What Planet Are You From? Part III

Is “heaven” a place where we go someday to live in a city of precious metals and jewels, as we’ve been taught, or is it an expression of something spiritual that can not be touched?

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched….But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God (Hebrews 12:18, 22).

The Jewish church state was formed on Mount Sinai.  It was a touchable place, a place where much was about outward and earthly things.  The gospel Church is formed on “Mount Zion”; it is neither an earthly nor a material mountain.  It is about inward and spiritual things.  It is everything that we have in Christ Jesus!

We read that the author of Hebrews says, “You have come to … the heavenly Jerusalem…”  This is past tense!  It has already happen!  You are there!  Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household (Ephesians 2:19).  While we remain foreigners and aliens in this world, we are “a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9-11).

As a tangible community, the lifestyle and fellowship demonstrated by its faithful and humble citizens announce to the world and beyond that Jesus has shattered their enslavement by and to idolatrous powers in this world and that Father’s glorious kingdom is already at hand.

We are given a glimpse of the untouchable, yet magnificence of the holy city in Revelation 21:2-23; 

(2) I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband...Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper. (12) It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are those of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel...(18) and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone...and the twelve gates were twelve pearls...and (22) I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb

1 Corinthians reads 3:16 reads, Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?  Is this a contradiction to what we read in Revelation?  How can we be the temple of God, yet the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple?

Because Jesus prayed, May all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.  May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them (John 17:20, 21, 26).

I pray that you find comfort in knowing that while you may be an alien to the rest of the world, as a child of the Father, you don’t have to wait to dwell with Him in His city.

And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth….  They were longing for a better country--a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (Hebrews 11:13-16).

This is what the “good news” is all about!  The Kingdom of God has come!  If you are “in Jesus,” you’re already home!

Whole-Heartedly,

Bonnie

P.S.  Please feel free to contact me with questions, thoughts, topics you’d like to ponder or to read past articles at: http://whole-heartedlife.blogspot.com/.  You may also contact me at:

             Bonnie Jaeckle

             In Search of the Whole-Hearted Life

             Diagonal Progress

             505 Jefferson St.

             Diagonal, IA 50845