Knowing Your Eternal Home

Main idea: The better you know God and His home for us, the better you live here today.

Review: Knowing God better

1. That you would know your forever home
   Mark 8:34-38
   Mark 10:29-30
   
   • At home with God
   • A role in His kingdom
2. That you would know your forever family
   • Celebrating quality Christian relationships
   • Investing in quality Christian relationships
   • Reconciling broken Christian relationships
   • Anticipating perfect Christian relationships

• Automated Transcription
• 0:21
  Oh, good morning, church family! So good to see you all gathered this morning. A bunch of you were in the Sunday school class, and hopefully that was a blessing to you. I was in it the last couple of weeks talking about end times things. I'll have a brief version of that, more personal end times, in the hope of our calling today, but church family, I love my heart just swells with love and thanks for you as we go through these prayer requests. I've thought about it many times over the years as I see what Paul thanked God for in the churches that he had helped plant and establish. We as elders, I as an elder and pastor, thank God too. Thinking of your faith and your love for the saints-that's how the Ephesians one prayer started. I have so much of that for you. So thankful for you. I just think of the ministry month called July with VBS and some 50-plus volunteers. I think of a hardworking kitchen crew that fed the volunteers. Thank you, sellers, and more for overseeing that. I think of Howard, like hunched over the hot pans in the kitchen, unsung heroes like that. I'm so thankful for that kind of thing. And then all the group time, teaching time, the excellence of that move on to youth camp, where again some 50 volunteers help 150 kids. All of them like doing cabin time. The heroes of any youth any youth camp are the cabin leaders for your 14 year olds, and they are our heroes. Spending time with them, shepherding them, encouraging them, having fun with them. This next week, another giant set of volunteers, 30 so going to UGM camp, and about 60 kids going out there with them. It's I don't know 10 refugee kids, 20 kids from UGM camp, something like that, from UGM ministries and something like that, roughly. He's like, your numbers are not great, Dan, but he means well. And about 30 kids from public schools, most of them unchurched, and our our people, cabin leaders, and so on, investing. Just I thank God for your faith and your love for the saints and love for ministry. I could count a whole bunch of other things going on, and I'm so thankful for that. Men's men's breakfast yesterday, 100 guys gathered, and Paul Bosley did a great job teaching, and we're just so encouraged. The characteristic of all of those that's so encouraging is the interpersonal conversations that the people who lead Faith Bible Church want to have with other people. It's not just about did the kids have a great time, and was the fun program? Did we have the water slide? You know, the stuff that happens that make it fun. It's like the interpersonal conversation. So thankful for that. So I want to encourage you. God's at work. So if you're new with us, welcome. I want to add my welcome along with John. If you're new with us, we want you to know Christ better. We really mean it. This is today's prayer request. Is a prayer that you would do that. And there are people around you who will help you. Now, some of you have been here for two or three months, so let me get you on board with the drill. You come in, you sit down, you look up and down the rows, and you find out if you don't know somebody. As soon as the service is over, you're saying, "I don't know you. Sure, you did. We were in growth group together 15 years ago for two years. Yeah, welcome, welcome to life on Earth. Okay, well, I'm welcome. Glad you're here anyway. But somebody might not be, and so if you're like two or three months with us, that's that's routine. Help us, and then everybody wants usually to connect into a community. So take them to the back and help them do that. We all want to do that together because ultimately we want to be in Christ, under Christ together serving His eternal purposes. All right, we're in Ephesians chapter one, and we are exploring the Apostle Paul's prayer for the saints in Ephesians. Stand with me for the reading of God's word. We're going to be praying for a variety of things today.
  
