Christ is Our Risen Savior

I was converted at the age of 18 out of a fairly, well, a very licentious lifestyle. And so, whenever Christ called me to Himself, I initially had much more zeal than wisdom. I was very robust in declaring the Gospel. And, well, those friends that I was trying to convert, well, I lost them all as friends in the meantime. I'm not sure if it's because the Gospel was a stumbling block or if it was because I was too zealous. I received a warning from somebody that has always struck me. The warning was this, be careful not to be so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good. As a new convert, that seemed wise. It seemed balanced. I wanted to be earthly good. I want to make sure that I'm making an impact in the world and so I don't want to be too heavenly minded. Then I had no idea what that actually meant. What does it mean to be too heavenly minded? As a new convert, I thought this must mean that I think of, you know, sitting on a cloud with a harp all day. I didn't know what heaven was. I didn't know how to think about heaven. So, I didn't know what it meant to be too heavenly minded. Well, this advice was, as I've come to understand, was wrong. I do not think it's possible to be too heavenly minded if one is truly seeking the heaven that Christ taught, that Christ has established, that Christ has promised. It's a lie. It's seeking a balance where there needs to be no balance. We will only be a blessing to all the earth if we are truly heavenly minded. There is no way to truly care for others if we are not focused upon God and His kingdom. To think more of heaven makes us heavenly. If we want to bless others, we must be captivated by God, His promises, and His righteous reign. As I think of heaven this morning, we're not just thinking of that afterlife. We're thinking of God's righteous rule at all times and all places. We're not just looking and thinking about what God is going to do for us after we die. We're looking at how we can live according to God's will today. We can seek heaven today. Our scripture text has two clear imperatives. Seek the things that are above. Set your mind on the things above. We are to think and to seek out those heavenly things. We have the sermon outline. If you don't, there's some in the back foyer. Please make your way back there and find one. Our message is simple. With Christ we have a new position. A new meditation, a new life, and a new hope. This speaks of what Christ has done for us. This speaks of who He is and all the blessings we have. We have all of these new things, a new position, a new meditation, a new life, and a new hope because of Him. Christ is all we need. We need to want nothing else because of all that He has accomplished for us. Let me read our verse in its entirety, each different point. Position, meditation, life and hope corresponding with each verse. We're in Colossians 3, verses 1-4. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you have died And your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory. Now, this is connected to our previous sermon. The last two sermons, actually. The last two sermons said if you have died with Christ, if you have died with Christ, you have no more guilt. You have no need to submit to anyone else because He has cleansed you. He has forgiven you. Here he's connecting us with his resurrection. So we identify with his death. That's what we looked at from chapter 2 verses 20 through 23 last week and the passage the week before. But now we're looking at how we identify in what we see blessing from his resurrection. Really all this comes out of Colossians 2 verses 11 and 12. In him also you were circumcised. was a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead." Here Paul is extrapolating the benefits of being identified with his death and his resurrection. We also see here that we're not just freed from outside authorities by Christ. We're free to live. We're free to enjoy life. We're free to experience the love of God. We're free to know God as He has meant for us to know Him. Let's look at our first verse. Our new position is with Christ. Our new position is with Christ. Verse 1. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Now the command is what jumps out because it's the very first thing Paul speaks of. If you've been raised with Christ, seek the things. We want to know what to do. We're supposed to seek the things. But the command is built upon the very condition that Christ is raised and we're raised with Him. We need to first think about the fact that Christ is at the right hand of God and what that means for us. So before we look at what it means to seek the things above, we need to think about Christ who has ascended. above. He is at the right hand of the Father. Now, the right hand is the great position of authority in the ancient Near East. The right hand is what is stretched out to conquer enemies, or the right hand is what is stretched out to help those in need. God the Father has Christ at His right hand. And this is where Paul may be getting the fact that he calls Christ God's wisdom and His power. Christ is the one that God the Father has sent to accomplish our salvation. He is the one who has gone down to us, to die for us, to rise again, and to ascend back to the position of right hand, because He has absolute authority now. This is helpful for us, because as we looked at last week, the Colossians' problem is the fact that they're looking for other authorities. They're looking for man-made religions. They're looking for things that are rudimentary and basic here on this earth. Why would we do that when we can look up to the right hand of the Father, where all power and authority and wisdom resides, and have Him to look to? It's a clear contrast. Do not look at the rudimentary principles. Do not look at human regulations. Look up to Christ. We can see the importance of the right hand in one of the most important messianic psalms. The psalm quoted most in the New Testament, Psalm 110. