This week I was reading one guy's description of how big the universe was and something caught my attention. He said, "If it cost you one cent (just one penny) to travel one thousand miles, you could take a trip around the world for twenty-five cents. And you could go to the moon for $2.38. You could travel for $930.00 but if you wanted to make a trip based on that same financial ratio to the nearest neighboring star it would cost you 260 million dollars." He was trying to show how vast was our galaxy and our universes.
Of course, it wouldn't matter if you traveled around the world or went to the moon, either of those journeys you would certainly need to make preparations for them in advance. Some of us traveled to Israel for a couple of weeks. And to do that you made preparations. It's interesting about two, three, even four weeks out at every service those who were going to Israel would ask some predictable questions: What should we pack? What will the weather be like? What about electrical outlets, can we wash our clothes while we're there? Is this the right camera for it? Schedules were cleared, money was saved, some people even read in advance the sights that they were going to see. All of that for just a two-week trip. Here's my point: we make those preparations for a two-week trip overseas, some people don't even make the same kind of consideration for the ultimate journey, and that is the eternal journey.
It was J.B. Phillips who was a great Bible translator and scholar, who in his lifetime conducted over five thousand funerals. And yet whenever he would do a funeral he wouldnever speak about the dearly departed. He would speak about the one who has arrived. The question is: Where did they arrive? Where did they go? What is it like now for that person? And for us the question is where will you arrive?
I heard about two neighbors, it was a pastor and a salesman, they lived next door to each other. And at the same time that the pastor died the salesman went away for a trip to Florida. And while he was there he sent a quick postcard back to his wife but the postcard was delivered to the wrong mailbox. It was delivered to the wife of the deceased pastor. And when she opened the mail, she was shocked to read the postcard: "Arrived safely. The heat here is awful." Quite a shock.
So, when you die and while people are on the earth preparing your memorial service, what kind of casket you'll be buried in, what kind of a flower arrangement should be before your casket, who will do the eulogy, what should be said, what songs will go on. While they're doing that, what will you be doing? You will be very conscious, the Bible indicates that. Will you be rejoicing, beholding God's throne with myriads of angels and countless humans who have passed before you into God's presence? Or, will you be in misery and in torment, separated from God forever?
We're beginning a new series. I'm calling it "from the edge of eternity." And what we're going to be doing principally is following the Christian from death all the way to heaven, through all of the stages of heaven. Though we will from time to time be discussing the other side of that, the unbeliever. Principally we want to follow the Christian from the moment of death and what happens next and then next and then next with the resurrection of the body and the stages of heaven. One of the reasons that I decided to do this is I've done my share of funerals also over the years and at funerals I get to hear what people believe about death and about the future and about eternity. And you might be surprised to hear what some who call themselves believers even think about death. I've heard Christians say that when a Christian dies he turns into an angel. And so at funerals I've heard, you know and at funerals you can't like stop and correct them. "Well I guess God just needed another angel. That's why he called this person to heaven." Or I've heard at a eulogy not too long ago, somebody stand up and say, "Right now I know he's playing golf in that big fairway in the sky." Really? I didn't know there was a big fairway in the sky. What about all the people who don't like golf? We've got to like be caddies for them or something? Or some people will say, "Well you know after you die you've got to go a place, some other place for a while and work really hard. And then if you work really hard for a long time and pay off your sins, then you get to go to heaven." Ever heard that? Not true. But some will indicate that. Or, and there's a number of stories that, "Well you know when a person dies they go to heaven and they've got to stop at the gate. And at the gate of heaven, who's there? Yeah, Peter. And Peter's going to fire a whole bunch of questions off and you've got to get all of those question right. Like, what's the square root of that number? And then if you get them all right you get to get into heaven. Or, I've heard people say, "Well you know heaven, you sit on a cloud all day long and you play a harp. Man, I'm sorry, but I don't even like harps. To play one for a million years? No thanks." So what will it be like really the moment after death? Do people turn into angels? What happens to the body? Do we remain disembodied spirits? Or, do we enter into a period of soul sleep until the resurrection? When do we get our new bodies? What will those bodies look like? What about a baby who dies? What happens to babies at death? And does that baby remain a baby for all of eternity? What about those who die at old age? Will they look the same if they're ninety-five years old, forever? It doesn't sound appealing. What will heaven be like? What will we do in heaven? Are there stages of heaven? And what will those stages be like? And what about the judgment? Is there one big judgment? Or do believers get a certain kind of judgment and if so when and what will that be like? Those are some of the things we want to explore in this series, that we might be prepared for the ultimate journey.