  4:38
  We're going to be sending off a couple of teams today, and Paul prays for believers in really specific ways that are things we need to ask God for, and the people in our lives that we love, we need to pray for the same things for them. So Ephesians one, I'm going to read 17 through. Or 18 through 20, I'll only get to 18 today. So, you would think that that would get us done really early. Don't count on it. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, this is a prayer request that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places? This is the word of the Lord, Father. We thank you and praise you for your grace, for the ongoing grace. Paul prayed. You answered the Ephesians. You have answered his prayer request for 2000 years now. You have drawn sinners, saved them, and enlightened them. We want you to continue to do that today. Help us know you, the one who gives hope, and the hope that you have prepared, the inheritance that's in the saints, and the power that we have. That you work toward us, we pray for you to powerfully work. Pray for UGM Camp, and that you would open the hearts of kids and families, move in families in our city in such a way that all the things that they thought were God's are all the ways they wanted to be God, but find that they cannot bear its weight brings them to their spiritual need, and they would come to you. Pray for kids to open their hearts and come to you. Pray that those who are exposed to the gospel would then be brought into the church and discipled. Father, we pray for those who are suffering in our church. I think of Jim Moeller, who is recovering from open heart surgery. There would be many others who have various physical difficulties. Give them encouragement and and open joy and rest in you. Bring them to real fruitfulness. We pray for Republic, and we pray that you would help Grace Bible Fellowship as we have been sending couples up there, men to preach, and and pray that you would help us help that church be a testimony to you. I think of churches in our city. I think of Matt Halverson, who is the new senior pastor at New Creation Fellowship help the the transition period help him be faithful to shepherd and his elders and deacons to shepherd faithfully shepherd well I pray that you would be at work north south east and west as there are many church bodies who are seeking to give testimony to Christ and His gospel, we want faithfulness in that. We want you to be known, and for you to draw people from our city away from sin, away from judgment, into relationship with you forever. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. So I remember pretty, pretty well the first time I got to decorate my side of the room. Do you remember getting to decorate your side of the room? Now maybe you were a kid who had his own room or her own room, but I shared one with my brothers. I hung guess what I hung on the walls. Washington Redskin penance. It was 1973. I was six or seven, and the Seahawks didn't exist. So what am I? What am I going to do? I remember when Linda and I got married and moved into our first apartment in Cheney. Linda got to finish and decorate our first home with thrift store finds and whatever was free, because that's what newly marrieds can make home with. Within a few months, we were pregnant with Corbin, and we decorated our first baby room. We picked blue and lambs because there were no llamas. There were no llama baby decorations back in that day. Now they might exist. Home, home is the the people you love in a place you make beautiful, so that it can be a haven for joy and growth.
  
  9:37
  Home. There's a sentimental aspect. There's a real aspect. There's a relational aspect. There's a physicality to it. We rightly pursue those things under God's good and gracious rule in making Adam and Eve, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth. He made families. Who landed in places, and they made homes to live in, towns, villages to call home, nations to be a homeland. It's all part of the created order. We naturally want to pursue it, some version or other. Whatever it is that feels like home, we have to admit that there is a sad reality. It's temporary. It's aging. You will die, and you will leave it all behind. Happy Sunday. The people you deeply love are also deeply flawed. Sometimes they are so hurtful you flee never to return. You are too often self-indulgent, selfish, manipulative. Sometimes you are the person who makes home into hell for others. Those are all sad realities. How much of life is searching for this elusive thing called home? How much time is in protecting it? How much is in controlling it and managing it? How much Energy is rebuilding broken lives in it. Near the end of your life, how much time and energy is learning to let go of it? Two-word definition: a lot, a lot of time is doing that. Now enter Jesus Christ, who calls you. John 14, Jesus said to his disciples after the disappointing news that he's going to die. He is going to go on with his father, not stay with them. He's got bigger plans. Enter Jesus Christ, who says, "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and I will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also. From the first verses of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we learn that eternal life is home with the Father who loves you and adopted you, the Son who died and rose for you to make payment for your sin, forgive you, and reconcile you to the Spirit who strengthens and enlightens you. Home is a calling to an eternal relationship with Him, and it is in a kingdom, the kingdom of God coming when Jesus returns. He now rules in heaven, the age to come. He will rule the earth below. He will then establish an eternal, deathless home where God will be our God. We will be His people, and we will dwell with Him. This is the hope of our calling. Knowing God, knowing God's goal and purpose, makes all the difference in living life here. It makes all the difference. The big idea could form something like this: the better you know God and the home He has prepared, the better you live here today. The better you know God and His eternal home that He set, the hope, as what Paul calls it today. The better you're going to live, the the wiser you're going to live, the more fruitfully you're going to live, the more the more you will be smart about what to live for and how to enjoy here. You need, according to this passage, you need to be an explorer of God. You need to be an explorer of the home that He has prepared. I think of a just a practical analogy, just this little tiny Earth and a gigantic. Unimaginable universe, 8 billion people, 195 nations. You live on it. It's your home. How well do you know it? I mean, you could spend the rest of your life in travel and conversation and never really scratch the surface, right? This little ball with this set of people still far bigger than you can. How much more so is this reality of God? You have you if you have trusted Christ, if you repented from your sin, turned to Christ, and have eternal life. You have God. You have His fullness, but bigger than standing on the little P called Earth is the infinite God who made it all. You need to be an explorer of Him, and you need God's help in exploring it. I think of this as this is a prayer request.
  
