GOD’S WORD FOR OCTOBER 24 ~ ~ Luke 15:24 ~ ~ “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to celebrate”
From the book, We Shall See God ~ ~ with Charles Spurgeon and Randy Alcorn
Today, the chapter, “Not Just a State of Being.” part 1—Spurgeon
C.H. SPURGEON:
When some people think of heaven, they imagine souls floating around among the clouds. But that’s not the picture the Bible paints of the New Earth. We, as both physical and spiritual beings, will inhabit a literal heaven on earth. The Bible says so!
Luke 15:20-24
“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. 23 And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.”
When the prodigal son came back to his father, there was a preparation of the fatted calf, the music and dancing, and the gold ring and the best robe. Then what will be the preparation when we come home not as prodigals but as the bride prepared for her husband, or as the beloved children, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, returning to the Father, who shall see His own image in us and rejoice over us with singing?
It is a grand place that Christ prepares for us, for never was there such a royal host as He is. It is a mansion of delights that Christ prepares, for never was there another architect with thought so magnificent as His. Never were other hands so skilled at quarrying living stones and putting them one upon another! This thought ought to cheer us very much! It must be something very wonderful that Christ prepares as a suitable place for His people!
It must also be something very sweet when it is finally prepared. An honored guest cannot help observing that he is being treated with special recognition. That guest room appears newly furnished, and everything that was possible has been put there to do him honor. If you were such a guest, you would take pleasure in the fact that so much had been prepared for you. When you get to heaven, you will be astonished to see this and that and the other joy that was prepared for you because Christ thought of you and provided just what you would most appreciate.
You will be no stranger there, beloved. You will say, “there has been over here a hand that helped me when I was in distress. There has been over here, I know, an eye that saw me when I was wandering far from God. There has been, in this place, a heart that cared for me – that very same heart that loved me and bled for me down below upon the cross. It is my Savior who has prepared this place for me!!”
If Christ is preparing heaven, then it will be what our Scotch friends call “a bonny place.” And if it be prepared for us, when we get there, it will exactly fit us. It will be the very heaven we wanted – a better heaven than we ever dreamed of. A better heaven than we ever pictured, even when our imagination took its loftiest flights. The heaven of God, and yet a heaven exactly suited to the happy creatures we shall then be.
Jesus Christ has gone to prepare a place for His people. Does this not refer, if we keep it to its strict meaning, to the ultimate place of God’s people? You see, Christ mentions a place, not a state. And He speaks of going to it and coming back from it: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:3) Christ is speaking of Himself as fully human, without any figurative meaning to His words. He means that He is going, with all His human nature, away from this world and that He is going to prepare a place for us, intending to come again with all that glorified human nature to receive us to Himself
This does not mean His spiritual coming in death. I am persuaded that the clear meaning of the words involves our Lord’s second coning, when He will come to receive us. Not you or me as individuals who, one by one, will enter into the rest, but to receive His whole church into the place He shall then have prepared for her. After the Resurrection, you must remember, we shall need a place to live in – a literal, material place of residence. For these bodies of ours will be alive as well as our spirits, and they will need a world to live in, a new heaven and a new earth.
Christ is preparing a place not for spirits, but they are already before the throne of God, and perfectly blessed. No, a place for the entire personhood of His people, when spirit, soul and body shall be again united and we as complete people shall receive the adoption – that is, the redemption of our bodies. Then the complete personhood of every believer shall be perfected in the glory of Christ.
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1Corinthians 15:21-22
For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.
Ps 73:26
My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 23:4
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
Hebrews 9:24
For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;
2 Corinthians 5:1
For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.