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations. filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs of the wide earth. He will drink from the brook by the way. Therefore, he will lift up his head. The right hand here is the power and authority to crush, to accomplish victory. Christ is our victory. Christ is our authority. We need to look to no one else. Now, what does it mean to be risen with Christ? What does it mean that we have been raised with Christ. So Christ has come, He's conquered sin, He's conquered death, He's now risen and He's ascended back to the right hand of the Father. That's where we are to put our hope and our confidence. Because we are united with Him. This is the great Christian doctrine of the union with Christ. We've mentioned a number of times because it's packed throughout Paul's epistles. Every time he says, in Christ or with Christ, he's telling us of how confident we can be that if we believe in Christ, we are His and His blessings are ours. There's two ways to think about the union with Christ. First, there's His representative union. There's a representative union. Christ represents us. When He died on the cross, He stood in our place. He represented us. He was our substitute. So that when all the wrath of God was poured out upon Him, God was counting our sins against Him. He represented us there. So that we no longer have to be under the wrath of God. So that we no longer will suffer the consequences of our sin. He stands in our place. as our representative. He rises again so that we have the hope of new life. We ride his coattails, as it were. He's our representative. He's our leader. He is the forerunner, as Ron read earlier. So, in one way, He represents us. That's our union with Him. Secondly, there's a living union. The Son has sent the Spirit to indwell us. The Son has provided life. The Son has given to us security and hope. The Holy Spirit changes us inside. The Holy Spirit renews our heart. He brings life to what was dead. As Paul will say later in Philippians, for me to live is Christ. Christ is the source of his life. Christ is the power of his life. The analogy of Jesus and John. He says, I am the vine and you are the branches. Our life is dependent upon Christ. Now, we cannot grow or bear fruit unless we are connected to Christ. If we're united to Christ, we must seek Him. Let's look at the command. Seek the things above. Christ is risen. He is the sinner, the right hand of the Father. With Him, we have every benefit, and so we are to seek Him. Seek the things above. Now, seeking the things above are in contrast to two of the things. We either seek the things above or we seek sin, or we seek the things above or we seek self-righteousness. Those are really our three options. We can seek our own regulations to make us feel like we're better, just trying to find a way to make ourselves feel as if God must accept us, so we seek self-righteousness. Or we forget the whole game and we say, who cares? I'm going to seek sin. I'm going to dive in. I'm going to try to experience as much sin as possible because it's what I enjoy. Or, you seek Christ. Those are your only options. Either try to seek out sin, you seek self-righteousness, or you seek Christ. Now, what does it mean to seek Christ? What does it mean to seek the things above? Primarily, I don't think it's necessarily the things And then things that come as gifts, such as a car, food, whatever it may be that we're looking for, in terms of earthly things we hope come from above. No, I think the things that truly come from above are God's wisdom, God's Word, God's knowledge of Himself. If we're going to seek the things above, we're seeking who God is, what He has said about Himself, what He has said about us, and how we are to live. Seeking the things above is seeking wisdom and the knowledge of His will. This is very clear throughout many of Paul's epistles or many of Paul's prayers in his epistles. We saw this prayer in chapter 1, verse 9, where he prays that they would know the will of God. We seek the things above so that we know what God has done for us and how God directs us. When Christ claims us, We become children of God. Our citizenship changes. We are of a new land. We are of a new home. We are a new people. We have a new identity. One of the poems or one of the great frustrations for Christians is whenever we have a new citizenship, a new identity, but we're not trying to live there. One of the sad truths would be Us as Christians, not seeking to enjoy the blessings that come from above. One of the saddest realities is that children run away from home. They leave home because they don't