  15:56
  This is something the Apostle Paul knew that his eloquence and his knowledge, his teaching, couldn't fully offer you. He had true words, but the subject, the reality, was so big. Even if he could tell you what it is, you would need to God. You would need God to show you what it is and how to experience it. There's three things Paul wants us to know in this prayer request. After knowing God better, what is our eternal home? Who we're going to share it with, and how we're going to get there. Next week we're going to get the how we're going to get there the power that raised Christ from the dead. This week we'll look at the first two. We need to ask this of God for ourselves, for the people in our lives, in our churches, our kids, our nephews and nieces, and if you're a small group leader, a growth group shepherd, the people that you shepherd, if you're a counselor, the people you counsel, if you are an auntie, your little nieces and nephews, anybody that you influence, you want them to become an explorer of God, the hope that He has laid up, the riches of His inheritance in the saints. We'll start with that today. So, three prayer requests. We're going to do two today. First one: that you would know your home. That's how I'm describing the hope. Life here is the journey that prepares us for eternal home. That hope, Paul prays. We would dig in. We would be an explorer of what's what's ahead. Verse 17 reminds us that this is all about knowing God better. So, who is the God that gives this hope? Says that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him. Who is the God that gives you this hope, this home? Well, He's the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, set out earlier in the chapter as the one who's eternally existing, the one who elected, the one who predestines to holiness and adoption out of love and grace. He prays that the Holy Spirit would give further revelation of the realities that we have in Him. It says, "Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, think of the the inner man that is the command center of all of life, that it would see and then appropriately direct Thinking and what you will to do, what you want to do, what you purpose to do-like everything that's inside you-may the inner man be so enlightened, see so clearly that it directs the whole path that you take, and that means that the prayer request of what we're to know is dramatically impactful for what we do next, how we live, how we purpose. We know Him, the first that that you may know what is the hope that He has called you. This is the home we need to know, the home to which he has called us. Here's the request Paul himself could not fulfill; God had to do it. That you would know this, I think when we pray it, it should go something like this: Lord, give us wisdom and revelation by Your Spirit. Help us more understand, lighten our darkened hearts to the sin that we have, to the hope that You've called us to. Those who have God do really have God, and what we're praying is this reality. I'm far too small. I'm far too clouded. I'm far too corrupted by residing sin in me. God, you've got to help me. If you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, let me summarize the calling. Go to the back of the phrase: the calling, the hope with which you have been called. This calling is is a message shouted out, beckoning you to come, and it it includes three undisputable realities you have stolen from God in some way so that you can be God yourself. And why do I use the word stolen? Because Eve and Adam took from the forbidden tree because they thought it would give them a knowledge that would be like God, and here is the pathology of sin-something that God has given.
  