But today in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, it's a book we looked at this last Wednesday, but strategically did not cover these verses on purpose because we wanted to go through them today. I'm going to call these travel tips because of the message title this morning. These are points that emerge out of the text, these are three travel tips for the ultimate journey. First of all, we all face our mortality. Or we might better say, we're bound by mortality. But we're made for eternity. And thus we all long for certainty. All of those three emerge from our text.
Let's take the first one, the mortality part of it. Verse 1 of Ecclesiastes 3 begins, "To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. a time to mourn, a time to dance. A time to cast away stibesm a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to gain and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to sew. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time of war and a time of peace. What profit has the worker from that in which he labors?"
Now just that quick reading of those verses reveal a repeated word in those verses. And what is the word that's repeated in every verse? The word time, it appears twenty-eight different times in those eight verses. Time. That's because we're creatures of time, we're bound by time. Since mankind has been on the earth we've observed our world, we've mapped out the rotation of the earth on its axis, we know that there are priods of the day that are light and some that are dark and we've divided it up into twenty-four segments called hours and sixty units in that hour of minutes and then seconds, sixty seconds. And that's time. And we live regularly by that time. We write things in our appointment books, we set our alarm clocks, we keep track of our watches. All day long, we are bound by time, we are creatures of time.
US World and News Report had a little article in it and it says, "In a lifetime the average American will spend six months at stoplights, eight months opening junk mail (I knew it), one year looking for misplaced objects, two years unsuccessfully returning phone calls, four years doing housework, and five years waiting in line. In addition, if you live to be 70 years of age, you will spend a total of twenty years sleeping, twenty years working, seven years playing, five years getting dressed, two and a half of years in bed (that's besides sleeping), five months tying your shoes (get loafers, flipflops, make it easy). Now all of these activities just amplify this truth. We all have a terminal disease, it's called mortality. And if the Lord tarries, we're all going to face what Solomon says in verse 2, "There's a time to die." Just as there's a time to be born. And George Bernard Shaw was fond of saying, "The statistics of death are quite impressive. Every one out of one person dies." We're bound by time, we face mortality. What's more, we're not really satisfied with any of this stuff, these activities don't fulfill us. Here we are on earth, in time, facing mortality, involved in all of these activities but they don't really satiate us, they don't really quench our thirst. We have a hunch this might not be all there is. Randy Alcorn in his excellent book on heaven calls earth "the in-between world. Earth is the in-between world. Here we are," says Alcorn, in between heaven and hell, in this place called Earth, in this time and space continuum, making choices as to where we will spend eternity."
Well Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes and if you know the gist of the book, you know that every activity that Solomon searched out and got involved with and experienced left him tasteless at the end. It wasn't enough, it wasn't satisfying, he's on a quest, he's on a journey. Life is disappointing for him, very, even despairing as he looks under the sun and all is vanity, a repeated them throughout this book. So that all of life's experiences, if you keep doing them, they don't satisfy. Paul even mentioned in I Corinthians chapter 15, "If in this lifeonly we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable."
It's interesting, Mark Twain, American author, was having a conversation with a gentleman and the guy was telling Mark Twain about heaven and being cynical as Twain was, Twain said, "Look, you keep your heaven. I'd rather go to Bermuda." Why would he say that? Well maybe it's because of all the ways he's heard Christians talk about heaven. Maybe they haven't come up with any suitable answers as to really what eternity's going to be like. Maybe a lot of Christians gave him the idea that heaven is one long church service where you sing one song after another song after another song after another song. And I've got to tell you, that doesn't sound all that exciting, and when we hear that that's what it's going to be like, we think that's boring. But we don't want to voice that because we're going to be unspiritual if we do. But we're thinking in the back of our heads, "Could I like bring a computer and do something else?" Or, "Like text message my friends from my i-phone, something else besides that? You take heaven, I'd rather go to Bermuda.