like the rules and regulations. They don't like the way dad runs the home. They leave and they get themselves in trouble. Christian, if you're not seeking the things above, it's the equivalent of a child leaving home. Your new place, your new position is to be with God, is to seek to be in His presence above with Christ. If we're not seeking God, we're runaway children. We're seeking to make our presence, we're seeking to be delighted in other things. So, that's the question. How do we seek the things above? How are we to seek the things above? First, in order to seek the things above, we must have confidence in Christ. To seek the things above, we must have confidence in Christ. The imperative is built upon the indicative. The command is built upon the condition that Christ is above and we are His. We cannot seek the things above unless we are truly Christ and we are certain of what He has done for us. The passage says, if you have been risen with Christ, That's not a hypothetical as if the resurrection may not have happened. No, it's a condition. We can read it as since you have been raised with Christ. The reality is Christ has risen, and if you believe in Him, you are risen with Christ. We must have confidence in this. He has risen, and we are raised with Him. He has risen, He has forgiven us. He has risen, and He allowed us into the presence of God. We must grow in our confidence with Christ, and we grow in our confidence by looking up. That's kind of obvious. The things are above. We look up to God and we ask Him to give us blessings. We look up to God by looking in His Word that He has revealed to us from above. If we want confidence in God, we need to remember and recall and be reminded of all those promises that the Father has made, and how He has fulfilled so many in Christ, and how He will continue to fulfill those promises. If we want more confidence, we must look to His Word. We must build ourselves in fellowship. We need confidence from one another. We need to be reminded of God's goodness to us. We need to pray. There's nothing wrong with praying for more faith. That's actually something encouraged in Scripture. If you lack confidence in Christ and what He has done, pray for more confidence. If you lack assurance in what Christ has done and done for you, pray for more assurance. Ask God what you need and He will give it to you. Second, we must stop putting our confidence in our obedience and regulations. This is the easy thing to do as Christians. To masquerade around as if we are okay. To dress up and look right. We come. We talked about this last week. We talked about this the last two weeks. I'm not going to stay here long. But we love to place our confidence and our ability in gifting. If our confidence is in anything other than who Christ is, then our confidence is misplaced. We must be aware that we are constantly tempted to think more of ourselves than what we do and how we believe. There's only one question that ultimately matters, and that is what God thinks of us in Christ. It's not how much others think of us or what we think of ourselves. It's what God thinks of us. If we believe in Christ, we are His children. We need one another to be reminded and rebuked, but we must seek our position in Christ alone. Third, if you want to seek the things above, we must stop seeking the things below. We must stop seeking sin. If you want to taste the heavenly treasures, you must cleanse your palate of sin. You don't prepare yourself to taste a meal prepared by a chef by eating dirt beforehand. That's not a palate cleanser. You cannot pretend that you can go into the presence of God and experience His glory, His holiness, and His love if you're constantly filling your palate with sin. We must stop seeking sin. We must repent of pursuing sin so that we can pursue God. There are two masters. We will choose one. Either we will seek God or we'll continue to play in the mud. correct or make clear something I said last week. Last week I was talking about intimacy. I was saying that intimacy is supposed to take place between a man and a woman. Well, I want to make clear that what I meant by that was between a husband and a wife. Intimacy, sexual intimacy is to take place only within God's good plan, God's good order. It is only to take place according to God's design. That's the only way we'll ever truly enjoy it. It's the only way you'll ever truly experience what God has meant for you with sexual intimacy. It is by pursuing it. Not according to your desires and your appetite, but according to His design. Fourth. The fourth way that we can seek things above. Intentionally invest in God's kingdom. This is really where our faith, where the confidence starts to have concrete fruit. It's putting our faith to work. It's saying, I'm going to believe so much in what Christ has done and what He has promised that I'm going to invest my time, my energy, my talents, my gifts, my finances in His work and what He's doing. I'm going to stop investing in my ease of life. I'm going to stop investing in what I want and what can be best for me in this easy life on this earth. I'm going to invest in heaven. I'm actually going to believe that there is an afterlife, that I will face God, that Christ is risen, that He is the one who has made me right, and that I will have rewards. based upon how I invest my time and my energy. This is built upon the confidence. And that confidence has to have fruit. Hear the words of Jesus in Matthew 6. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the length of the body, so if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, the whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Are you loving God with your money? Or are you loving your money? Are you loving God with all the different things that He has given to you? Or are you loving those things? Are you seeking to invest in God's kingdom with all the great blessings He's given you? Or is your attention solely devoted to them? Well, the two tests are pretty obvious. Your checkbook and your calendar. Where is your time, and where is your money? Let's move to our second verse. Our new meditation is with Christ. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on this earth. That's our second imperative, but it's still built upon the fact that Christ is above. We're supposed to set our minds on the things above. If we are with Christ and He is above and we're supposed to seek the things above, we are supposed to set our desires, our affections, our minds, our thoughts on those things. We will become what we think about. Now, there's a clear contrast here. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. There's a contrast. You must choose one or the other, as we just read from Jesus. You must despise one and love the other. You cannot love both. Now, we have ways of tricking ourselves into thinking we're loving both. But the reality is, because we believe Jesus' teaching, we cannot love both. We cannot have two masters. The question is, who is your master? The command here is to set your mind on the things above. Be heavenly minded. Think much of God. Think much of His Kingdom. Think much of what He has done for you. This is very similar, I think, to what Paul says in other epistles. Be transformed in your mind. It's changing the way you think. We're born and we're naturally going to think of things on this earth. That is our natural disposition as creatures who are sinful. We will think of this earth. We will think of things in this world. But here, as Christians, because we're with Christ, we're commanded to change the way we think. We're to be transformed in our mind. We are to look to God. We are to know Him and to know His will. We're to be transformed in our mind. This means that we think God's thoughts after Him. If you ever want to know what a good theologian is, that's it. A good theologian isn't someone who's clever and creative and comes up with new ways of explaining and describing things. No, a good theologian is someone who thinks God's thoughts after him. And this is God's thought. This is God's Word. He's revealed Himself in our own words to give us His thoughts. If you want to be transformed in your mind, you must start thinking God's thoughts after Him. Let this shape and form you. We promote other books because we think they think God's thoughts after them. But if you really want to know what God thinks, this is it. Not only are we supposed to think God's thoughts after Him, we're supposed to desire God's desires after Him. Our thoughts change and our desires change. We're supposed to love what God loves. Now that warning to be heavily minded. Don't be too heavily minded. I see how dangerous that is because we want to be earthly good. But the only way we're truly going to bless others is if we are so heavily minded they see the light come down from God in this dark place. The only way we're going to truly be a blessing to this world is if we share the light that has penetrated the darkness, Jesus Christ. If you want to reach this world, you must leave it. If you want to be an impact on this world, you must put yourself in the heavenly realm, know God, know His Word, and then proclaim it to this world. There's no straggling the fence. You cannot be double-minded. You either think like God, after Him, or you'll think like this world. As C.S. Lewis said, and you will get thrown in. Ain't an earth, and you will get neither. You cannot have heaven and earth if you are seeking this earth. Now, if we're to meditate on heaven, what do you picture? If we're supposed to be thinking about the things that are above, what do we think about? As a child, before I was a Christian, I was raised going to church. When people talk about heaven, I would often think that it was a realm where I got to drink Dr. Pepper and eat Doritos and play Nintendo all day. Those are the things I really enjoy, so I thought heaven must be all these things that I really enjoy. That is a sinful temptation to make the things that we love the most about this world elevated as if those things are God's things. We must be careful not to take the things that we have of this world and elevate them up to heaven to God's righteous reign. Many people get discouraged by heaven because it is difficult to think about. What is it you do? A lot of people will say it's just a monotony. Is all you're doing sitting there on the cloud and playing the harp all day? Is it just one long precious memory moment? What do you do in heaven? Some people get discouraged by this because it's an absence of things in many ways. The only thing absent in heaven is sin. If you're worried about the absence of