  21:08
  Like you are God's, so you decide to take yourself from God's purposes to your own purposes for the exhilaration of being your own God, and that-that is what sin does. It gives us this idea that we could be our own God, and the second reality is that one day Jesus will judge this. He is not going to let you steal from Him and let you off the hook. Somebody's going to pay. The third truth that Jesus is the only one to rescue and restore you back to God. You're made for good purposes. You're using yourself and the world around you for different purposes-that's the stealing, that's the sin. You can break the rules, and for a moment, you can be a little god. I remember my freshman year at college, some teammates from inner city Oakland, which my teammates called Coakland was not an affectionate term for Ian City Oakland. They were incredulous at how easy it was to steal and shoplift from a local grocery store in Cheyenne. We were out on a food run one night, and they said, "Look how easy it is! Like we had bought some drinks, we walked out. One of them grabbed snacks off an end cap, tossed it to another one as he walked out the door, threw it in the back of the car. I tumbled in. Nobody came out. Nobody noticed, and there was this bizarre experience of exhilaration, like we just got away With this, or did we? I'm going to tell you, we didn't. Nobody ever saw us. I never went and put the stuff back. I never went and paid for it. I never confessed. They're not in business anymore. I guess I could go back and confess. This is you. You get away with it, and you feel like, oh look, it! I'm a little god now. I have made my own rules. But here is the problem: if you're a little god, now you have to bear the weight of God. You have to bear the weight of God, like you have to be your own savior for all things. And and every person who's a little god establishes his own standards by which to live that he cannot keep, and there is a lie that you've believed, and one day there is a fixed day where you're going to be found out as a fraud. Enter Jesus Christ. Jesus comes to thieves, addicts, control freaks who can't hold up under their own weight, you can use the rules to be a little god to maximize this life. You can use the rules. You can break the rules to be your own God for the exhilaration you have this life. Jesus comes in and He makes this remarkable statement: If you're going to experience real life for eternity, you're going to have to let go of this life. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's sake will save it. Being your own little God, establishing your own little life, you can't bear up under it. The call of the gospel is to leave it behind. And take the next life with Jesus. Jesus says, "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? That means there's an accountability and a life to come, friend. There's a more important life after this life. Repent, turn to Jesus, and you will receive Life with God now and in His presence for all eternity. That's what Jesus did throughout His ministry. If you have repented and believed, shown faith publicly in baptism, and you have laid up a hope in heaven where Christ is, Paul writes about a home in the body. The home metaphor is used a lot. Second Corinthians five one, for instance, says, "For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, talking about this body, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. This body may fail you at 21, like my brother who died of bone cancer. The body may fail you at 91. Jesus promises a home eternal in the heavens. Often we try to make family ultimate.
  