But back here in time framed by all of these activities spoken by Solomon, we're not satisfied, it's not enough. Why is that? Well the next couple of verses tell us why, though we are facing and bound by our own mortality, we haven't been made for that, we were made for eternity. Look at verse 10, "I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time. (Notice the next part) Also (or besides this, besides these activities in time, also) he has put eternity in their hearts." Stop right there for a moment, pause just for a moment, he has put eternity in their hearts. Now here's a truth that is uniquely about the human being, no other creature on earth, no other species has this characteristic. God has put eternity in their hearts. You have maybe a dog at home or a cat at home or a goldfish or a pet iguana, I don't know, but do your pets ever come to you and ask you the meaning of life? You ever see them pondering over in the corner, like, "What happens to me after I die?" You know, I have a dog, you give him a meal and you walk him once a day and life's good. They don't really care about much beyond that. But humans have this unique dissatisfaction, this search, there's got to be something beyond that. We're restless. There's a whole field of study that has come really out of this truth called phanatology, whether you're a nursing student or you go to a modern college, you'll find a course on phanatology, the study of death, what happens to the dying person and what do they think will happen to them after death. Phanatology, from the Greek word phanatos which means death. And why is that? Why that interest? Because God put eternity in our hearts, that's why. It's the same reason your children ask you, "Daddy, what's heaven like? What will we do all day long?" And sometimes when our kids ask us those questions we don't have really great answers, we don't even like those questions. Like little Cliff who asked his parents, "Up there in heaven, does Jesus have to keep his room neat like I do?" Four-year-old Ginny asked her mom, "Does heaven have a floor?" How would you answer that: does heaven have a floor? Well her mom was quite clever and sort of stepped back from the question and said, "Well Ginny, what do you think heaven's like?" And Ginny was very pragmatic, she looked up and saw the sky and the clouds, she goes, "Well it doesn't look like it has a floor. So I guess people are up there on coat hangers," she said. One parent told their nine-year-old daughter Heather, "One day we'll have glorified bodies." Imagine what that sounds like to a nine-year-old. One day we'll have glorified bodies. And the nine-year-old responded, "Does that mean we'll all look like Barbie?" That's the mind of a nine-year-old. But people are the creatures that are fascinated with what happens after death. And verse 11 of Ecclesiastes 3 explains why: God planted that seed within us, he put eternity in our hearts.
This is of course why people are interested in the near-death experience, a favorite topic that in the last thirty years has come out in all sorts of different books. And the story's basically the same: A person goes into the hospital and dies, that is they experience clinical though not biological death and during that period they get out of their bodies and they're hovering over the emergency room table or the operating table and they're watching the doctors and hearing the conversation. And then they get revived, they go back in their bodies but during that time they're experiencing certain things that they see and they come back and they write about them. What are we to make of that near-death experience? We'll talk more about that later but it's enough to say why are we so interested in those things? Because, for the same reason, God put that seed of eternity in our hearts. Now some people get annoyed with us even talking about heaven. In fact, they would say, "Well you know I have a problem with people who don't think about here and now, I mean here and now we have responsibility on this earth. I don't want to work around somebody who's always thinking about heaven, they're not going to be focused on what's important." That old favorite saying of some people, "You can be so heavenly-minded you're no earthly good." I would contend those who are the most earthly good are those who are the most heavenly minded because once you have eternity settled you'll have between now and death lived very confidently. C.S. Lewis responded to that sentiment by saying, "If you read history you will find that Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought most of the next. It is sensed Christians have largely ceased to think about the other world that they become so ineffective in this one. Aim at heaven and you'll get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you'll get neither." Solomon would say, "I'll add to that, we were meant to aim at heaven." It's something God put within us.
Some years back I went to a baseball game here, an Isotope game, I love going to baseball games, I just love the whole environment of baseball. But right in front of me were a couple guys drinking beer after beer after beer and I don't know what they were seeing in the game but we were losing, we were down. But even though we were down and the wind kicked up and it was quite sandy and windy like it's been the last couple days, this one guy holding a Budweiser turns to his friend and says, "It doesn't get any better than this." And I thought, "Man, that's sad. A baseball game in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we're losing and it's sandy and windy and it doesn't get any better than this? For some people, it doesn't get any better than that. But most human beings want there to be more to it than this, wonder if there's something more to it than this. And for the believer, it gets a lot better than this. Well how better, how good, how can we know.