something, what are you going to do? The only thing you're not going to be doing is sinning. You take away everything that is sinful and rebellious in us, and you're starting to get towards heaven. But it's not just what's removed, it's what's there. It's a direct relationship with the holiness and love of God. It's a face-to-face relationship, no longer through a mirror dimly. It's seeing God in His beauty and His holiness and His glory and His love. It's seeing the One who is infinite delightful and being delighted forever. I love playing with my daughter because she can do the same thing over and over again. Pick her up. Put her down, she wants to be picked up again. Again, Dad. That's what heaven's going to be like for us. The beauty of monotony. Looking at God constantly saying, Again, Father. Let me see your glory. Again. Every day, whatever day it looks like in heaven, we will be looking and saying, God, let me see your glory. Let me see your holiness. If you're worried about being bored in heaven, there is no boredom, because the greatest source of delight is the Son, the center of heaven, God Himself. There is no boredom, because God is there, and He is infinitely delightful. And we invited college students today, and I want to give you a particular challenge. What are the things you're thinking of? See, college is the time where you actually have the most free time. Life actually gets busier. It's easy to take this time and abuse it. It's easy to take this time for granted. You will never have more free time in your life. You'll never have more freedom in your life. There's two things you can do. The world says, take advantage of that freedom and do what you want. Take advantage of that freedom and do things you'll never have an opportunity to do again. That's fine. But let me give you a particular challenge of what I think you need to do with your free time. You need to set your mind on things above. You need to take this season and prepare yourself for the next. And the best way to do that is to know God better. To get deeper in your relationship with God. To know who God is. We have a number of books that we give away to college students. Knowing God by J.I. Packer, Holiness by Sproul, Knowledge of the Holy by Tozer. You're welcome to all three of those books. If you come to breakfast, we will give them to you. All three books think God's thoughts after them very well and they tell you about God and how to think about God. They will give you a greater devotion and a greater desire for God. Don't put off your commitment to following Christ and knowing God better, because life only gets busier and will only get more complicated. Today, you can start digging your roots deep into the waters that will nourish your life forever. Do not waste your time. Children, you are in a unique position. You are under the authority of your parents. You can look at your parents for authority and you can say they're too regulating, they're too authoritative. But this is what you can learn by submitting to your parents. One, they know what's best for you. I know as you get older you think you know better, but your parents know what's best for you. Secondly, by learning to submit to your father and your mother's authority, you're learning to submit to God's authority. You're learning what it means to have an authority over you and submit, even when you're being asked to do what you actually don't want to do. It is a testing period, a training period, for you to go out and love God and submit to Him as your authority. Let's go to our third verse. Our new life is with Christ. You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Our new life is with Christ. Now this passage connects with the first two commands. Seek the things above. Set your mind on the things above. And then there's this key word, for. It's a ground or a basis for everything he said so far. You have died with Christ. Set your mind on the things above. Seek the things above. Because you have died with Christ. and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Now, the initial focus was on the resurrection. If you have been risen with Christ, seek the things that are above. If you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. The initial focus of the resurrection, now Paul takes us back to the cross. If you have died, he points us back to what Christ has accomplished for us. We have died with Christ. His death was our death. He died for our sin. We are no longer dead. We now have life because Christ has given us life. Now this is the clear connection here. If we have died with Christ, we now must count ourselves dead to sin. We have died to the things of this world. We have died to sin because we have died in Christ. Because Christ has died for us, we now must deny ourselves and take up our cross. We die to our old life. We die to our old guilt. We now have confidence to fight against sin because Christ is our Savior, our victor. So before we believed in Christ, we were slaves. Our sin was a slave master. It barked orders and it had a chain around our neck. And when it would bark orders, it would jerk the chain and we had to sin. We had no other option. Sinners sin. That's what sinners do. When our sin nature barked orders, yanked the chain, we had to sin. But we believe in Christ. And His death is counted towards