  26:26
  God has given us good work in building families. There's much in Ephesians to talk about how to make a great home. But sometimes we make family ultimate. Jesus said to people like that, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time houses brothers and sisters and mothers and childrens and lands. I mean, there there is a hope when you trust Christ because as you share in the community of believers, we we share all the joys of things together. But he says also with persecutions, the ancient day is much like many of the places today. Turning to Christ as your only Savior means turning away from the household gods, the family pursuits, and the family agendas, and they'll give you a hard time for that. Here they're called persecutions. This is whoever leaves those, you're going to have persecutions. But in the age to come, you will have eternal life. That's the call of the gospel. Abraham, who was looking to build a nation, was called into Canaan, but he was always a sojourner. Hebrews describes him this way: He was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. There's going to be a shaking and translating of heaven and earth, and Jesus will come, and ultimately a new Jerusalem will come out of heaven. It's our ultimate Home, and it's not only home in that sentimental sense, but there's a role in the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven. Paul just summarizes it very succinctly in Second Timothy 212. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. We will have a place in the kingdom with Jesus, with important work to do. Why is it so important? Why is it so important for Paul to pray that you would know what your hope is? Well, one is to fight the fight off the constant disillusionment of life on Earth. God made most of us with a desire for companionship and children. It's an average thing, a normal thing. Not everybody, not everybody in the church. Everybody in the church has a desire for companionship and bearing fruit for another generation, but in reality, how many nine-year-old girls have already drawn their wedding dress in crayon on a piece of paper? I know 12-year-old girls. I would have never done that. Your parents have 16 pictures of your wedding dress because you've dreamed about it, the decades pass, the spouse never materializes, the children never come. What then? He wants you to know the hope of your calling in a world that is not what it will once one day be. What about the spouse that does come along? Spouse does come. So do the children. The career comes. Success follows success. And at some point, the Ecclesiastes moment sinks in after Solomon makes all the wealth, builds all the parks, builds the fabulous city of Jerusalem, and he still says deep down in his heart, "Why does it feel like I'm still grasping at smoke. There are things that you spend enormous energy at that are just grasping at smoke. Forget it. you're you're 16. You have a 21 year old friend who's given you a little attention and gave you your first bottle of Fireball. Why do I pick Fireball? Walking in my neighborhood on a busy street, there's three new little bottles of Fireball off to the side all the time. If you don't know what Fireball is, praise the Lord. If you do know what Fireball is, this will make sense. So, 21 year old friend gives you your first little bottle of Fireball at 16. You drink it, you feel really good. Gives you a second, and you feel even better. You're godlike when you're drunk. Nothing can hurt me. Pretty soon, you need a lot of fireball. Pretty soon, you're the devil when you're not drunk. Years later, 30 more days of rehab and 30 more months of jail. You are stuck. Moments of pleasure promise Godlike status and an eternity of euphoria, which instantly collapse and bring you to nothing.
  
  32:11
  Knowing the hope that Jesus Christ calls you is the only fight you have becoming an explorer of God, and your future home is your only direction of safety. Without that, you're going to drown in your misery. You have something bigger, grander, more compelling than the escape into the next sin. You may well need the saints mentioned in the next passage to be like the sailors on Odysseus's ship, plugging their ears with earwax while he is strapped to the mast, hearing the sirens calling, and being unable to answer them. You may need people like that who know the hope better than you do, but exploring the hope you have is part of the antidote to experiencing the greatness of God and being able to fight against the false promises of false heavens on earth. Why is it important that you know the hope of your calling. The better you know God and the home He has prepared, the better you live here. That's our first prayer request: that you would know the hope of your calling. Second, that you would know the value of your forever family. That you would know the value of your forever family, everybody has an earthly family. Christians have a forever family. Paul wants you to know what the value of that is. He he says it in the second what. There's three whats. Next week we'll look at the what of power. The second what he says. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? the The main word is inheritance. Everything else describes it. What is an inheritance? Then it's a heritage. It's a possession. It's a portion. Usually in English, we think of it in terms of when somebody dies, they leave something to me. That's an inheritance. But that's not how Greeks would understood it. That's definitely not how Jews understood it. Jews understand inheritance as that which was allotted by God for the family as a place to dwell, that possession, that place. They would have understand understood themselves as God's inheritance. God is their inheritance, and they gave them a a place of lasting value. In verse 14, God is the inheritance of the believer, which speaks to the hope of your calling. What do you get at death or Christ's return? The full sight and enjoyment of your Creator and Redeemer. I think of First Corinthians 1312. God, our inheritance, now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known, God already fully knows you. You will fully know Him if you can stretch your arms around a globe of infinite width. You will know Him, and you will keep knowing Him. Okay, that's that's inheritance. Him, what's it here? Okay, let's look at the scriptures. Riches that you would know. The riches, the inheritance is described as abundant, plentiful, wealthy. It's a wealth. This inheritance is abundantly and immeasurably valuable. Who does it belong to? It's it's his inheritance, and the his which is crucial is referring to God the Father. It is what is his possession, his portion, what is valuable to him. It is glorious. Glory is the full display of of the characteristics, attributes, truth, activity of something. In this case, it is what is shining forth in a reflection. Back in verse 17, God the Father is called the Father of Glory. He emanates in a brilliant display of the fullness of all that He is. The inheritance that He receives reflects it back. As a father has an inheritance in his adopted children, they bear and reflect the image of God back. It's glorious, valuable, immeasurable. So, what is the inheritance? Last phrase in the saints, made up of God's people. It's going to be called the church, called the body of Christ, the elect and adopted. Remember, from the foundation of the earth, He set forth to choose for Himself a people who would be holy and blameless before Him. He would predestine them to adoption as sons. They will arrive, be transformed, and they will be in full glory, reflecting the glory of the Father. They will be His holy ones. What's so striking about what the Spirit of God is telling us here is that these are God's people. They are his portion, his possession. Top five movies for me.
  