That brings us to the next point here: Though we're bound by mortality, we're made for eternity, and therefore we long for certainty. We want to know what happens after we die. There's a few questions that Solomon asks in this chapter. And really I'll sum them up by saying there are two big questions that he asks. Question number one: Where do we go? Where are we going after we die? And question number two: what do we gain? Where are we going? And what do we gain, here and now for the hereafter. First of all, where are we going? He really asks that, go all the way down to verse 21, it's a question, "Who know the spirit of the sons of men which goes upward and the spirit of the beast which goes down to the earth?" He begins the chapter by saying, "This is what I've observed. There's a time to be born and there's a time to die." And now he's saying, "Where do we go when we die?" He wants certainty.
Then look at verse 9, "What profit has the worker from that in which he labors?" The first question is where do we go? The second question is what do we gain? Now follow me here. IN verse 1 through 8 he makes observation about predictable patterns, the balance of life: you're born, you die; you scatter, you gather; you tear, you sew; twenty-eight different activities, fourteen matched up with fourteen. You might say fourteen positive and fourteen negative. And for every positive activity it's cancelled out by a negative activity which leads him to the bewilderment: what is the gain of all that? It's simple math, fourteen minus fourteen equal zero. Vanity is his word, emptiness. What's the point? What's the gain of all this activity? Here's a guy longing for certainty and the bulk of this book is that quest for certainty. By the way he gets to the right answer at the end of the book.
Now if I had the opportunity to counsel Solomon at this period of his life, and I know he's wise and God gave him great wisdom, but at this juncture of his life, I don't know if he was in a mid-life crisis or what, but if I was there and had the opportunity to counsel Solomon, I might put my arm around him and say, "Dude," or (I couldn't call him Dude could I?) "King," "Sir," "Solomon. You can know. You can know the answers to these questions, they are all available. But not simply by observation. Solomon, it takes revelation for you to understand the answers to these questions. Because here's the problem Solomon, I've been reading your stuff lately and I've noticed that you are asking these questions and you are looking at life by observation and experience only and it's not enough, you'll never really get the full answer by just making observations and just by your own experience. You need something else and that something else is God's revelation. But you can know answers to your questions." And I would say that to anybody today. Everybody wants certainty for the future, you can know the answers, the Bible is filled with those answers.
Now somebody will object and say, "Well how can you really know for sure what happens after you die?" I guess you listen to somebody who's been in eternity a long time and has revealed it to us. That's where the Bible comes in. But you know I'll have people and I've heard it, I bet you have too, people quote this verse and I want to bring it up. They'll say, "Well the Christian can't really know for certain what happens after death because the Bible says (and they'll quote I Corinthians chapter 2 verse 9. Let me quote it to you. "Eye has not seen nor has ear heard nor has it entered into the heart of men the things that God has prepared for those who love him." And this is whre they stop and they'll interpret it by saying, "See it's so amazing there's no way to even describe it, why bother trying? That's why the Bible they say doesn't say anything about heaven. Because eye hasn't seen, ear hasn't heard, it hasn't even entered the heart of man the things God has prepared for those who love him. And my answer's always the same. It's this: Why stop there? Why not read the very next verse? Now let me give you the whole context. "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed them to us by his Spirit." You see it says the very opposite of what some people will cite that verse to mean. Yeah we can't know it naturally by observation but you can know by revelation. God has revealed what it will be like and there's a lot of scriptures for that. Then others will point to Paul's own words in II Corinthians chapter 12, remember where Paul describes a man who was caught up into paradise, the third heaven. He said he heard inexpressible words unlawful for a man to utter. Or as Eugene Peterson puts it, "It was forbidden to tell what he heard." So they will say, "Look Paul didn't even talk about heaven because God said, ‘Shh, don't tell anybody, it's unlawful to even write this stuff down. Don't even talk about it." Well that's one instance, one guy. But what about John who had a prolonged visit to heaven and God said, "John, write this down and reveal it to people," that's the whole book of Revelation. What about that? What about the words of Isaiah the prophet? Or Ezekiel? All giving us glimpses into heaven and different stages of the future. And there's a lot of words spoken by Paul that indicate our glorious, the resurrected body, the incorruptible body and what happens after death. That was just one instance. So God has in His word explained to us what heaven is like. And yet he hasn't done it in an exhaustive form. It's not completely, totally revealed. We still see through a glass darkly. I'll admit that.
