What Are You Going to Do Forever?
What Are You Going to Do Forever?
June 30, 2019
Cartoonist Jules Feiffer once drew a series of sketches of an older couple sitting opposite each other who were obviously very bored. Frame after frame neither of them stirs until the man finally asks his wife, “Do you believe in life after death?” She mumbles in reply, “What do you call this?”
What of us? In the Apostles’ Creed we say that we do, but what exactly do we believe about the life everlasting and more specifically, what do you think we are going to do for forever? It sounds like an awfully long time, doesn’t it?
Two weeks ago now we looked at the affirmation “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” This core conviction of our faith affirms that this physical body of ours is one day going to be transformed into a new and glorious body which will continue on in the life we call resurrection. Underscoring this belief is the conviction that we were designed, not for this life alone, but to live with God eternally; this is confirmed to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Contemporary Christian writer John Hicks writes, “If we trust what Jesus said out of His own direct consciousness of God, we shall share His belief in the future life. This belief is supported by the reasoning that a God of infinite love would not create finite persons and then drop them out of existence when the potentialities of their nature, including their awareness of Him, have only just begun to be realized.” Perhaps stated more simply, why would God design us to die just when we get a glimpse of what it means to live?
In addition to that, this means that this life, as we know it, is the valley of disciple-making in which we prepare to live eternally in the presence of God, or not. The choice is ours as to what kind of eternity we want to have and what we desire to do for forever. We are designed to begin living now as we will one day live in the Kingdom of God, if that is what we so desire. In his book The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard writes, “It might prove helpful to think of how, exactly, I would be glad to be in heaven should I ‘make it’…I often wonder how happy and useful some of the fearful, bitter, lust-ridden, hate-filled Christians I have seen involved in church or family or neighborhood or political battles would be if they were forced to live forever in the unrestrained fullness of the reality of God and with the multitudes of beings really like Him…There is a widespread notion that just passing through death transforms human character. Discipleship is not needed. Just believe enough to ‘make it’. But I have never been able to find any basis in Scriptural tradition or psychological reality to think this might be so. What if death only forever fixes us as the kind of person we are at death? What would one do in heaven with a debauched character or a hate-filled heart? Surely something must be done now.”
I think he is on to something and if we follow this line of reasoning, then heaven and the promise of eternal life is far more than a reward for right living or for correct decision-making. It is the believer’s true home, the ultimate human destiny that we can begin to experience even now in our relationships with God and one another. It is the life we will enjoy one day when God finally has His way with us which begs the question, if we choose not to live in a God-honoring way now what makes us think we will want to do so for eternity?
The testimony of Scripture is “trustworthy and true” that one day God will draw all of human history to completion and fulfillment, and on that day, God will usher in the promised Kingdom of Heaven in it’s fullness. So what will life be like on that day and then for eternity? Eternity is an awfully long time, you know, so it might be helpful if we could get a sense of what we are getting ourselves in to so that we can start preparing for it now.
Given that all of this is an experience beyond our experience, Scripture is, however, plain to give us some assurances of heaven and eternity. First, wherever, whenever and whatever heaven may be, it will be glorious because God will be at the center of it. Heaven is that condition in which God’s perfect rule is ordered and obeyed. It is life as God intended it to be, without the perversion or distortion of sin and disobedience. In that regard alone, it will be very different from the life we experience now. The challenge of life as we know it is that we allow any number of competitors to occupy that place in our lives that belongs to God alone – work, family, pleasure, material possessions. But when God is rightfully at the center, then all of those other things are given their appropriate place and the promise of God’s Kingdom is fulfilled. In this, we can get a glimpse of life as it will be then as we allow God to reshape and reorder our priorities now.
A second observation we can make from Scripture is that in heaven there will be many delights, but no surprises. What I mean is, in Jesus Christ God has fully revealed Himself. As Paul writes to the Colossians, “He is the image of the invisible God…for God was pleased to have His fullness dwell in Him” (2:15,19). So, the more we know of Jesus, the more we can know of God, which means there will be many delights, but no surprises.
So, what will heaven be like and what will we do for forever? While speaking at a revival in Boston in 1950 a young Billy Graham described heaven in very specific, even worldly terms. “Heaven,” he said, “is as real as Los Angeles, London, Algiers or Boston. It is 1600 miles long, 1600 miles wide and 1600 miles high. Once there, we are going to sit around the fireplace and have parties, and angels will wait on us, and we’ll drive down the golden streets in a yellow Cadillac convertible.” Mr. Graham made heaven out to sound an awful lot like the 1950’s version of the American dream.