  38:25
  Fiddler on the Roof is still in the top five for me. I don't. Do I have an action movie in my top five? Maybe. Rev Tevia meets a guy named Perchik. He brings Perchik home for Sabbath meal. Welcomes into the home. He yells. Riftevia yells at all his girls come in to the Sabbath. And so one by one they line up to me, and he says, Perchik, this is mine. The next one comes. He kisses her. This is mine. This is mine. This is mine. This also is mine. Five daughters. Five daughters. Yes, it's true. God, your Father, says to you, "This is mine. You are precious, so precious that He sent His Son to suffer on a cruel Roman cross, be rejected by His own, bear your sin, bear the wrath. Sent His Spirit to strengthen you and seal you. This is mine, is what He says of you, if you are a saint, and it's what He says of. Every saint. The hope of our calling includes the day we are face to face, united with God, all together, as holy ones. He is ours; we are His. And here in verse 18 is a request that is intended to revolutionize how you view other Christians. Dennis and Wendy, Dennis was telling me about the trip to Britain and then to Papua New Guinea and to Indonesia and like weren't you talking about the thrill of gathering with believers, like six different nationalities this summer? I mean, it is thrilling and exhilarating because you feel the bond with other believers wherever you're gathering with them, offering God true worship. It supersedes class. It supersedes gender. It supersedes nationality. And so there, there are fruit that come as this prayer is answered. I'm giving you just just a few. First of all, celebrating the quality of Christian relationships. We we have enjoyed Christian relationships. The men's breakfast yesterday, a shower for a girl's going to get married, a baby shower. Like Christian relationships have all all these joyful qualities about them, and we celebrate the quality of Christian relationships. Richard Sibbs, one of my favorite Puritans, said this: "If the communion of saints here be so sweet, even a heaven upon earth, what will it be when all blessed souls that have been from the beginning of the world until the end shall be gathered together, and they all together freed from all corruptions and infirmities. What a blessed sight that will be! Celebrating Christian relationships, investing in the quality of Christian relationships, into quality relationships, spending times with saints, and at various events in various places, the gathering together of believers. What you do as a dad seeking disciple. I remember Brenna, our third. Sometimes I would need to get time with her away from the family. Dads need to get time with their daughters and their sons. Sometimes I didn't have a lot of it, so I said, "I need to go to Lowe's, which is every preteen's favorite destination. I'll go get you a coffee at Starbucks. We'll pop over to Home Depot across the street. There's some things I need to pick up, and I would let her set the playlist for music she wanted to listen to, and we just try to talk about life, pick up some topics that I think we should talk about. Just prize any opportunity to invest eternally. What does this do for us today? Well, it helps us prize this gathering, sharing any conversation with fellow Christians. I think of of the importance in Hebrews of continuing in faith. I'm going to recommend if you don't have it, we have a whole bunch of them. One free one per household. How to Walk into Church by Tony Payne, and it's based on Hebrews 10:23. It helps you think about how do I pray before I come into church. What am I looking for in other people at church? What am I ready to worship with? What am I ready to contribute to the saints? It's an excellent little booklet. If you've been a believer for many years, you're still going to be encouraged. If you're a newer believer who thinks the church is to make you feel good. It is by helping you love others. Here's what it says in Hebrews: Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering.
  