In fact, look back at our text at verse 11, "He has made everything beautiful in it's time, also he has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end." See I think that as much as God has revealed and we'll see what that is in the next several weeks, there's a lot of truths that are undisclosed that he will disclose in the future. It sort of has to be that way. Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 7, "that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." I think there's going to be countless surprises in heaven. This is the way I believe it's going to happen: Let's say you were to keel over and die today, God forbid. But if you were to take your last breath on earth today I have a hunch that you're first breath in eternity would be something like this: "Woww!" I don't think you'd go, "Yeah I read about that. I knew that was coming." I think it would be, to really see it and hear it and experience it, it's going to be amazing. It's going to take God, according to Paul in Ephesians 2, all of eternity to reveal all of his great truth and grace and love, his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. And I think that gasp will be followed by a whole bunch of other ones, for on and on and on and on.
Marco Polo who was the famous 13th century explorer and he told people that he had traveled to China and all sorts of places. They didn't believe that he actually went to some of these places. When he was on his deathbed, people who attended that urged him to take back and recant all of those fanciful stories that he told them about these fanciful places he had visited. Marco Polo responded and said, "I haven't told you the half of what I saw." So though we will peek into the portals of heaven and get a glimpse of the eternal state, the new Jerusalem, the intermediate state, the resurrected body; I don't think it's all disclosed and we're in for some great surprises. But suffice it to say and close with this morning that we ought to live our lives now in the light of what we find out about this journey we're going to go on. You know we want to get as much information about the journey we're going to take and read about it in advance and get a grip on it as much as we can and doing that ought to change the way we live now. I've always loved that great quote by a Scottish cleric named Duncan Mathison who said, "Lord stamp eternity on my eyes. Stamp eternity on my eyes." Imagine if we were to live with an eternal perspective. It would probably change choices about where we live, what job we don, who we marry, etcetera, etcetera. Stamp eternity on my eyes. It certainly ought to make us happier people.
Charles Spurgeon, not only my favorite quotable preacher from Victorian England but he taught a pastor's school every week attached to his church called the Pastor's College. And he told his young students this: "When you speak of heaven, let your faces light up and radiate with a heavenly gleam. Let your eyes shine with reflected glory. And when you speak of heall, well then your everyday face will do." I've got to say by being around some Christians you'd think that they were speaking of hell every day. What about heaven? What about the future? What about the glories? Where's that excitement shown in their lives? Well the only thing that satisfies us in this time, the prison that we're in, is eternal stuff. Material stuff will never satisfy. Activities will never totally satisfy. Because we weren't made for it, we were made for eternity and being eternal creatures we need eternal things. That's why Jesus said to every person born on this earth, "You must be born again or you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." It has to be a spiritual life that takes place inside of you. And the whole reason that people experience boredom, that so many people, "I'm just bored with life," it's because you weren't meant for this life, you were meant for another.
So what about the journey? Go back to the opening illustration: If for one cent you could travel a thousand miles, meaning you could take a trip around the world for twenty-five cents, for $2.38 you could make it to the moon, for 930 bucks you could go to the sun, for $260 million (if you've got that lying around) you could get to the nearest neighboring star, I wonder what it would cost to get from earth to heaven? Whatever it costs the price has been paid. The price has been paid because the only way to get from earth to heaven isn't by millions and millions of dollars or lots of good works and well-intentioned ideas. But it's only by the death of God's perfect holy Son that washes away our sins so that anybody anywhere can say, "I believe in that. I believe in Him." And God will say, "Great! I made it easy by me paying the ultimate price so that you can take the ultimate journey. To heaven forever." That's where we begin.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you will and have in your word revealed to us what happens when a person dies and leaves this world, this world that we only understand by experience and observation. Lord, one day, should you tarry, we will have people planning our memorial service. And at that very moment we'll be conscious, we will feel and experience things. Lord, I pray that every one of us in hearing this message will be born again and have everlasting life and be prepared to take the inevitable and ultimate journey and that everyone will be ready to take the journey to heaven, because Jesus Christ who was the firstfruits of the resurrection has enabled us to do so. I pray everyone here will make that choice to follow Christ. In Jesus' name.