Others have made it out to sound like the place of eternal rest. There are times, I will admit, when having absolutely nothing to do sounds rather appealing; but I will also confess that I could never endure having nothing to do for an eternity. Others have described heaven as getting to do what you most love to do, all of the time; hence all of the jokes about golf. If heaven is a place of great enjoyment, then it is reasonable to expect that the kinds of experiences which bring us joy now will be sustained then, only on a grander scale. Yet still I must admit, I can’t imagine doing even those things I most enjoy doing, all of the time, forever.
When Scripture speaks of what we will do in heaven the most immediate and predominant response we find is worship. The book of Revelation is replete with images of all of the creatures of heaven and earth bowing down before God in endless worship and praise. In the 4th chapter John writes of seeing the throne of God surrounded by the 24 elders and heavenly creatures who “Day and night, never stop saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was and is and is to come.” At the center of life as it one day will be is worship and that is as it should be for God will be at the center of life in the Kingdom of Heaven, and God alone is worthy of our worship and praise.
That is why worship must have a place of priority in our lives now. If it does not, then we really have not properly understood our relationship to God. God is the Creator and we are His creatures, and creatures are intended to worship their Creator. At the center of what it means to be Christian and to live the Christian life is this understanding of our right relationship with God. Worship is what we are designed and intended to do for here we are reminded of who we are and to Whom we belong, now and for eternity.
But is that all we’ll do in heaven, worship God, play harps and ride on clouds? As much as I love to worship, and indeed I do, I must admit that even that may become a little tedious over time and eternity. Surely there must be something else for us to do for forever, and I believe there is.
To my knowledge Scripture never out and out says it, but it does give some pretty substantial hints that there will be work for us to do in heaven. But it will not be work as we know it now, boring, tedious, something we one day hope to retire from. Many of Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom of Heaven involve the concept of manual labor, such as the parable of the laborers in the vineyard and the sower in the field. In the passage we read this morning from John’s Revelation, he envisions “a new heaven and a new earth coming down out of heaven.” This new creation is a re-creation of life as it once was, before the fall; Creation 2.0, if you will. But what John describes is not an idyllic garden, as perhaps we might expect, but a holy city in which God lives intimately among His people. So the work we will be given to do is not that of hoeing and planting and weeding, but of community-building, of relationship-building, of learning the ways of justice and righteousness and peace, that of learning to do life together under the reign and rule of God.
That, in fact, may take an eternity, which may not actually seem as long as it sounds. Have you ever found yourself so immersed in the enjoyment of your work that you’ve lost total track of the time? Where time has no meaning? That could be a glimpse of eternity, right? Think for a moment about the work you do: paid or volunteer or recreational. What is it about what you do that you enjoy most? Creating something? Being with people? Closing a deal? Supplying something to help meet someone else’s need? Helping to resolve a conflict? Teaching a concept? Promoting healing in someone’s body? Now as you consider that quality of your labor, take out of the equation the sense of urgency you feel about having to get the task done by 5:00 or closing the deal by the end of the reporting period. Take away the pressure you feel of trying to satisfy an angry customer or a demanding boss or an unreasonable neighbor. Take out your concern about needing to make the sale in order to earn your salary, or get the commission, or perhaps even keep your job. Take away all of those worldly concerns and work almost begins to sound fun again, doesn’t it? That’s what it will be like in the Kingdom of Heaven and the work we will do there. We will have work to do, important work, meaningful work, God-honoring work, for we are the ones who will be laborers in the building of God’s new heaven and new earth. And the beauty of it is our work will be an expression of our worship, for God is our “all in all.”
Scottish philosopher Thomas Chalmers writes, “The grand essentials for happiness are: something to do, something to love and something to hope for.” Each of these will be satisfied on that day and for eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven. Yes, there will be singing and worship and praise, but when the party’s over, rest assured, there will be work to be done.
Admittedly in discussing these matters we have to confess with the Apostle Paul that “now we see in a mirror dimly but then we will see face to face” and today with John who does his best to describe the heavenly glory which is wholly indescribable in human terms, so let me close with what I believe we can know as being certain and it comes from the mouth of a child. One morning a pastor was giving a children’s sermon and he asked his young listeners what they expected to see in heaven – golden streets, mansions, lots of toys- what did they think? After a rather long period of silence, one little boy piped up, “I expect to see God!” Enough said!
To the glory of that end and in the hope-filled anticipation of that day, we say, “I believe in the life everlasting.” Amen.