  44:28
  We've got a lot of temptations and a lot of difficulties. We got to hold fast. For he who promised is faithful. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, yeah, people bagged out on church back then too. But encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near, the end. Either when you die or Christ splits the skies, and the shaking and translating of heaven and earth happens, and Christ comes. His kingly glory help us encourage one another. The prayer of recognizing the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints transforms how you view the saints. Reconciling, third is reconciling broken Christian relationships. Since we're a forever family, Paul will make much of rebuilding and reconciling broken relationships. I think it's it's a reality. It was a reality for me. I'm sure it's a reality for you if you've been a believer for any number of years. That the greater hurts come from fellow Christians than they do from non-Christians. You don't expect a lot of non-Christians after a while, but you have normal and good expectations for Christians, and we all fail to meet those expectations. Bitternesses, difficulties, conflicts settle in. In the book of Colossians, Paul anchors Christian relationships in what's to come. When Colossians three four, he says, "When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. The first thing he does in verse five is tells you to put to death sin within. The second thing he tells you in verse 12 is how you deal with your beloved brothers and sisters, who you're going to spend eternity with, not in separate corners or separate countries far away, but in regular communion. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if anyone has complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So also. you must forgive. Reconciling Christian relationships, he's going to make much of this in chapter four, one through four, in living in harmony. Remember, what you think of your future affects what you do in the present. Fourth, it's not the last, but it's the fourth. The last I'm going to give you today is anticipating perfect Christian relationships. I find this so heartening when I consider being at odds with fellow Christians. Again, Sibbes says this: Are there not oftentimes in the church within itself prejudices, assumptions, jealousies one against another, that the the company of them causes offenses. Are there not scandals and offenses in the church that hinders the comfort of it, and so many times do cause the falling out of those that are otherwise truly good, so that in regard of Christians themselves, there isn't so much sweet enjoyment and delight in one another as there should be. Isn't there trouble in the church? Oh no, not in my church. Just dig a little deeper. It's not so much delight in one another as there should be. And in the kingdom, there shall be delight. Then there will be. We anticipate this is who we're spending forever with: purified, holy, purposeful. You know, we don't decorate forever homes on Earth. We do renovate and keep them up, whatever you consider that to be, so that you can make a home for somebody else also, a vista For the home that we're all on pilgrimage toward, we don't renovate forever church buildings, but we do renovate them to make them more useful for helping others for future generations. How do you make your house a home, your life a home, so that you can help somebody on their way to their home? This prayer will bear fruit in that. Let's pray, Father. Thank you for what you have given us in the gospel, the hope. Of our calling, Jesus, you came to us when we were sinners. You called us to faith and repentance, and you showed your mercy and grace by offering your life, by providing a new creation within that one day will experience a new creation on the outside. So we are praying for these things.
  
  50:23
  I pray for the children, children who went to camp, the youth, the children who went to BBS, the youth who served, the adults who served, invested. God, show us more of who you are. Help us be explorers of you, our hope and your inheritance called the church. I pray that you would open our eyes to see it, and then live fruitful lives until you call us home. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

Dan Jarms

Dr. Dan Jarms is lead pastor at Faith Bible Church in Spokane Washington, as well as associate dean at The Master's Seminary in Spokane. He has been married for over 30 years to Linda, and has three adult children. He earned his B.A. in English at the Master’s College, B.Ed. at Eastern Washington University, M.Div and D.Min in Expository Preaching at The Master’s Seminary. His other interests include NCAA basketball, woodworking, and art.

View Resources by Dan Jarms