Gates Of Pearl; Streets Of Gold: Just Hype?
Preaching
Shaking Wolves Out Of Cherry Trees
And 149 Other Sermon Ideas
Purpose Statement: There are conflicting suggestions in our Bible regarding what life after death is like. Some possibilities seem more consistent with a loving God than others.
The book of Revelation, as a means of giving hope and courage to persecuted Christians, describes heaven in different ways. Chapters 7:9-17, 20:11-15, 21:1-27, and 22:1-5 are graphic descriptions of heaven that must be contrasted with the great number of Jesus' teachings about salvation and God's love and forgiveness. Any sermon on eternal life probably must list options of beliefs held by Christians. I see no reason why the pastor cannot stress her or his opinion as the best among them. When preaching on this subject, the following ideas must be dealt with:
a. The vivid imagery. John, in Revelation, was not the only one to dramatize in glowing terms concerning heaven. Jesus made exaggeration with poetic license common in his teaching in order to help us remember his ideas as well as to drive a point home with special emphasis. His hyperbolized imagery included swallowing camels, camels passing through needles' eyes, plucking out your eyes, tearing down the Temple, bringing a sword to divide families instead of peace, and so forth. Any sermon on heaven and salvation must start by explaining this technique of Jesus.
b. Hell. The description of hell given by Jesus falls under exaggeration as pointed out above. A loving God would in no way assign anyone to an eternity of torture as suggested by a fiery burning hell. The Catholic Church was uncomfortable with this idea and invented purgatory from an obscure passage in one of the Maccabees books found in the Apocrypha, I am told. It was a nice attempt to avoid the unreasonable cruelty of hell. If, as I believe, there is no hell, then what?
c. Salvation or who makes it? Some Christians endorse the concept of a universal salvation where everyone enters eternal life or heaven, and where there is no such thing as hell. Their argument, sometimes, is that God could never "ultimately" be defeated, as would be the case if some people never made heaven. I like the idea, and perhaps we all enter life after death at different levels prescribed by how we have developed spiritually in this life.
d. Heaven and what goes on there? It would seem more likely, if we enter into eternal life at the appropriate level of spiritual awareness that we have attained in this life, that heaven is a place where we continue to grow and mature spiritually. We "pick up where we left off" in this life even with the possibility of backsliding at times in heaven. We do not just jump from this life into perfection in the next. Heaven must be a growing experience just as this life is centered on our becoming mature Christians. Certainly, it would involve interaction with others -- our loved ones, especially -- as it does here, only in a spiritual realm. Eternal life would incorporate remorse and penance for our sins in this life before there would be any growth. Jesus' description of an "outer darkness" and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth illustrates this remorse.
The book of Revelation, as a means of giving hope and courage to persecuted Christians, describes heaven in different ways. Chapters 7:9-17, 20:11-15, 21:1-27, and 22:1-5 are graphic descriptions of heaven that must be contrasted with the great number of Jesus' teachings about salvation and God's love and forgiveness. Any sermon on eternal life probably must list options of beliefs held by Christians. I see no reason why the pastor cannot stress her or his opinion as the best among them. When preaching on this subject, the following ideas must be dealt with:
a. The vivid imagery. John, in Revelation, was not the only one to dramatize in glowing terms concerning heaven. Jesus made exaggeration with poetic license common in his teaching in order to help us remember his ideas as well as to drive a point home with special emphasis. His hyperbolized imagery included swallowing camels, camels passing through needles' eyes, plucking out your eyes, tearing down the Temple, bringing a sword to divide families instead of peace, and so forth. Any sermon on heaven and salvation must start by explaining this technique of Jesus.
b. Hell. The description of hell given by Jesus falls under exaggeration as pointed out above. A loving God would in no way assign anyone to an eternity of torture as suggested by a fiery burning hell. The Catholic Church was uncomfortable with this idea and invented purgatory from an obscure passage in one of the Maccabees books found in the Apocrypha, I am told. It was a nice attempt to avoid the unreasonable cruelty of hell. If, as I believe, there is no hell, then what?
c. Salvation or who makes it? Some Christians endorse the concept of a universal salvation where everyone enters eternal life or heaven, and where there is no such thing as hell. Their argument, sometimes, is that God could never "ultimately" be defeated, as would be the case if some people never made heaven. I like the idea, and perhaps we all enter life after death at different levels prescribed by how we have developed spiritually in this life.
d. Heaven and what goes on there? It would seem more likely, if we enter into eternal life at the appropriate level of spiritual awareness that we have attained in this life, that heaven is a place where we continue to grow and mature spiritually. We "pick up where we left off" in this life even with the possibility of backsliding at times in heaven. We do not just jump from this life into perfection in the next. Heaven must be a growing experience just as this life is centered on our becoming mature Christians. Certainly, it would involve interaction with others -- our loved ones, especially -- as it does here, only in a spiritual realm. Eternal life would incorporate remorse and penance for our sins in this life before there would be any growth. Jesus' description of an "outer darkness" and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth illustrates this remorse.