us. And His death frees us. He broke the chain. He broke that chain that forces us to sin every time our sin nature barks out orders. Now, here's the world you live in. If you're a Christian, your sin nature is still barking orders. And by habit, we still obey. What we have to do is set our mind on the things above. We have to remind ourselves that in confidence, our confidence is in Christ. He has destroyed that chain we no longer have to obey. Yeah, sin nature, it's still barking out orders, but now Christ is given a new voice. He's saying, Son, Daughter, I've freed you. And you no longer have to obey that sin nature. I have conquered it. I have victory over it. I now stand on the right hand of the Father with absolute authority. You are free. If you have died with Christ, stop seeking the things on the earth. Stop seeking sin. You no longer have to obey sin. You're free. Spurgeon said this, the old life is dead. You are dead to it. You will not be consumed by it. You cannot be controlled by it. You have a newer and higher life. Let it have full scope. You have a new life now. It is up yonder where Christ sits in the right hand of God. Do you not feel drawings upward? Are there no longings after the high and heavenly estate where Jesus is? Come, beloved. Let your soul break loose for a while, and like a lark that, having found its liberty, ascends with joyous wing, singing as it rises till it is out of mortal sight, so let it be with you. You profess to be dead to the world. Is that profession false? You have observed that scriptural ordinances in which you profess to be buried with Christ, was that observance only an empty form. Friends, you no longer have to be controlled by sin. You're free. You're free to ascend to God. You're free to know God. You're free to enjoy the blessings and the lights of heaven in Christ. Let's look at the second half of this verse before we move on. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. Now this is an interesting phrase because, as we argued from chapter 1 and from all of scripture, Christ is God. Jesus Christ is God the Son. And so here he's put alongside of God. And as I understand it, the best way to interpret any passage where Jesus is put alongside of God, that we read God the Father. So we could read this passage, your life is hidden with the Son and the Father. Does that make sense? We're not going to deny the deity of Christ. Christ is divine. And so as we look at this passage, if it's Christ and God, it must be hidden with the Son and the Father. Now, why is that important? It's because Almighty God, the Father. You are hidden in Him. Christ is the one that takes you into Him. It is with Christ that you are in the Father. Not to be hidden. He's your refuge. He's your strength. When we hide in the Father with Christ, we have Almighty God protecting us. What other great protection do you need? What fear do you have? That's important because our sin nature is going to bark out harsh orders. It's going to make threats. It's going to try to make you feel guilty. But you're hidden in Christ. You're hidden in the Father with Christ. No one can make accusation against you. That's why that song, Arise, My Soul Arises, is so fascinating. No more guilt. I have absolute confidence because I am hid in the Father with Christ. Our last point, our new hope is with Christ. Our new hope is with Christ. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. Let's look at first look at this phrase, who is your life? Christ is your life. We can look back and see how Paul quotes the pagan poet, in him we live and move and have our being. So the most basic root, we actually exist because Christ has created us. In him we live and move and have our being. He is our life because he has provided a new life. Christ has breathed his life into us. The Spirit has come to bring us back to a life where we were dead in our sin. He is life because he gives us a new purpose. He renews us. He redirects us. He is our life because he changes us. Paul says this in Galatians 2, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. He's our life because his death gives us new life. He is our life because his resurrection gives us eternal life. He is our life and we are called to enjoy him and love him. Second, let's notice there's a temporal clause when Christ appears. So everything up to this point has actually been telling us how we can seek heaven, seek the things above now, today. But now he's setting forth a future hope when Christ appears, you will also appear with him in glory. So as long as the great benefit we have now, we can know God, we can we can ascend with Christ to the right hand of the father in the spirit. But now we also we're looking forward to that day we will appear with him in glory. Now, what does it mean that we will appear with him in glory? I believe this is referring to the glorified state. When Christ appears or when we die, we will receive new bodies, a new life. We will receive a new life that is not able to sin. Sin will be removed so that we no longer have a tainted heart that's being torn from God and to God. We no longer will have a tainted love. We will no longer have that treason that's constantly corrupting us. We will be perfectly renewed. We will have eyes to see God. Not just eyes that are hoping to see God. We will be renewed when He appears. We should long for this appearing. We should be longing for Christ's return. That's one of the clearest ways to seek the things above is to already start longing for when we will fully experience the things above. We must long for Christ's return. Life will be better. There's a great country song. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now. Is that true of most Christians? Do we still have something we want to do here and now before we go up into that glorified state and enjoy God forever without sin? Could that be true of you? Is there something you still have to do before Christ returns or do you long for him to return to call you home? Do you love God and are you desiring to see him with just a perfect love? Are you loving these things more than God? Another quote by C.S. Lewis. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death. I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside. I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same. It gets snowed under. The busyness of life keeps us from thinking about heaven. Not just sin, just the busyness of life. Not focusing enough on our time with God, not focusing enough in our fellowship with one another. It gets snowed under. We must always be striving to remind ourselves our citizenship is not here. Our hope and delight is not here. As we conclude, let me give us four reasons that we should long for heaven. Four reasons why we should long for heaven. First, longing for heaven energizes your gospel evangelism. If you want to share the gospel with others, keep reminding yourself of what happens in the end. When sinners die without Christ, they face God who is the judge and he is just and he will punish their sin and they will have an eternity in hell. It is only if we confess Christ, it is only if our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors know Christ, believe in Him, will they be forgiven. It is only if they believe in Christ that they will know the Heavenly Father and be able to truly delight in Him rather than be consumed by His wrath. Longing for heaven, always having the things above the forefront of our mind and that Christ is returning. It energizes our gospel evangelism. Secondly, longing for heaven empowers our battle against sin. Because we look up, we see the great authority over all things, even the authority over our own sin, and he declares we are forgiven. We must constantly remind ourselves that the end is coming. And that the one who is coming has absolute authority and he gives us the power to fight against sin. Related to that is the third reason longing for heaven enriches your heavenly reward. Throughout all Scripture, you can see it in Matthew 6 three times. You can see it throughout Paul's epistles, and I'll walk you through these if you want to look at it, because it's worth looking at. There are rewards in heaven. We will have to give an account, Christians, for our deeds, whether good or evil. We will have to give an account to God. Now, this is not you earning salvation with your deeds. We come into the presence of God in this judgment by Christ saying, Father, this one's mine. I died for my rose again. But there are. There will be an accounting for what we do, whether good or evil in our deeds. Longing for heaven enriches our reward because we constantly reminding ourselves, I am called to be obedient. I'm called to be faithful. And I will receive a reward from God, what greater reward is there to hear? Well done, good and faithful servant. If all you're doing is pursuing money, even though you've confessed Christ and maybe you really are Christ, all you're doing is pursuing money, you're not going to hear that. You're going to hear that you are greedy and that you wasted your days. Finally, longing for heaven encourages us in our infirmaries and trials. My wife is actually the theologian of heaven in her home. She far excelled me in the doctrine of heaven because she has a health problem. And it was encouraging to watch how she realized there's things that she can no longer do in this world. And so she started longing for what she could do in heaven. Your physical trials, your physical infirmaries, they're supposed to remind you this isn't the end. You'll receive a glorified body where you can use everything God created you to be in every way to glorify him and enjoy him. Our physical infirmities are only to remind us that this world is not the way it's supposed to be. Death is a reminder that this world is not the way it's supposed to be. But God is going to return. Christ is going to return to reconcile all things to himself, to renew all things and make this world the way it was meant to be. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank You that You again give us access into Your holy presence. Help us, Lord, to not take this for granted. Help us to not just seek it in our prayer, but seek it in every desire and every thought of our day. Help us to pray unceasingly. Help us to constantly be looking up to you for wisdom and direction and guidance and strength and power to have confidence to fight against temptation, to proclaim your gospel and to wait eagerly for your return. Help us, Lord, to have absolute confidence in what you have done and what you said you will finally accomplish. In your holy name we pray, Amen.