will never have to confess our sin. We will never have to struggle with sin. We will never have to apologize for anything to anyone forever. Isn't that wonderful? We will never have guilt. We'll never feel bad about anything. We'll never have to make anything right. We'll never have to write a letter to correct what we said or what we did. We'll never have to clarify anything. We'll never have to call somebody up to explain what we really meant. We'll never have to straighten out anything that's confused because nothing will ever be confused and nothing will ever be wrong so nothing will ever be straightened out. We'll never have to fix anything. We'll never have to repair anything. We'll never have to adjust anything. Nothing will ever be out of adjustment. We'll never have to replace anything, nothing will ever wear out. Nothing will ever malfunction. We'll never have to help anybody because nobody will ever need any help. We'll never have to deal with Satan. We'll never have to deal with demons. We'll never have to deal with sinners. We'll never have to defend ourselves against attack, we'll never be attacked.
We'll never be sad. We'll never cry. We'll never be alone. We'll never be lonely. We'll never be hurt emotionally. We'll never be hurt physically. We'll never need to be cured. We'll never need to be counseled. We'll never need to be coddled. We'll never need to be entertained.
We'll never be less that totally filled with absolute joy. We will never have to do anything special to anyone any time because everything we do will be special to everybody all the time. We will never grieve. We will never lose anyone, lose anything, miss anyone. We will never have to be careful because we couldn't make a mistake anyway. We will never have to plan for contingencies or emergencies. There will never be a "plan B". We will never have to avoid danger, there will be no danger.
It's incredible to think about all that, isn't it? I just sat down with my pen and started writing all of that out. About ten minutes later I had what I just gave you. And that's just a start.
What we've been saying in summing up the essence of heaven is that it is perfect holy bliss with unmixed and unending joy in perfected body and soul dwelling with the Lamb and with God in intimate fellowship and vision forever. That's heaven.
But what will we do? We won't do these things but what will we do? Well, I don't want to disappoint you but I can't be specific about what you will do and I can't even be specific about what I will do because the Lord hasn't chosen to reveal that to us. But in general we can be somewhat specific about what we'll all do categorically.
Let me give you some suggestions. Number one, we will adore God and Christ. We will spend forever adoring God and Christ. Let's call that worship...worship. Heaven will be the place of eternal loving adoring worship and praise forever and ever and ever all throughout all eternity without any break or any interruption, we will ever continually and always be praising God. There will never be an interruption to that. There won't be a place where you go to do that because the temple will be heaven and God will be all in all and so there won't be a place you go to do that, you will do that all the time without break. In fact, God's purpose in salvation as clearly delineated in Scripture was to create an eternal group of worshipers.
In John, his gospel chapter 4, our Lord says that in talking to the Samaritan woman. He says in John 4 that the Father seeks true worshipers. Salvation is a means to an end and the end is that there might be men and women who will spend forever adoring, praising, worshiping God. God's purpose in salvation was to choose a group of worshipers. Philippians 3:3, we are those who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no conf